Talk:Cloning

This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Cloning article.
This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject.

Put new text under old text. Click here to start a new topic.
New to Wikipedia? Welcome! Learn to edit; get help.

Article policies

Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL

Archives: 1

The subject of this article is controversial and content may be in dispute. When updating the article, be bold, but not reckless. Feel free to try to improve the article, but don't take it personally if your changes are reversed; instead, come here to the talk page to discuss them. Content must be written from a neutral point of view. Include citations when adding content and consider tagging or removing unsourced information.

NPOV

Somebody decided to insert this very political paragraph in the middle of the reproductive cloning section:

"The cloning of humans could be the greatest achievement of medical science, it could lead the way to the solution to some of humanity's greatest problems. Cloning can save lives. Every year hundreds of thousands of Americans die from cancer making it the second most common cause of death in the United States. However, through cloning and other forms of genetic research scientists are all ready learning all kinds of important information about the genetic make up of cancer and before long we may have the cure for cancer. Some believe that cloning and cloning research risks the lives of humans. That it may lead to many malfunctions within the body and eventually to death. The United States and Canada enacted laws in 1998 making human cloning a felony, setting penalties for cloning, and prohibiting state funds from being used for it (document 1). Yes cloning is a science in the making but no human has been cloned as of today, and it is certain that governments around the world will only allow human cloning to occur after proper development and research. Therefore the development of stem cell research should continue as it will only serve to save lives of precious human lives in the future. Though the cure for cancer is reason enough not to ban cloning it is by no means the only benefit this new technology could create for the medical field. With human cloning scientists are working on ways to perfect methods to clone individual organs. This could finally be a permanent solution to the ever growing demand for organ donors. It also could lead to a way to repair damaged nerves by cloning the nerve cells from the injured person."

The fact that the next line in the same paragraph is

"Mitochondria, which are organelles that serve as power sources to the cell, contain their own short segments of DNA, although this is only 0.01% of the total DNA. Acquired mutations in mitochondrial DNA are believed to play an important role in the aging process"

shows that this was just jammed into an already existing paragraph.

Clearly whoever wrote this neither cared about the integrity of the rest of the article nor recognized that this is clearly a statement of advocacy for cloning. Since this is a rather big chunk I didn't simply delete it. Sayfadeen 01:56, 12 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Forget it, the whole thing was lifted from http://www.humancloning.org/essays/david.htm and some idiot decided to shove it in the middle of a random paragraph. Deleted and tag removed. Sayfadeen 02:04, 12 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Pictures of Dolly?

It would be great if someone could add a picture of Dolly the sheep. Stancel 20:10, 19 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Must both be from same species?

You stated "currently, both the egg cell and its transplanted nucleus must be from the same species". I thought that cow egg cells♥ had been used to clone other species. See [1] - unsigned

Yes, you are right. I'm deleting this, as it's obviously incorrect. A cow egg was used to clone a gaur, which was called Noah. The clone died a few days later from unrelated dysentery. See [2] Faerielight 03:04, 12 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Indeed, it is more likely that the amount of cytoplasm disturbance created by insertion of the nucleus matters more than what species the de-nucleated zygote is from (as long as it is somewhat closely related - they got embryos, which at some later point aborted however, by using panda nuclei and rabbit zygotes). A zygote's cytoplasm is not uniform gunk; the things have a top and a bottom half as indicated by differing concentrations of regulatory molecules, and if this gradient gets disturbed, the clone won't develop: the first division (the one which produces the first, 2-celled, embryo stage) is perpendicular to that gradient. No correct gradient, no correct division. Dysmorodrepanis 17:18, 6 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I've heard that they're thinking of taking a tasmanian devil egg to clone a tasmanian tiger. Currently the tasmanian tiger is extinct but I don't think it will be a success. -- Starry.dreams 06:30 9 July 2006

Apparently recently they removed the DNA from a cow egg cell and inserted human DNA. they will probably have fertilised it but this is only 2nd hand news. Does anybody else hear of it or know if this is even possible?? 20:35 7 November 2006

Source?

