'Now we have the technology that can make a cloned child'

[carbar]

says Dr Robert Lanza of Advanced Cell Technology, in reference to IPS (induced pluripotent stem) cell research

in the following article in the UK's Independent newspaper:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/sc...ld-808625.html

Now what will the Catholic Church and George Bush make of this?

Dr Lanza says: "At this point there are no laws or regulations for this kind of thing and the bizarre thing is that the Catholic Church and other traditional stem-cell opponents think this technology is great when in reality it could in the end become one of their biggest nightmares," he said.


Read the article for the full content of his argument.

[Wise Young]

says Dr Robert Lanza of Advanced Cell Technology, in reference to IPS (induced pluripotent stem) cell research

in the following article in the UK's Independent newspaper:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/sc...ld-808625.html

Now what will the Catholic Church and George Bush make of this?

Dr Lanza says: "At this point there are no laws or regulations for this kind of thing and the bizarre thing is that the Catholic Church and other traditional stem-cell opponents think this technology is great when in reality it could in the end become one of their biggest nightmares," he said.


Read the article for the full content of his argument.

Car,

Fusion of somatic cells and embryonic stem cells has been shown to work both in vitro (in the test tube) and in vivo (in developing embryos). This approach is much more efficient and probably less likely to produce tumor cells than the viral method of introducing genes into skin cells.

In my opinion, Lanza is inappropriately raising the specter of human cloning for political reasons. It is working against his own cause and company by raising public fears. This is illustrated by the headlines of article. He is hurting his own cause.

If the society decides that cloning is unacceptable, it can be readily banned by law and it is easy to enforce. For example, one can definitively detect a cloned human by showing that a person has the same genes as another person but the two persons are of different age. Note that a pair of identical twins are clones (of each other) but are of the same age. So, the application of penalities against doctors and scientists who clone another human will be a strong deterrent to human cloning.

Just because human cloning can be done does not mean that we should not be creating stem cells with the same genes for therapeutic purposes. Everybody agrees that this is not only morally acceptable but ethically desirable, especially if it can be done without the destruction of any embryos.

On the other hand, I fail to understand people who believe that it is better to throw away frozen blastocysts than to use their stem cells to save lives. The act of throwing them away is morally wrong when their cells can be used to save lives and their parents have agreed to this. The situation is morally equivalent to throwing away the organs of people that have died rather than to use them to save lives.

Wise.

[carbar]

I agree with you about Lanza's statements hurting his own cause - in fact I think they hurt the whole cause for therapeutic cloning - yet again a headline that will only stir things up rather than clarify. I was at a loss to see why he made these comments - you say it could have been for political reasons - what political reasons would benefit him to stir things up like this? Unfortunately this article was the front page story on the online edition of the Independent so its scaremongering effect could be widespread and certainly will not help in any progress towards a comprehensive legislative solution to the practices of therapeutic cloning.

[Wise Young]

I agree with you about Lanza's statements hurting his own cause - in fact I think they hurt the whole cause for therapeutic cloning - yet again a headline that will only stir things up rather than clarify. I was at a loss to see why he made these comments - you say it could have been for political reasons - what political reasons would benefit him to stir things up like this? Unfortunately this article was the front page story on the online edition of the Independent so its scaremongering effect could be widespread and certainly will not help in any progress towards a comprehensive legislative solution to the practices of therapeutic cloning.

Carbar,

By political reasons, I guess that he may be trying to say that there is too much criticism aimed at the somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT) method and little at the cell fusion method which has a greater risk of producing human clones than SCNT.

Wise.