Basically one of the shows that I am watching right now is Orphan Black, and involved with some community chat on a Reddit forum.
When I looked up the latest in Human Cloning, one of the things that struck me, was that Human Cloning is only against the law in eight states, with some follow up laws that put heavy restrictions on related subject matter in other states. How does the medical community decide when its time to give Gov’s a heads up that within a certain time frame, this may very well be within reach of basement labs run by hobby types. ( I’m not that concerned btw).
But basically the big question in my mind, is how far along are we, until we can genetically sequence the entire population of North America. Not who can do what with the genetic database, such as insurance or medical therapy or gov ID biometrics. At the moment, our ability to detect free range clones seems kind of limited.
I expect that the actual people themselves have the same rights and freedoms that free births would have, and not get into the old scifi tropes about a corporation having the final say over a tube baby being able to donate a kidney or give blood cause the corp has copy right claims.
Right now, full genome sequencing has reached the point that it can be done in around 24 hours and cost around $1000 per person. That’s per expensive testing machine. Which needs human operators. To sequence all the humans in North America would either take centuries or orders of magnitude more machines, labs, and technicians, or orders of magnitude improvement on throughput on individual machines.
A clone is nothing more than a delayed identical twin, and would take as long to grow up and be as much an individual as a natural identical twin. Except that with the modern state of the art in cloning tech, it would take hundreds or thousands of tries to get a viable embryo and have it survive full term, and that child would likely have a range of medical conditions ranging from mild to fatal.
So we neither have the ability to casually test for clones or the ability to casually produce them and will not have either in the short term or possibly ever.
Looking to TV SF for anything like real science is akin to watching Lord of the Rings for real English history.
I’m not concerned either. Sometimes I think a human clone should be created, so we can stop the fuss about mad scientists creating clones. There, we made one. Dr. So-and-So gets the prize. Find something new to do!
I think cloning would only be a problem if it were widespread (it would reduce genetic diversity, and people might select clones based on racist ideals, sexist ideals, etc.) To an extent, we’re already facing a similar problem with assisted reproductive technology. There’s not that many sperm donors, so their offspring could share genetic weaknesses such as vulnerability to certain diseases. The selection criteria for sperm donors don’t focus on randomness. (Indeed, it seems there’s very little quality control, so what are they really selecting for?)
But I suspect we’re basically there. We can already clone large animals, although every species (including humans) have some unexpected problems (and since noone has really tried to clone a human, we don’t know what all the problems are).
The main problem would be a numbers game. You might need 10,000 women willing to donate ovaries, and perhaps 10,000 women to implant zygotes… convincing that many people to do something illegal (or viewed as illegal) is going to difficult to begin with. Then you have to secretly recruit 20,000+ women without anyone noticing for at least 9 months. That’s bordering on the impossible. (A South Korean scientist who tried this decided not to keep it a secret, and while there was an outcry, not much was done. His data was fake, so maybe the government knew this and didn’t bother to do anything about it.)
Another problem is the duration of pregnancy. I believe you can raise generations of cloned mice in nine months. This means it would take scientists longer to learn from their mistakes.
Yet another problem would be birth defects. Not all birth defects are genetic, and I suspect clones would be more prone to these non-genetic problems due to damage to the eggs plus non-germ DNA being used as the DNA source. Because the embryos would be unrelated to the host mother, there would be a greater likelihood of an immune response. These are problems with any kind of cloning, but given the smaller available sample and the duration involved, it’s more problematic for humans.
You might also face premature aging, depending on whether telomeres regenerate enough. I think that might depend on what cell types are contributing the DNA.
“Free range” clones already exist. They’re called identical twins. We might be able to detect them if their telomeres are shorter than expected.
They would have the same rights. Currently-existing clones (identical twins) have the same rights as other human beings. Of course, you could probably extract stem cells from an embryo (probably killing it) without much of a legal penalty.
Free range in this case had more to do with the show, the individuals had no idea that they were clones. Evil Mega corp had implanted embryo’s all over the world, and then left with parents to grow up, and let the Nature/Nurture thing happen. Imagine going to your doctor and having him tell you that given your genetic info, your a clone.
