how far will cloning take us?
will it be the gateway to regeneration of lost limbs?
is it a crime against nature?
it can easily be one of man's greatest or worst advancement's to date.
wich road we choose is up to us.

With the advances in technology, cloning may not prove to be all that effective for replacing body parts. Maybe arms or legs, but it will be amazing to see how effecient an artificial/mechanical (just to name an example) liver may be versus an organic one.

There is some considerable difference between what is publically acknowledged about the development status of human cloning and the contemporary achievements of Clinics in both USA and Europe.

Consider , the price of body parts and organs sourced mostly from two 3rd world areas are now affordable to the upper income levels of developed countries rather than solely the perquisite of the very affluent - and this has been within the last ten years.

The principles of Politicians and others of 'high purpose' will naturally be suborned should it be their liver or lungs that need replacement......and this is naturally extended to spouse and progeny.....therefore , as always there are laws and ethics applicable to the rich , the poor and the cognoscenti.

These latter will be by definition the former and have already ' sown the seeds' in private Clinics in anticipation of a need. This has been especially prevalent in Coronary cases where occasionally CABG procedures have been superceded by the more adventurous.

The prices are still reportedly distant. For example , kidneys from say. Pakistan can be obtained for around $25,000US whereas 'grown' renalware is somewhat dearer and together with the rejection therapy STILL required may cost upwards of $40,000USD.

Limbs are becoming passe' now , and there is gossip of advancements being made which will eventually percolate down publically - once prices have stabilised. The recent hand transplants have been received with less fanfare than deserved as the micro work involved is of the highest order.

I believe that 'true worries' should only surface when serious work is done in the cerebral and brainstem areas. One of the most entertaining pieces of fiction about this was the excellent novel by Peter Nieswand called 'Fallback'. The technology is available now!
Regards.............................Caligula

organs can be grown without rejection

xenotransplantation will (someday) be as efffective as normal organ donation

both organ farms and the even cheaper xenotransplant animal farms will be able to out produce the number of organs stolen from people in 3rd world countrys... there for their prices will be lower and they will have a variaty of organs over just a kidney from some poor smuck in south america.

I been telling my friends for months that I think cloning will be the biggest "non-event" of the century. My only caveat to that is if quite a few human clones are produced with severe genetic and/or physical abnormalities. But then, I think it will self regulate into minor obscurity until the technical problems are ironed out.

For comparison, how big a celebrity is Louise Brown (the first IVF baby)? She probably gets on some news show every 5 years.

Clone-shmone. If there ever are dozens, or better yet, hundreds of more of less healthy cloned humans out there, people will realize that a clone is his/her own person and is not a way for a person to perpetuate his/her own life. (At least not until the Raelians perfect the whole process...)

Identical twins are a real curiousity and it's often freaky how similar in personality they are. But since a clone will generally be 20+ years younger than the cloned individual, the actual clone will hardly be recognized as such.

gentic determines a good precentage of your personality John. the clone could be more like the origional then you think... though cloning could help finally answer nature vs nuture questions.

Originally posted by WellCookedFetus
gentic determines a good precentage of your personality John. the clone could be more like the origional then you think... though cloning could help finally answer nature vs nuture questions.


WellCooked..it is extremely difficult to say that most of your personality come from your genetics. As learning and adaptive creatures ,humans change drastically throughout the course of their life. Though I am no expert,but I would gamble that a clone though alike in appearance would vaguely resemble the orginal in personality. It is our experiences that determine who we are, not necessarily our genetics. And though there are things that are inherited like maybe forgetfulness, and even a short temper. Overall life experience itself will determine our personailty.

and yes..it would most definitely answer the that elusive question of nature vs. nurture.

Though in the end and in response to the ultimate question...I have to agree with you about cloning in general. to clone a whole person would be a massive waste of time and money. We should focus on regenrating the parts we need.

Who wants to live forever anyway?

