The scientists, from the California-based company Stem-Gen, injected DNA from two adults into donor eggs, and at least one of the resulting embryos was a perfect clone of one of the men. The researchers: a first step towards the production of personalized stem cells for the patient
Scientists at Stemagen, a small biotech company in San Diego, claim to have used cloning to create human embryos from stem cells from the skin of two men.
The work marks another step towards the promise of creating embryos that will be identical copies of a patient and that can be used for healing purposes. Although the embryos have only grown enough to produce embryonic stem cells at a very early stage, the work could theoretically be seen as a step toward creating babies who are genetic copies of other people.
In a statement released by the company on Thursday, the scientists who performed the experiment said they used mature stem cells to produce cloned embryos that had developed to the blastocyst stage, where stem cells can be produced. However, the researchers did not produce the same stem cells.
The group of researchers created five embryos with the help of 25 donated eggs. The DNA fingerprints showed that at least one of these fetuses was a clone of one of the people from whom the sample was taken. "We are the first in the world to have taken cells from adult humans and documented how we were able to clone embryos from them," said the lead researcher, Dr. Samuel Wood, in an interview with the BBC.
"This is an important step towards the final goal of producing specific stem cells for specific patients by the method of transferring the DNA nucleus (another word for cloning)," said Dr. George Daly, a stem cell researcher at Harvard and Children's Hospital in Boston, to the New York Times.
As you may remember, about two years ago, a South Korean scientist, Hwang Woo Suk, claimed that he succeeded in cloning human embryos and created stem cells from them, but later it turned out that he falsified the results of the experiment and he was forced to resign.
The news of Hwang Woo Suk's resignation
The father of Dolly the sheep retracts his support for cloning, claiming that there is a better method for producing stem cells
Researchers have made skin cells equivalent to stem cells
22 תגובות
Hello Nadav,
You bring up something interesting, which has already been discussed in the past - and will most likely be brought up in the future as well.
The truth is that medical science has always raised a banner to save people's lives, regardless of the genes they will pass on to their children. A sad day will be when the doctor decides not to treat the patient because he wears glasses, and it is not good for him to pass on his short-sightedness to his offspring.
Anyway, I would like to encourage your view of the possible future. First of all, with the help of the replacement organ technology that will come from research in stem cells and clones, people will be able to live longer and healthier lives regardless of the genes they inherited.
Second, we already know how dangerous it is to try to predict the future. When Malthus tried to predict the future in 1800, he predicted that within a century there would be no food left for the world's population. But as science developed, more effective fertilizers and stronger varieties of edible plants were created. Today there is enough food to feed the entire world population and then some.
Similarly, when a committee in London tried to predict the future, they determined that London would be flooded by horseshoes in the future. She failed to foresee the technological developments that led to the spread of the automobile.
So even if you fear a population explosion, I can reassure you that…
1. It will not come from cloning technology, which is designed to treat a tiny number of people with serious health problems.
2. Such a population explosion has been expected for 200 years, and has not yet arrived. The technological developments may continue to keep him away, and we can only hope that when the day comes they will also open up for us places to live in space and in the stars.
Moshe Katz,
thank you for your response. You assume that fetuses are living things. I can agree to that, but only from a certain stage in their development. In the blastocyte stage - which is the stage from which the cloned stem cells are taken - the embryo is clearly not a human being in my opinion.
Could he evolve into a human being?
On the one hand, yes.
On the other hand, why does it matter?
We do not look at the future and the possibilities. Also, each of the millions of sperm cells that I empty could have developed into a human being - if only I had learned to invest my seeds in the right place.
Am I a murderer because I pour out my seed in vain?
According to the Church's position, absolutely yes.
According to the objective and logical position, in my opinion, explicitly not.
Nadav:
I hope it is clear to you that if we had accepted the approach implied in your question, we would have had to abolish medicine.
There are all kinds of methods for treating medical problems and the genetic method is just one of them. All of them enable survival and culture for people who might have died without them.
Without intending anything insulting, I would like to point out that your approach is simply a version of eugenics - the approach that the Nazis also took - according to which one should take care of the genetic improvement of the human race (the Nazis were of course much worse because for them both belonging to the Jewish people was a genetic defect and an active activity Killing the "inferior" was seen as desirable, but since then people tend to shy away from everything related to eugenics.
I am not judging. It may be that concern for the improvement of human genes is justified, but the answer to this should be given in a broader context because as humans we have no obligation to adopt the criteria of natural selection and it may be better that we apply another selection - after all, given the possibility to reproduce in ways based on technology, the defect in natural inability To reproduce is not so significant. Stupidity, on the other hand (and again, I emphasize, I am not implying anything and no one will dare to interpret my words as an implication about him or about anyone else!), can be a more significant flaw. Perhaps the criterion of wisdom should be preferred over the criterion of the ability to reproduce naturally? Imagine if we had managed to keep Ramanujan alive!