Alright, what "human-rabbit hybrid" was cloned in China? If I can't get a source for this I'm going to remove it---Ricimer

The Chinese cloning in 1963 should perhaps be qualified as "reported" - the only online references I saw are the PBS online entry, and dozens of Chinese government websites extolling China's prowess in cloning, making one suspicious that this is a government propaganda thing. Is there a non-Chinese scientific source that reports on what was actually accomplished back then? Stan 15:22, 9 Apr 2004 (UTC)

The debate over clloning is causeing many serious differences between peoples religous beliefs.

I think that if we started cloning animals of different species then everyone around the world would be racing just to be able to be in the history books as the person who invented whatever.

1) What does that have to do with sources?

2) If I understand what you're saying, you're mixing up cloning and gene splicing. Neither necessitates the other, just so you know. You can gene splice without cloning, and you can clone without gene splicing--in fact, it's easier to clone without tampering with the specimen's DNA.--Hausman 03:03, 26 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Use of word "clone"

Hello. I found some references which indicate the term "clone" is rather older than the previously reported origin in 1963. I've put the refs in clone rather than here to avoid cluttering. Hope that works. -- On a related note, does it seem odd to you that this article is not itself named clone ? Should this article have some other name such as clone (nonhorticultural) ? That's clumsy, but more accurate perhaps. Happy editing, Wile E. Heresiarch 14:33, 14 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Redundancy

Why all the redundant articles; clone, cloning, clone (genetics)? Maybe even more. 213.236.117.2 07:34, 26 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Because they all talk about different things, maybe? ^^ Kreachure 15:48, 31 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

surely nothing wrong with replicating an entry on cloning? if you can't do it there where can you? Well, clone is the main page that leads to different types of clones, cloning is the process to clone, and clone (genetics)is based on molecular biology. --Starry.dreams

Hehe, 'clones' of the 'Clone Article'... funny. Stop The Lies 00:16, 17 December 2006 (UTC)Stop_The_Lies[reply]

Frogs

I believe that in 1951 a team of scientists in Philadelphia cloned a frog embryo. "They took the nucleus out of a frog embryo cell and used it to replace the nucleus of an unfertilized frog egg cell. Once the egg cell detected that it had a full set of chromosomes, it began to divide and grow."

I believe that the first successful cloning of a frog embryo was performed in 1948 by Georgy Lopashov, though his experiments were not published because of the strong opposition from psudo-scientist Trofim Lysenko.

Would that still be considered the modern technique? and if so should it be added to the article? I suppose not for they never let the thing fully mature, just grow. Then they killed it. I think they did it at Robert Briggs lab.

Um and in 1996, before dolly, the same place that cloned dolly also cloned two other sheep from embryos, Megan and Morag.

In 2000 Chinese scientist cloned Yangyang, The second ever cloned female goat. The first died of respiratory problems 36hrs after birth.

In 2003 Prometea was born, the first cloned horse. - unsigned

Sounds intrestin but if it was never published how do we know about it. If you can find a source that talk about this we may be able to include it in the article. alsong as it's not Hearsay. The fact that it was not publised unfortunetly means it may be wiped from history. Unless their is evidence this really happend other than a belief --E-Bod 21:59, 12 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Mitochondrial DNA

"Mitochondrial DNA, which is not transferred by this process, is generally ignored as its effects on organisms are thought to be relatively minor" - why? surely you need all the info in a cell to create a full clone. The current procedure , by transfer of the nucleus, is not full cloning - what should it be called? - unsigned

It's called "nuclear transfer". "Cloning" is what laymen refer to it as; technically, splicing a jellyfish bioflourscence gene into a bacteria is "cloning", it's actually a broad term---Ricimer

You get all of your mitochondrial DNA from your mother--thus, from the egg cell. That means that the sperm cell carries none. That means that a clone will have all of its parent egg's mitochondrial DNA.This means that, in the case of females cloned, they will be exactly the same as their parent. Male clones will have to deal with the mitochondrial DNA of another ogranism, though, yes.--Hausman 03:11, 26 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Ditto propagating a plant from an offshoot is "cloning" - the new plant is genetically alike to the old one. Everybody who keeps plants is likely to have cloned an organism, but that is not what the debate is about. Dysmorodrepanis 17:10, 6 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

"Mitochondria are unusual, genetically speaking. For example, we inherit half our nuclear DNA from our father and half from our mother but we get ALL our mitochondria from our mother! People who call Dolly [the sheep] a "fake" could also claim that a father is less of a parent that a mother because the child has its mother's mitochondria not its father's! They might go on to claim that (for example) Chelsea Clinton is not President Clinton's daughter because she does not have any of Bill Clinton's mitochondria. Obviously that is silly but it is also a great way to get people's attention and to raise a trouble. That is exactly the kind of "logic" being used to claim that Dolly isn't a clone."