My 2 cents..spend it where ya can

lb:D

You obviously have not read any modern studies done on identical twins separated at birth. Genetics determines are basic thought processes, the environment on the other hand adds what we can do with those basics. So a clone will have very similar behavior patterns to its original though the clone may marry a very different person then the original did, may have different political and religious beliefs. The clone and the original will still have the very similar personality; they will still react to stimuli in the same way and like/dislike the same things. It actual very complecate with something being nature and other being nuture like a pro/cons list. this list though is still in the making.

Please clarify for me these studies you speak of..send a link I would like to see them. As for my personal experience with friends and family members who are twins. They are not so alike. You would be surprised as to how different they really are. I stand by the origianl opinion that experience is the determining factor in personality. We are not talking about whether or not the clone likes broccolli. I am saying though alike genetically, it is pompous to presume that the clone would be so like the orginal. When it is clearly seen everyday in young children that they mimic what they see and learn their attitudes and opinion from their parents. In essence their personality is learned..not programmed.Behavior is a learned......Please forward those links on the case studies of genetically identical twins seperated at brith. I would love to read them.

And so it goes

lb

:D

http://www.nature.com/dynasearch/app/dynasearch.taf?site_source=ng

look here… good luck I read some but finding them again is like trying to @#$% a elephant! Hey don’t make searchs as easy as SA but then again Nature is a primary source science magazine and Scientific American is just a notch above Discovery!

your looking at too high a level there, when I said basic thought patterns I mean irritability, how adventures you are, how curious you are, how impulsive you are, emergancy thought pathways such as if you will be dominate, submissive or just plain freak out in a time of crisis... ect. belief, opinions and so forth are controlled by environment… sadly there is no gene that makes you a republican though if there where it would also make you
gullible and ignorant too.
:)

Yes, our current understanding is that genetics plays a large part in determining our behaviour. But, the clone will be LESS similar to the "parent" than are identical twins raised together, since the environment will be less similar. But so what? Children already inherit genetic predispositions from their parents. We are only talking about matters of degree.

Here's a thougt, though, on a different tack. Suppose someone rumages thru Halley Barry's garbage and digs out some of her hair (follicle attached). They then proceed to clone her from the recovered DNA. Do we have any laws on the books to prevent that? As much as I'd like to have my very own Halley Barry, the thought of surreptitous cloning is kind of scary.

we don't have any laws prevent girls form stealing their boyfriends uuuuh "stuff" and selling it at some clinic do we?

http://www.haverford.edu/psych/biopsych217b/crim_beh/JMTwin.html

http://www.arts.uwaterloo.ca/~acheyne/courses/BehaviorGeneticsNotes.html

http://www.worldpolicy.org/globalrights/sexorient/twins.html

http://www.nida.nih.gov/NIDA_Notes/NNVol14N4/Twins.html

http://health.discovery.com/minisites/dna/glossary/glossary_twin_studies.html

http://psych.colorado.edu/~willcutt/CLDRC/project1.htm

google (http://www.google.com/search?num=50&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&newwindow=1&safe=off&q=twin+studies)

thx spookz I tryed searching on google but got fed up quickly what did you put in the search box?

Originally posted by John Mace
Here's a thougt, though, on a different tack. Suppose someone rumages thru Halley Barry's garbage and digs out some of her hair (follicle attached). They then proceed to clone her from the recovered DNA. Do we have any laws on the books to prevent that? As much as I'd like to have my very own Halley Barry, the thought of surreptitous cloning is kind of scary.

fascinating!


simple theft
now my dna belongs to me. the same goes for my liver, kidneys.... if i am incapacitated the "ownership" goes to the next of kin. i think current law could be interpreted to include genetic material. so this is the first charge?

but what if the thief picks my hair of a chair in a restaurent? finders keepers?

illicit use/harvest of body parts!!
using dna without owners permission. obviously not on the books,
but in the same way a kidney cannot be transplanted without my say so, current law..............second charge?

a clone of course is still a human being so one is gonna have to come to terms with the unauthorized copy

I think that human cloning is a rude outdated method
nanotechnology is (ok will be) a lot better

you mean biorobitics?

small not biological robots (nanites*) going by your body and configuting everithing as programmed

*Nanites are microscopic
robots programmed to operate within the body to various ends.

naw why not biological robots: it a much more easily achievable technology... heck thats the feild I dream of going into!