Similar things happen. Liketheseexamples. As already mentioned, clones are nothing more than identical twins with health problems. (That’s cloning from adults–the way you mentioned for Orphan Black would be much more simple–take a 2 or 4 cell fertilized embryo, tease the cells apart–each can grow into a perfectly normal infant (you might be able to do that division a few more times–I don’t know if anyone has done experiments on the limits to the number of times a “reset” can be done at the 2 to 4 cell stage of an embryo.)
I was quite shocked a week ago, when my wife and I were at at a lake cabin with 2 other (ostensibly educated/intelligent) couples. i forget the conversation/context, but at one point one person casually observed that human cloning was either possible or imminent. I expressed my understanding was that cloning a viable human was still quite far off. The other 4 were adamant, despite having nothing to back it up other than saying “Dolly was some time ago.” I didn’t have internet access - or really the inclination - to prove them wrong…
What would get that price down to 10 dollars a person. Is the price amortized to the cost of the machines, and the 24 hour turn around, is that computer /sequencer time or C/S with fedex overnight for the results ?
Yeah, I already mentioned that I expect that tubers would have the same rights, but what does the law say about body parts, if say one of them wanted to donate a kidney. Or harvesting organs after death, even if they have consented personally
What it would take to get the price down (but maybe never to $10) is the economy of scale–for instance, if they were trying to sequence everybody in North America. The cost, I’m assuming, includes amortization on the machine but also the chemicals themselves are apparently pretty expensive. The 24 hours or so is actual sequencer time. (I’m no expert on this, just going by data that I had researcheda few months back.)
I don’t endorse any of the link’s , as I don’t know their provenance or angle that they are presenting. The above, looks like its been lay washed. But essentially no higher primate has been cloned or has been disclosed to have been cloned, but the other stuff looks interesting.
Why would the fact that a person is a clone have any bearing whatsoever for their ability or inability to donate organs or tissues, either while they are alive or after death?
Is your theory that the “original” owns the clones organs? That’s nonsensical. A clone is a human being. No human being can own another human being, because that would be slavery. So clones can donate or not donate organs or tissue in the exact same way everyone else can.
As for whether we’re “near” to perfecting human cloning, the answer is that we are not. I mean, we could be, if people wanted to do it. The only problem is that cloning in animals isn’t a foolproof process. The cloned animals often have health problems, and it takes a lot of attempts to since the cloned embryos often fail to develop, or develop atypically.
So if we cloned a bunch of embryos and implanted a bunch of embryos we could eventually get a couple of full term cloned babies. What would be unknown would be the health problems those babies would be at risk for developing over their lives. It’s fine if a cloned sheep has a heart defect and dies early. It’s not fine for a human baby.
So human cloning will have to be in the same ballpark as IVF before it would really be ethical or practical to clone humans. And so we need much better basic techniques. The problem is that it’s expensive and impractical to clone livestock, and so it’s not a common technique, and therefore there isn’t much laboratory improvements in the processes to make it safer and better. Until that happens, nobody is going to bother to try to clone humans, except as a stunt. And in the United States given the state of the art, it would likely be an ethics violation for a doctor to participate in such work.
My sisters are naturally occurring clones. Neither owns some sort of copyright over their shared genome. The older twin can’t use the younger twin as an organ slave. We didn’t have to turn over the younger sister to some corporation. The fact that a human being shares a genome with another human being is scientifically interesting, but it has no legal significance.
If there ever is mass routine genome sequencing it will come about because doctors will find it useful in treating their patients. It will not be to expose and enslave the secret clones that walk among us.
Thanks Darren, it would appear that while 10 Dollars is closer to fantasy , the projected costs are expected to drop even further. It also points out that what we are getting now, is essentially draft sequencing for the most part. Which makes me wonder, if the database were to go forward, exactly how accurate would we need to be.
Because the time to start asking these questions is now, we are on the cusp of bio-genetic engineering and while I originally started referencing the TV show orphan black, the reality is that we are closer to Gattaca, even if the time frame is 20 years away. The copyright argument is simply extrapolating current trends with copyright to include human templates, the same way Monsanto does currently with genetic crops.
