Conference lgp30::christian-perspective

I'd like to make sure I understand what is meant by "cloning".  Normally an
embryo is formed by the fusion of an ovum with a sperm cell.  In cloning,
is the ovum made to spontaneously start dividing without the need for a
sperm cell, or can the embryo be formed from cells other than ova?  Is the
DNA in the clone identical to the DNA in the parent, or can there also be
genetic changes?

				-- Bob

    .1 Bob,
    
    Good questions.  And my answer: I don't know.
    
    I saw on the TV news last Friday that sheep have been cloned, genetically
    identical copies produced pretty much at will.  An ethicist urged that
    the wait and see period is over.  Any further delay will soon be after
    the fact.
    
    Shalom,
    Richard
    

    So, has everyone read Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World"?
    
    Shalom,
    Richard
    

I've read "Brave New World" but it was a long time ago.  If I remember
correctly, the children in the BNW were all test tube babies raised by the
state and assigned at birth into categories based on mental ability
(alpha, beta, gamma, delta I think).  I don't remember if they were cloned
or artificially inseminated.

Certainly the BNW society wasn't one I'd be happy living in. Individuality
counted for very little, and there was centralized control over all
aspects of life.

To change the subject a little, the following news snippet in yesterday's Vogon
News Service was rather unsettling:

	Cell research may lead to man-ape hybrid

	EXPERIMENTS to grow human embryo cells to improve infertility
	treatments could eventually give scientists the ability to grow
	man-ape hybrids, researchers claimed yesterday.

They may gain the ability to create such hybrids, but will they have the
*right* to create them?  I'm sure scientists would be very interested in
studying these man-apes, but look at it from the man-ape's point of view.
Did they ask to be made man-apes?

The existence of this kind of creature would certainly blur the
distinction between humans and animals and force us to re-evaluate some of
our ideas on both human rights and animal rights.  For example, would a
mentally handicapped human have more rights than a more intelligent
man-ape, less rights, or the same rights?  How would an unintelligent
man-ape's rights compare with those of an intelligent ape?

Getting back to cloning, I guess one could ask the same question about
human cloning: Did the human clones ask to be made clones?  This might not
be an important question unless clones are worse off in some way than
non-clones.  Are clones infertile?  Are they more susceptible to
hereditary diseases (like the products of incestuous marriages)?

				-- Bob

That is pretty disturbing and alarming, Bob (.4).

Actually, nobody asks to be born.  Such is often a ploy used by adolescents
in an attempt to inflict some degree of guilt on their parents.

My concern is more the possibility of a quest to create a "super race" of
human beings, Hitler's dream realized.  You'll recall that in BNW, the
outcasts, the ones who couldn't or wouldn't fit, were banished to an island
and kept separate from the rest of humanity.

Shalom,
Richard

Re: .5  Richard

>Actually, nobody asks to be born.

True, but I think that people who are born do have certain rights.  We may or
may not be free of birth defects, but we have the right to be free of
intentionally inflicted birth defects.  We may have "good genes" or "bad
genes", but we have the right to be free of intentionally inflicted bad
genes.  (Or in some cases intentionally inflicted "good" genes?)  We may
be born into a poor family or a rich family, but I believe that society
has an obligation to make sure that we don't starve to death.  We may be
born into a happy household or a dysfunctional one, but we have the right
to be free of abuse.

I see it as a balance: no one is guaranteed to be born into a perfect
environment, but everyone who is born has a right to be born into an
environment with certain minimum standards.  And being born a man-ape
falls outside what I consider to be "minimum standards".

				-- Bob

Re: .6

>>Actually, nobody asks to be born.

>True, but I think that people who are born do have certain rights.

Indeed.  Of this, there's no doubt in my mind.

Shalom,
Richard

Isn't this tampering with God's power of creating life, a gift that was 
thought to be his and his alone?

Couldn't (shouldn't) he just stop it? For example he could simply refuse to 
put a 'soul' into these creatures. There is precedent for this kind of 
action, such as the tower of babel.

Steve

    I haven't read anything on this (yet) but am not surprized in what's
    been  said.  My guess would be that the nucleus of an egg cell is
    replaced with  the nuclus of cell from whoever it is you want to clone. 
    Implant the zygote in a fertile uterus and nature takes it from there. 
    
    In a different way, genetic clones exist today with identical twins.  In
    that case, the single cell zygote splits once and the two halfs detach
    to form two babies (the detaching is not supposed to happen but
    sometimes does). Environmental and cultural influences can give rise to
    two very different people physically and psychologically if not
    genetically.  Clones need not be people to be afraid of (IMO).  They're
    different people in all ways that count.
    
    A man ape hybrid?  That's probably a ways off.  I'd guess there'd be a
    lot more work to do before something viable was created.  Fatal
    differences could be as subtle as the lack of a gene that produces an
    enzyme that's used in the metabolism of a specific fat molecule or 
    something like that.  Finding that the lack of the enzyme was the fatal
    flaw would be a huge task, isolating the genes in both genomes (man and
    ape) would be a huge task, and making sure that it would always appear 
    in all offspring would require difficult gene transpositioning.  But,
    if all that could be worked out, it would be similar to "Horse + Donkey
    = Mule" and the hybrid would brobaly be as sterile as the mule.  I know
    that "evolution" is a 4-letter word (spelled with 9 letters), but it's 
    theorized that there was one a human/ape hybrid from which men and apes
    evolved (the infamous "missing link").  
    
    The morality of all this?  It's just one of many such moral issues that
    science is thrusting on society.  Genetic manipulation is one part of
    it.  Manipulating the minds of existing people is another realm.  Much
    has already been done in the line of mapping personality traits to the
    physical and biochemical structures of the brain.  Manipulating these
    via drugs and/or surgery has already begun.  The implications are
    awesome (not necessarily meant in the good sense of the word).
    
    Be assured of one thing.  If the technology exists, and someone with
    the technology, power and resources can gain from it, it WILL be used.
    Just like nuclear power.  It's society (not the scientific community)
    that has the responsibility to decide how these developents will be
    used.  So far, we've been sticking our heads in the sand, hoping
    they'll "go away".  They're not and they won't.
    
    Good topic.
    
    -dave
    

.9

>    In a different way, genetic clones exist today with identical twins.

Indeed.  Hitler was fascinated with identical twins.

In BNW, Huxley doesn't say how cloning is accomplished.  He doesn't even
call it cloning, I don't think.  He just predicts it happening.

>    The morality of all this?  It's just one of many such moral issues that
>    science is thrusting on society.

In the past, moral considerations have been more or less reactive.

>    Be assured of one thing.  If the technology exists, and someone with
>    the technology, power and resources can gain from it, it WILL be used.

Especially if someone will profit from it.

>    It's society (not the scientific community)
>    that has the responsibility to decide how these developents will be
>    used.  So far, we've been sticking our heads in the sand, hoping
>    they'll "go away".  They're not and they won't.

Society needs to become involved, not some detached spectator standing in
awe of the wizardry.  Society needs to demand responsibility, restraint
and respect.

Shalom,
Richard

.4

>	Cell research may lead to man-ape hybrid

I'll bet you could come fairly close by breeding Jack Palance with
Marilyn Hickey.

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