From http://www.synapses.co.uk/science/clone.html --User:Lietk12 20:35, 15 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Snuppy

I don't understand why Snuppy is mentioned in the section "Health aspects". The sentence presents a stand-alone fact that has nothing to do with health aspects. Also the date given is Wednesday 3rd August 2005, but it's reported today (4th August) that Snuppy is 16 weeks old, so the date of the successful experiment is prior to the 3rd August 2005. - unsigned

The problem with the section on Snuppy has been fixed. -unsigned

And I don't understand why Snuppy isn't mentioned in the cloned species list. (That's why I put it there :) Kreachure 15:46, 31 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

BS Regarding Metropolis

I removed this: "* Metropolis: a movie in which the workers are cloned." because it has nothing to do with the film. There is nothing in it about cloning workers; instead, Rotwang creates an artificial human-looking, robotic android. There's a big difference. --NeoThe1 20:08, August 18, 2005 (UTC)

Break up this article?

This article seems fragmented. Why have cloning of DNA molecules on the same page as cloning organisms? Although the words are the same and they are both examples in biology, they are actually very different. I think this should be split into two different pages. David D. (Talk) 05:41, 30 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I changed the heading a bit to try and resolve the issue

cloning legal or illegal??

Why is everybody so caught up in cloning?

Are they trying to clone you? Probably not. The reason i write is if anyone we loved had something wrong with them and noone could help them, wouldn't you want someone to be able to do something? What if their only chance was in fact a clone? Would you do whatever it took to help them or would you let them die?? Feel free to respond.

I think cloning is coo. I mean we could have a giant army of clones to fight our wars....like in Star Wars!

- Are you sure you fully understand what is a clone? It would be a rightful human being and killing that clone would be a murder. Would you kill somebody to save your loved one? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 85.119.90.50 (talk • contribs) .

A clone is certainally a human being, but it's legal status doesn't necessarily depend on the facts. I remember in school, a football player commented that if he had a clone, he could send the clone in to play for him when he got tired. I pointed out that the clone would compete for his position. We could use clones as slaves, but it would be as wrong as any other form of slavery, and it the clones wouldn't be under any moral obligation to accept slavery. We could fight our wars with brainwashed clone slaves, yes. But their status as clones is incidental. We could also raise an army of brainwashed non-clone slaves, for example, by taking infants from orphanages, and raising them as slave soldiers. If people would find the latter immoral, there's no reason not to find a slave clone army immoral. Also, unless we had artificial wombs, few women are likely to want to give birth to cloned slave soldiers.--RLent 17:28, 17 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Monozygotic twins are clones by definition. The argument is whether an embryo of not more than 4 days old is already a person? --KimvdLinde 04:28, 6 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

That first message up there thoroughly shook my faith in humanity. "Let's make clone slaves to fight our wars! It'll be just like in Star Wars! Yeah! That'd be awesome!"--Hausman 03:18, 26 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I disagree with that point. Cloning shouldn't be to make humans to be our slaves but instead to save people. It's called theroputic cloning. Where they take a cell and transform it into a human part for you that way your body doesn't reject it. The reason why is because it's a healty clone with the same DNA inside of you. -Starry.dreams 04:34, 9 July 2006

ISBN

ISBN 0523404506

"Cloning": Novel by David Shear, first published in 1972, about a man who discovers he is a clone. His mind and body are taken over by the psyche of his genetic twin whom he never knew and died a violent death.

