Cloning - what's the big deal?

First, there were The Boys From Brazil
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not to mention a lof of other science fiction:
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like, for example, the cloned dinosaurs of the Jurassic Park:
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Then came Dolly, the cloned sheep:
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Then came the AskThe ScienceBlogger weekly question: On July 5, 1996, Dolly the sheep became the first successfully cloned mammal. Ten years on, has cloning developed the way you expected it to?...

What followed were (not in chronological order) a bunch of other cloned animals, including:

some cute mice:
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piglets: Millie, Christa, Alexis, Carrel and Dotcom:
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a rhesus monkey, a male named Andy (a female named Tetra came shortly afterwards):
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the infamous (because of his creator) Snuppy, the Afghan Hound:
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two calves, named Pora and Potira
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and Annie:
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and Fufu:
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Prometea was the first cloned horse:
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Pieraz the first cloned racing champion:
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Here's a cat named Nicky:
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And the more famous (for being first) cloned cat CC (here pictured with genetic mother Rainbow and surrogate mother Allie):
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Finally, the most famous of them all, the cloned mule, Idaho Gem:
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What has all this mammalian cloning accomplished? Hopefully, a more widespread understanding of what non-mammalian cloners were saying all along - you do not get an identical copy by cloning. It's not the DNA that matters, it's what cellular machinery is reading that DNA.

CC does not look anything like its genetic mother. The cows do not have markings like their genetic parents. I doubt Pieraz will be a great champion. The piglets received quite different scores on a battery of behavioral tests. Idaho Gem actually did much better in a mule race then his twin brother, a cloned mule named Idaho Sam - they did not end the race in a dead heat and neither one had a champion-style finish that their genetic father used to exhibit.

I hope that all these examples will decrease the irrational fear that some people have of cloning. It is not making little Hitlers. It is babies. With their own looks, abilities, quirks and personalities. If you are looking for an identical copy of your pet, sorry, you'll be dissappointed. If you are looking for a fertility treatment, perhaps some of the stuff learned over the last ten years can be useful to you and your physician. If you are looking for an organ-donor for yourself, think again - it is not a copy of you, it is a different human being with its own feelings and its own human rights.

So, for some it will be a disappointment, for others it will offer hope, but most importantly, the stigma of the word "cloning" is going to go away and, in the process, hopefully people will understand that DNA is not a blueprint - it is just a catalogue of parts which the cell uses to make more cells.

More like this

If you are looking for an organ-donor for yourself, think again - it is not a copy of you, it is a different human being with its own feelings and its own human rights.

I've never understood why this wasn't obvious to people. I remember seeing this the first time I thought about the mechanics of cloning. It is a time shifted identicle twin, to a first approximation[*]. There is absolutely nothing less-than-fully-human[**] about the resulting organism.

[*] This intentionally ignores some of the complications arising from differences in the ovum system into which the donor genetic material is inserted as well as from broader developmental differences.

[**] Or whatever species the original donor of the genetic material and ovum was.

Very cool. If you've never read "Imperial Earth" by Arthur C Clark, I rec it highly. Amongst the plotlines is the doctor who created the first in a line of clones, refusing to clone the 3rd one because he (the doctor) has developed a "moral" issue with the idea of cloning.

Clark is excellent as always.

Thanks for the updates on all these unique individuals.

The organ donor thing. Morals and societal norms aside, an exact clone would make a perfect organ donor. I don't see how you could argue otherwise.

To put your examples more in the concrete, the reason CC looks different from her genetic mother is probably due to X-inactivation. She is heterozygous for an X-linked gene that determines coat color. Which homologue gets silenced in which progenetor cell determines the pattern of her coat. This is only partially determined by her genetic code (there are aspects of X-inactivation that are sequence dependent), but mostly due to random chance. Note that she is still much more similar to her genetic mother than to her surrogate.

Organ donors - it goes without saying - I was focusing on social aspect.

X-inactivation is developmental. Explain the pigs.

I would only quibble with one sentence. I think you should have written (additions underlined):

"It's not just the DNA that matters, it's also what cellular machinery is reading that DNA, and how environmental variables affect the process.

(Note: underline tags didn't seem to work on preview. I hope they show up in the final post.)

Honestly, who cares, just let it be, they are not going to hear your opinions and suddenly change there minds. I mean, comon, who are you kidding. You are just wasting your time, might i add that you have too much of!

Clones are not exact replicas of its donor but are in fact only similar reproductions. The simple approach totally supports clones; however, in the hands of ill conceived experimentations the results may leave humanity at its worst. I think certain things in science are best left to nature. Those who feel that clones are "parts replacement banks" are the ill conceived minds I fear. They do not understand clones and in their minds clones of themselves are at their total disposal -- wrong. Ill conceived ideas have given the world evil minded leaders who have caused devistation to the human race. Let's not provide an avenue for more future evil. Instead let nature takes its course. It has done well in and of itself, why mess it up? At what cost do we learn to leave well enough alone? Why can't science double up on their efforts to cure existing ills rather than generating new potentialities for more ills?

By Chuy Anaya (not verified) on 16 Nov 2007 #permalink

I believe that Cloning animals is wrong. before we all know it our world will turn into a huge embryo farm! and all of us will be clones or cloned.
Cloning will cause our world to turn to violence. if humans are cloned then what? we all end up as a communistic country and we make war on our neigbors and friends and family because we all want to be better. if cloned humans exsist, whos to say that the scientists will not make them more genetically superior like and genetically perfect? if they do this then they have created a whole superior race and our world goes into mass chaos.