While human cloning has been a staple of scifi, since the sixties, there really is no economic benefit to human cloning in terms of sentient clones, we would just be expanding the human population for the sake of seeing if we could do it. But cloned organ replacement does seem to be on a lot of peoples minds, do that, and we are still that much closer to re-engineering the blueprint.
Agreed, but judging by the documentation, clones would have half the lifespan of the original, so if we postulate 80 years as the median age length, and people started to die at 40, would we really notice. Dead babies make bad headlines, but dead adults, not as much.
Your first point, agreed no economic reason for a full grown clone.
Third point, only 8 states have laws regarding cloning, and several others have restrictions. It currently does not sound like there is an ethics argument happening, quite possibly because its not really on the medical radar for folks that don’t deal with it, and the people that do deal with it, ethically its not a concern at the moment.
No, it will happen because someone wants the database created, and doctors will have access to it, probably for a price.
I’m a biologist, and I’ve just never really understood the amount of angst and fear surrounding this concept for so long. What nefarious stuff do you think we’d want to do? And why? At this moment, I have the DNA of a couple thousand or so random individuals sitting in my freezer, and for the life of me, I can’t think of anything to do with it - ethical or not - that would reap me riches or scientific fame.
“Someone’s going to sequence my DNA without my knowledge!!!” WHY?? It costs a bunch of money and is an annoying amount of work to do so, and all we’d learn is that you’re some person with a typical amount of unusual mutations. NO ONE GIVES A SHIT ABOUT YOUR DNA.
Clone a bunch of Hitlers
Farm organ donors
Slave work force
Army of identical soldiers (because that’s what you want in an army…predictability)
Evil version of people
Scatter them all over the place and then kill them
Watch c-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate
I think that’s actually the biggest fear people have. That somehow a “cloned” human would have less rights than a “natural” person. That they could be considered corporate “property” much in the same way as RoundupReady Soybeans seeds.
One of the few practical applications for cloning or genetically engineering a human, other than maybe wanting your kids to play baseball like Derek Jeter, is to create humans that can be used in a manner considered “unethical”.
Then again, maybe I can make a couple of copies to go to work for me or help my wife with the kids while I hang out and do fun stuff all day.
How do cloned slaves turn out cheaper or better than regular old slaves? I mean, if you want a bunch of slaves right now all you have to do is kidnap some people from third world countries and put them to work. It’s called human trafficking. How would enslaving a bunch of clones work out better for you?
The only way cloning could be used in an unethical manner is if we decide that clones should be slaves. So let’s not do that! Gee, we treat clones just like regular people and suddenly each and every ethical dilemma about cloning vanishes, and we’re only left with practical barriers, like “it’s expensive and sort of dangerous and what’s the point?”
How exactly would treating clones as slaves be “simply extrapolating current trends with copyright to include human templates”? It’s not simple, because it would be slavery. You think that because copyright laws are sacrosanct we’re just going to have to bite the bullet and accept that corporations should be allowed to own slaves now?
It can all be resolved by: “Slavery is illegal. We had a war about it. It’s not legal to enslave someone, even if you really really want to.”
I still don’t understand the panic about the separate issue of a national or global genome database. So some corporation wants to create the database, and they demand a price to access it. And…so? Thing is, if it’s so cheap to sequence DNA that you really could create a database of hundreds of millions of genomes, then anyone who wanted to know their own genome could get it done for very cheaply, and wouldn’t be at the ill-defined mercy of this ill-defined evil megacorp.
And, you know, you could just decline to provide EvilMegaGeneCorp with a DNA sample. And even if they have it, what exactly is the evil they can do with it? Deny you health insurance because analysis shows you’re 23% more likely to develop heart disease? Maybe we could switch to some form of universal coverage by then, I guess.
Again, we already have clones running around. My sisters are clones. Neither owns the other as a slave. Neither can force the other to donate an organ. The younger twin can’t be shipped off to an island prison to be carved up for spare parts for the older twin.
All these problems can be avoided if we simply remember that cloning won’t make slavery legal.
Err no, you first get an open concept office, and then put in a cellular structure and have them all dress in the same manner, no human trafficking needed.
But you missed or read by my comment that there is no economic reason to have clones for a work force. They don’t need slavery anymore, we are pretty much indentured servants now a days.