Do not refer to User: in article. Fplay 00:34, 12 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

needs Ethics section

Should discuss why it's considered unethical in separate section. Neurodivergent 19:18, 14 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I see there's one now, but I think it should discuss the controversy outside of a religious framework as well. If I knew enough about the topic I'd do it myself. As I recall, some of the issues are: (1) When parents lose a child, they might think they can just clone him/her to get the child back; (2) People might want to clone celebrities instead of having their own children (leading perhaps to loss of diversity); (3) People might clone themselves just so they can see what it's like to raise themselves; etc. There might also be some positive aspects. For example, twin studies could be taken to a new level. Neurodivergent 03:39, 10 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Cloning for child replacement is problematic. It would put undue pressure on the child. For one, despite the parent's wishes, cloning gives you essentially an identical twin, it doesn't bring the child back. Many children have enough pressure dealing with parental expectations, and living up to the accomplishments of older siblings without cloning as a factor. Having the expectation of actually "being" someone else would present a log of pressure. Imagine if someone cloned Elvis Presley. The expectations could be very high. You might get the best Elvis impersonator in the world, but the child might not even desire to be a singer. Even if he did become a singer, he would likely be expected to "continue Elvis' legacy", which would constrain his own creativity.--RLent 17:38, 17 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Absoulutely, especially the potential problems with epigenetic imprinting and the potential for far from normal children. As well as cloning for spare parts. Why don't you start off? David D. (Talk) 04:02, 10 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Cloning for spare parts sounds good, unless you're the clone who is using the parts. If we could just grow organs in a vat, it could be a good thing.--RLent 17:38, 17 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Cloning for spare parts would never happen. That's what we use stem cells for. Organs in a vat.--Hausman 03:24, 26 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I've tried to clean up the parts labelled "copy-editing", but it still needs work (in the ethical issues in cloning section). One problem is that the article is about cloning in general, and the ethical issues are mostly about human cloning (and there is opposition to all cloning by many groups). Maybe this needs to be under human cloning, issues, or the ethical section needs to be broken up into General and Human... something. Also, I put POV marks above the 4th paragraph in Cloning Endangered Species. It's written as opinion, yet it needs to stay in some form because the points it brings up are indeed floating out there in the world of biologists. The possible problems are real, but we need sources of these reservations, preferably from biologists actively involved in species preservation or cloning or both. What think? Gaviidae 14:54, 9 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It will be useful to include more religious views, possibly as separate articles linked to this one. Not only Roman Catholicism/Christianity, but also other major religions, such as Buddhism and Islam.219.90.84.218 02:09, 12 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed. [3] Islamic Seminar. Found a smorgasbord of views here [4], under "Religious Perspectives." I'd hate to be a plagarist, and as this site is already pretty succinct in summarising the views, I don't think I could summarise any better. Anyone think they can incorporate these into the Ethics section? Gaviidae 15:07, 9 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Human genome is Science Collaboration of the Week

Just to let you know that Human genome has been voted Science Collaboration of the Week. - Samsara _contrib ^talk 10:32, 27 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

List of cloned species

What about a list of sucesfully cloned species?--KimvdLinde 16:14, 2 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Well spotted. There used to be a list. It looks like it got deleted by a vandal and no one noticed. David D. (Talk) 17:19, 2 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I noticed that the restored list has the Korean groups claims of cloing humans. this will need to be edited. David D. (Talk) 17:22, 2 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

all claims need to be linked with the appropriate references, not just claims out of the blue. Furthermore, as there is a sepertae list, just linking there will do, and reduces the amount of editing--KimvdLinde 17:51, 2 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Jurassic Park

Is cloning prehistoric creatures possible, despite the problems discussed in Biological Issues in Jurassic Park? It would seem like a worthwhile enterprise to me. Scorpionman 03:21, 27 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Only when you can recover the comlete DNA, which is highly unlikely. Even for species like mamoths that are preserved very well in artic ice, it is near impossiible. KimvdLinde 05:42, 27 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I thought they used frog or lizard DNA in Jurassic Park to compensate for the gaps in the dino DNA. Couldn't they do that here? And not all dinosaurs (or other creatures) are so huge that it would be impossible to recover their DNA. The compsognathus was no larger than an adult chicken and could probably easily be cloned. Scorpionman 16:08, 27 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Jurassic Park contains a lot of fantacy :-) The length of the DNA is not the issue, it breaks down so there is insufficient DNA to work with. KimvdLinde 17:24, 27 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The article states that the dinosaurs cloned in Jurassic park were initially females and that they leared to reproduce. If I'm not completely mistaken, the reason they could reproduce was that they used genetic materails from frogs that are hermafrodites to implantate dinosaur DNA. If you read the Jurassic Park article, it says: "The park contains dinosaurs, which have been recreated from damaged dinosaur DNA found in mosquitoes trapped in amber that sucked their blood that have been spliced with reptilian, avian, or amphibian DNA to fill in the gaps. Hammond and his genetic engineers take great delight in explaining the ways that they created the dinosaurs. The scientists grow apprehensive when they discover that the dinosaurs have been breeding, despite InGen's efforts to keep them sterile." Erik Broomé 3 April 2006

dune

The dune series would certainly be worth mentioning since Cloning is a crucial part of the story line and some of the ideas presented on it are quite interesting. unless what occurs in the books isn't considered cloning? 66.82.9.90 08:55, 22 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

What If....