And again I say - I have no opinion on eugenics - I just want you to know that this is what you were talking about.
To Roy Cezana
Note that in all the examples you gave, it is a solution to the problems that the drug or technology preserves, produces or improves life without changing the condition of other lives.
In cloning we actually eliminate the possibility of a created life (the embryo) to develop which brings us to a philosophical question from which stage the embryo is called life or if stopping development that will lead to life is moral even if at the moment it is not yet life.
Roy,
Is it possible to approach the matter from a different direction?
For the purpose of the introduction, I say that I do not believe in a being called God (at least as the main religions present it) and I believe in the process of evolution.
You mentioned the production of glasses for the first time, the smallpox vaccine and now the use of fetal cells to perform medical repairs.
Hundreds more examples can be given of human intervention not in the act of creation but in an evolutionary process of natural selection lasting hundreds of millions of years (according to scientists' estimation).
The aspect that is visible to everyone right now is unprecedented inflation (probably similar to exponential) in the growth of the human population (here we enter into environmental issues that are too short to detail).
The problem is this:
The more you interfere with the process of natural selection, the more people you cause (problematic in itself) and the more people that the selection process would have eliminated live and produce offspring. Technology to maintain a normal life and even reproduce.
I hope you understand that there is a big problem here and substantial consequences for the future.
I will be happy to respond
Nadav
Yael,
Allow me to quote you, in response to my question about the ethical problem in cloning for medical purposes:
"The first section of the human rights law - the right to life and security: no one harms the life, body, or dignity of a person, regardless of who he is."
You claim now that you do not pretend to determine who is right and who is wrong, but in the lines above you actually compare fetuses to human beings, and say that it is forbidden to harm human fetuses.
And the next sentence...
"No man, except that one up there, has the right to create a man and kill him."
And after you say such a sentence, you still accuse me of -=I=- involving religion and ideology in the discussion?
And you continue and insert words according to "Does technology and progress precede everything, even human life? It seems to me, Roy, that technology is meant for the well-being of man and not the other way around that man is meant for the well-being of technology."
And I can only wonder - when did I claim otherwise?
I will try to simplify the discussion and summarize my position in two statements:
1. Embryos in the blastocyst stage are not human beings, therefore moral laws that apply to humans (do not kill, do not burn, etc.) do not apply to them.
2. Shock from new technologies is something that comes and goes in every period of history, as I have shown in several different examples. We should not immediately oppose technology just because it is new, because it is possible that in a few decades people will take technology for granted and as an integral part of society.
A combination of these two statements leads to the simple conclusion that cloning technology is not immoral, and therefore there is no reason to oppose it even if it seems shocking to us according to the spirit of the time we live in (and as the glasses must have looked to the people of the time when they were invented).
I would love to hear your position on the matter.
Roy.
Peter:
I too, as you can deduce from my vegetarianism, oppose, for example (to the limit of reasonableness), abortions, because I think the life of the fetus is valuable, but the limit of reasonableness seems important to me.
I think the line of plausibility runs between where there is potential for intelligent life and where it already exists.
I don't require a lot of intelligence to define life as "intelligent" every animal on earth is in this field for me and I allow myself to eat plants because they are not in it.
Today we already know that every cell in the body has the potential to become a living being and certainly we will not feel guilty for not allowing it to realize this potential.
Even for a few-celled embryo that has not yet differentiated into significant tissues and especially has not developed a nervous system, it is still potential and not intelligent life. If we accept that all our feelings are a product of the brain then this fetus does not yet have any feelings.
I think that the effort to save or improve intelligent life at the expense of cellular tissue that all it has is potential and that it lacks any capacity to endure is certainly a worthy effort.
תיקון
belligerent*
Roy Cezana,
My first argument was that people are shocked (or at least supposed to be shocked) to hear "news" such as: "Scientists create embryos in the laboratory so that we have spare parts".
I did not argue what should be done and I did not pretend to decide who is right, but I did point out the fact that there are moral barriers in experiments on humans in general, and in the creation of embryos just for the sake of "research" or for the sake of "spare parts", in particular.
These moral barriers do not concern religion, belief and ideology. You involve a species that is not of its own species and are just sulking.
Regarding the line of "historical justifications" you brought up, I didn't really understand what you were trying to claim and how it has to do with the fact that growing embryos in a laboratory for research is simply a shocking thing.
Does technology and progress precede everything, even human life? It seems to me, Roy, that technology is meant for the well-being of man and not the other way around that man is meant for the well-being of technology.