*biorobots are robots made of biological components and program via DNA... basically cells with their entire gnome synthesized off of a computer.

I dream of nanotechnology
it's a lot more reliable and configurable and programmable real time accordind to various situations

how will you order a bio robot to stop one work from cleaning your blood ways to going and destroying a virus?

easy use a chemical to trigger a different Opteron {Opteron = set of genes that runs on a feed back loop or pathway can be turn off or on digitally}

Biorobitics is just mouths away will nanorobitcs is well decades if not longer… tell me how would you tell a naorobot to do a different task!

If you look at it we know much MUCH more about how to make a biorobot then how to make a nanorobot also Biorobots are already self-replicating! Will nanorobot would need to be made in a factor like today silicon chips and that ain’t cheap!

easy use a chemical to trigger a different Opteron why trash your body with chemicals?

Biorobitics is just mouths away will nanorobitcs is well decades if not longer… decades

tell me how would you tell a naorobot to do a different task! some kind of a signal to which a particular group of nanites responds. 5 signals within an interval - go clean the lungs, 8 signals - increase his lung capacity (while diving)


If you look at it we know much MUCH more about how to make a biorobot then how to make a nanorobot where's your thrill of research?


Will nanorobot would need to be made in a factor like today silicon chips and that ain’t cheap! no- they won't be cheap either way, but can be very valuable for specialized professions - law enforcement, military, astronouts, spies...

and biorobots also get more easily damaged by outer factors imo and can disfunction under such factors
i.e. radiation, big pressure, toxic surrounding

Spookz:

I think we need a law to protect DNA. I specifically used the "out of the garbage" scenario because one could argue that whatever a person intentially throws away no longer belongs to them. But simple theft cannot cover the action of stealing someone's DNA to create a clone. I'd equate that more to rape.

Suppose someone steals your DNA, creates a clone and you find out about it when the fetus is 2 months along. Do you have the right to demand an abortion? I'd say yes.

This is going to get really complicated because I will guarantee that as soon as cloning becomes feasible, people will want to clone movie stars, sports personalities, what have you.

Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against cloning. But it sure opens up some interesting legal questions.

Anybody got other interesting scenarios...?

no months away let me pull up the citation... by the time the first nanorobot comes out biorobots of the virus and single cell prokaryote size will be use for everything! making drugs, fibers, gene therapy, we could design high organism as well like dinosaur, dragons, super humans like the "Nexus" seen in blade runner ect. Biorobots only rot because there parts are edible. If you look at it from affair both technologies are nanorobotics its just mine is in the well studied and developed field of carbon based and your is all hypothetical scifi of silicon based!

Im going to start a whole need thread for this one!

Originally posted by WellCookedFetus
thx spookz I tryed searching on google but got fed up quickly what did you put in the search box?

sorry but I read over these..there is still no viable proof for the statement that your clone would be like you in personality. Not even twins are that much alike. I'm not convinced..

ce la vie

lb:D

:eek:
Wow, is this thread really THAT old?

Why the hell should you bother cloning when you can fuck someone and get a kid the natural way? Mystery to me.

Because cloning like designer babies you have the ability to know what the child will be like ahead of time. Though it is agued that how they behave will not be predictable. how the clone will look and how healthy the clone will be is proven predictable.

Zero:

How about someone who is infertile and can f*ck all they want and never have a kid?

I think, though, that cloning will probably be used as much by people who have a child who died, and who want to recreate that same child. Seems like a huge waste of time/money to me, but what the heck, it's their dime. I would feel a bit sorry for the kid, though, who'd have all these expectations to live up to. Not that people don't put ridiculous expetctations on their kids already (be like your older brother; I wanted to be a doctor but couldn't so you're going to be one; etc.).