Scientists Clone Frozen Mice
Scientists have been able to clone mice that have been dead for up to sixteen years. From the story:
Japanese scientists have cloned mice whose bodies were frozen for as long 16 years and said on Monday it may be possible to use the technique to resurrect mammoths and other extinct species. Mouse cloning expert Teruhiko Wakayama and colleagues at the Center for Developmental Biology, at Japan's RIKEN research institute in Yokohama, managed to clone the mice even though their cells had burst. "Thus, nuclear transfer techniques could be used to 'resurrect' animals or maintain valuable genomic stocks from tissues frozen for prolonged periods without any cryopreservation," they wrote in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.Hmmm. Should we interfere with evolution by trying to bring back extinct species? Not sure about that.
But I do know that eventually scientists will want to turn these technologies at the human race:
Wakayama's team dug out some mice that had been kept frozen for years and whose cells were indisputably damaged. Freezing causes cells to burst and can damage the DNA inside. Chemicals called cryoprotectants can prevent this but they must be used before the cells are frozen.Of course "we" wouldn't be back, it would be our near-identical twins who would be their own individuals. I am beginning to be glad I won't be here one hundred years from now.
They tried using cells from several places and discovered that the brains worked best. This is a bit of a mystery, as no one has yet cloned any living mouse from a brain cell.
Many animals have been cloned, starting with sheep, and including pigs, cattle, mice and dogs. Livestock breeders want to use cloning to start elite herds of desirable animals, and doctors want to use cloning technology in human medicine.
"There is hope in bringing Ted Williams back, after all," cloning and stem cell expert John Gearhart of the University of Pennsylvania said in an e-mail. The family of Williams, the Boston Red Sox hitter, had his body frozen by cryogenics firm Alcor after he died in 2002.
Gearhart was only half-joking and said the study "may now stimulate the small industry of freezing parts of us before we die to bring us back in the future."
Labels: Biotechnology. Animal Cloning.
posted by Wesley J. Smith @ 3:25 PM
21 Comments
21 Comments:
Come on, Wesley. You love life.
I do. But I also believe there is a time to live and a time to die, and right now is my time for the former and someday in less than 100years, it will be my time to do the latter, and then we will see what comes next.
But my point was that I am very worried about humanity's future, and indeed, our posterity's remaining fully human is one of those worries.
I really hope they dont mix frog DNA with Dino DNA cause lord knows what that brought us LAST time ;)
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P.S: Barack the Vote!!!!! (Had to do my share :D haha)
Bring back Neanderthals!
Wouldn't it be great if our species wasn't not the only species of genus Homo to exist. Neanderthals are people too!
Neanderthals are not people as they no longer exist. This cloning issue reminds me of the old Burl Ives Song "She swallowed a fly."
http://sniff.numachi.com/pages/tiSWALLFLY;ttSWALLFLY.html
At what point does "She" cease to exist because the trip to getting rid of the fly led to having a cougar being swallowed to kill the various other critters she swallowed???
"Neanderthals are not people as they no longer exist."
True, but they would be people if they still existed, right?
Wesley, can you imagine anything more exceptional than humans, and would not such be worth working toward carefully, respectfully and compassionately?
Lincoln: I think it is the height of hubris to think we have the wisdom to do such a thing, and indeed, that such an enterprise wouldn't result in the same tyranny as eugenics did the last time. It is happening again, in fact.
We've repeatedly demonstrated ourselves capable of both wonderful and horrible things, Wesley. It is not hubris to regard our capacities and choose to make the best of them, according to whatever wisdom and inspiration we may have. You are doing no different, in your estimation. Are you certain we'll fail? Are you certain aging is inevitable? Are you certain we cannot develop ourselves into more compassionate beings? Are you certain such efforts are immoral? If so, understand that many see hubris in such pessimistic and nihilistic certainties. Maybe we will prove incapable of making a better world, but it is our moral duty to make an effort, whether or not someone else considers that hubris.
I feel moved to quote blogger Mark Shea here that history can be divided into two phases:
1) What could it hurt?
2) How were we supposed to know?
That an extraordinarily narrow perspective on history. Would you swap your life with a person that lived 10,000 years ago, 1,000 years ago or even 100 years ago? You know: back in those good old days?
Well, I was born in the United States of America in 1974, so I got lucky on when/where. Had I been born in rural China, the Congo, North Korea, or someplace else, my answer might be different, or the change to 100/1,000 years ago less meaningful.
I'd rather be born in England in 1774, for example, than the USSR in 1918 through the early twenties, where some years had a 70% plus chance of being killed in the second world war - if you survived the two famines and the Red Terror, of course.
History can't be reduced to a continuous march onwards and upwards, and I worry about the effects that biotech/transhumanism/etc. will have on human society. You're a regular here - would you say that respect for all human life has been increasing or decreasing in our culture lately?
Although I agree that there are fluctuations according to place and over relatively short periods of time, the broadest trends in human compassion and liberal esteem for differences and diversity in human (and non-human) form and thought have always been toward improvement. I recognize that this observation depends not merely on history books, but also much on my own values. However, I did not create my values from nothing. I inherited them anatomically and communally, and they therefore reflect something much larger than me, even if I've managed to shape them somewhat as a unique individual. Within the context of such a value system, I know of no time in Earth's history that I would rather be born to a random mother.
I value Wesley's perspectives because they, like those that have preceded them, produce a tension that encourages our careful consideration of risks. I do not, however, think his reasoning is always consistent. He has too much respect for death, and ironically too little respect for human ability.
Bring back Neanderthals!
To be lab specimens for publication-crazed academics to poke and prod? Media freakshow attractions? I hope for the clones' own sakes that this never is tried.
"To be lab specimens for publication-crazed academics to poke and prod? Media freakshow attractions? I hope for the clones' own sakes that this never is tried."
That is a worry of mine too, but I'd imagine that we'd extend our idea of informed consent to their species, just as we do for our own.
Well, I do not share your optimism, Lincoln. I respect human ability, but alongside vaccines, clean water, radio, electric lights, and the Internet, it has given us firebombing, show trials, unrestricted submarine warfare, beheading videos, concentration camps, poison gas, and the atom bomb.
I think that if humanity moves towards more compassion and decency, it's due to constant vigilance and combat of our baser instincts, not a benevolent providence that will keep things getting better without our involvement. I think that things tomorrow could get far worse as easily as they could get far better, and only through great struggles will we keep what we have won up to this point.
That is a worry of mine too, but I'd imagine that we'd extend our idea of informed consent to their species, just as we do for our own.
Why create them in the first place, Joshua? Why not leave well enough alone? Later extending them the right of consent does not change the fact that they would be created as a lab experiment to satisfy biological speculations. In other words, made solely to be a means to another's ends. Or do you disagree that such is a violation of a person's dignity?
"Or do you disagree that such is a violation of a person's dignity?"
Indeed. Parents often have children as a means to some end - to fix a marriage, to conform to social norms, to pass on the family name, etc. The children are still loved and treated as ends, despite this, and so as long as this baby Neanderthal is brought up in a loving home, I see no problem with it, for dignity or other.
So you have no problem with a child being created solely as a science experiment?
"So you have no problem with a child being created solely as a science experiment?"
I don't know about "solely as a science experiment", but if that is part of the reason for conceiving and bearing a child, I don't see how that is worse (and it may even be better) than a child's existence being due to a pair of teenagers experimenting with sex.
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