Ideas - as we all know - have a life of their own.
These are not life in the biological sense of the word, but in terms of reproduction and evolution they are very similar - a special term was even coined - memes - to describe the similarity between ideas and genes.
Furthermore - as many of the discussions here attest and as the behavior of the monks, the suicide terrorists and in fact all people who apply some principle in their lives also attests - people identify with their ideas, often, much more than with their genes.
In my opinion, the claim "a person is the collection of his ideas and opinions" is just as true and maybe even more true than the claim "a person is his body". This claim is also the basis of the prevailing beliefs about the soul - people believe that if their soul, which is actually their memory, ideas, opinions and other mental characteristics survive - it can be said that they themselves have survived.
By claiming "this or that right is reserved for God" we condition the right of the other idea to live with the consent of the (wrong) idea of God.
It is time that instead of saying "only God will determine who will live and who will die" it is said "the idea of God will not determine what other idea will live or die". This statement, unlike the previous one, will not only be moral but also true (because as Roi described - it comes true anyway)
By the way, the matter of the 'right' reserved for God alone is an argument that has already unfolded many times throughout history, and has been refuted time and time again.
In the 13th century, the inventor of glasses, Salvino Armato, was born. He was punished for wearing glasses, because he violated God's right to decide who would be short-sighted, and who would see well. The sentence is engraved on his tombstone: "Here lies Salvino Armato, the inventor of the glasses." May God forgive him for this sin."
In the 18th century, the first vaccine against smallpox was invented - a disease that killed hundreds of thousands of people a year. The church's response? This is against God's right to determine who will die of disease and who will live.
In the 70s of the 20th century, in vitro fertilization (which is very similar to cloning from a technical point of view) began. And the usual response? Well, it's already clear: we don't have the right to determine who will live and who will die, who will be violated and who will be violated.
Today everyone uses glasses. Today no one gets smallpox anymore. Today about 30% of people in Norway use IVF (at least that's what Professor Armand Leroy told me. I can't find another reliable source).
In short, throughout history it has become clear time and again that sentences like 'we have no right to...' simply do not remain valid over time. Once the technology proves itself, it becomes an integral part of society, and society shapes itself accordingly.
Good Day,
Roy.
Do you mean a blastocyte, which consists of several hundred cells?
Without hands
without legs
without genitals
No head, neck, belly or anything that even resembles a body
No eyes, nose or mouth
without a nervous system
no brain
And all its size is the size of a point on a page.
Is this a person?
Edit: Here is a good picture of the fetus in question:
http://courses.washington.edu/fosep/images/blastocyst2.gif
the fetus
Pretty crazy
When will hybrids of different animals begin?
If we take a leap of imagination to describe an invitation to a clone to which I can transfer the subjective feeling of "I".
crazy
Where is the person being hurt here?
Yes
The first section of the Human Rights Law - the right to life and security:
"No one harms the life, body, or dignity of a person, regardless of who he is."
No man, except that one up there, has the right to create a man and kill him.
Peter,
When it comes to medical cloning, the only ethical problem I can see is obtaining the source cells. It is clearly not ethical to take eggs from a woman who does not wish to donate them.
At the same time, if the new developments in stem cell research and cloning continue at the current rate, it is possible that we will still reach a time when we will not need eggs at all to produce medical clones.
Do you see an ethical problem in cloning for medical purposes?
Roy,
Are you really unable to see any ethical limitation in cloning human embryos?
...and of course also "back skin"
Oops…. instead of "skin cells"
A note on the title of one of the links:
Write "light cells" instead of "light cells"
Beyond the association it creates in relation to photovoltaic cells, it brings to mind the anecdote about that man who received a report that the rear lights on his car did not work.
Since the policeman recorded in the report that he did not have a rear light, he went to the doctor and obtained a certificate that he did have one and was acquitted.
As far as I know, the law in the USA prohibits government funding of institutions for research involving human cloning. This makes research in the field by universities almost impossible. But a private company can do it.
In any case, even in the US, they understand that there is a difference between cloning for the purpose of creating a whole person, and cloning for medical purposes. In the case of cloning for medical purposes, the embryos are only allowed to develop up to the blastocyst stage - a sphere the size of a dot on the page, containing several hundred cells and among them stem cells From the stem cells taken from this clone, replacement tissues can be created for the two men who donated their cells to the experiment. The contribution that clones of this type can bring to medical science is, in a word, enormous.
The reason there has not yet been an explicit law banning cloning in the US is that Congress is unable to pass it because of the understanding that cloning for medical purposes can bring enormous benefit.
Is it legal in California to create genetically cloned human embryos??