If a zygote has 23 pairs of homologous pairs of chromosomes could cloning be as simple as taking the gametes from each parent which hold 23 chromomsomes form each parent and matching them up in the same pairs. What if to make a clone you dont need a cell from the person your trying to clone. And through this ypu could even make a "perfect person", you could take the best traits from each parent and make them into pairs. Meiosis will just take the same course again.

No, Imprinting will prevent this. After fertilization, the genetic material needs to be "reprogrammed". A "zygote" constructed this way would not be viable; the "best" (read: most complex) thing that would result would be cancer, but usually, it would just abort. Dysmorodrepanis 17:08, 6 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Large paragraph removed?

As of March, http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Cloning&diff=42055071&oldid=42055003 has been removed for some reason. Is there a specific explaination to the removal of this area, or is this only an accident? 154.5.45.239 06:33, 18 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

missed vandalism

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Cloning&diff=63624505&oldid=63613883 this user did a lot of unnoticed damage. i replaced some material but a lot of other stuff was lost. Trouble is that many other edits have now occurred so it is not so simple just to revert back to the orginal. David D. (Talk) 00:37, 1 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I think i replaced all the lost material. i had to merge some subsequent new edits intot he old text. i hope it looks OK. David D. (Talk) 03:05, 1 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

"Work Clones"

I've heard about some really shocking things about cloning. It has been predicted that in 1,000 years that "Bio-bots", i.e. "work clones" will be commonplace. Some will have four arms, hands, some will have eight arms, hands, all for doing work that is performed by metal (to distinguish them from "Bio-bots") robots, all will be human or humanoid, except for the "extra equipment" needed for work as living tools. Is that even possible ? Martial Law 23:22, 10 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I Think it would be possible. The only problem would probably getting donors to clone, then surgically add clone arms, feet, etc. Whether it will be done, I'm not sure. But if they do make "Bio-bots", then they will need to be able to do theriputic cloning. Starry.dreams 06:06, 17 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The process you are referring to is more along the lines of genetic engineering and frankly has little to do with cloning as you have presented it. As for predictions of "bio bots" in the future, I would leave that to the science fiction books. Genetic engineering on that scale is many many years away (likely centuries), not to mention the ethical considerations. 24.254.82.121 06:12, 18 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Move ethical concerns to Human cloning page?

Should the section on ethical concerns be moved to human cloning? This section focuses solely on the ethical debate on human reproductive cloning, whereas the current page as a whole deals with cloning, primarily reproductive, in general. Let me know any thoughts. --Jesse Reynolds 22:59, 13 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Better would be to expand it, especially adding in some mention of the Asilomar conference in the 70's with respect to molecular cloning. David D. (Talk) 02:21, 14 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Reorder of sections

I just did a significant rearranging of the material (not much actual changing of the words). As it was, the first main section was "types of cloning," which described molecular, cellular, natural full organism, reproductive, and embryo cloning. Subsequent sections then touched on aspects of these types of cloning. I found this a bit confusing. I rearranged the sections so that the top level sections are the types of cloning (molecular, cellular, natural full organism, reproductive, and embryo cloning) and any details are subsections within them. I'd like to hear any thoughts on this. --Jesse Reynolds 19:06, 17 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Vandalism

I noticed some Vandalism. I changed some words. Check if there is more vandalism.

Cloning Theory

I believe that the cells used to clone may affect the clone's lifespan. Dolly the Sheep developed artheritus and died young I believe this is because the cells taken were already quite old so they were already some way through their lifespan. I believe using younger cells would allow the clones to survive longer. Jay Hughes age 14.

Clone or clones?

Is a clone of a living organism always taken to refer to all the copies of the original (as in horticulture), or is each individual a separate clone? The article does not state anything about the general meaning of the word clone, from what I could see. ToohrVyk 10:56, 2 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]