Tag: Cloning

It Doesn't Work Perfectly Yet, So Lets Ban Cloning

Dolly, the cloned sheep, has arthritis. This is apparently big news.

It is big news, of course, because of fears that the arthritis might have something to do with the cloning process. We’ve already learned that many cloned animals have serious health problems, so perhaps Dolly’s predicament might be due to being a cloned animal. Or it could be that Dolly simply is one of a small number of sheep who suffer from arthritis young.

As researcher Ian Wilmut told BBC Radio 4, “There is no way of knowing if this is down to cloning or whether it is a coincidence. We will never know the answer to that question.”

Wilmut has called for an independent study to examine the health of cloned animals. Animal rights activist, of course, have a different response — ban animal cloning.

Sarah Kite of the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection told the BBC,

Scientists seem to think that they can mix and match animals’ genes in a controlled way, but actually the control is an illusion. No one yet understands exactly how genes work or what the effects will be on the innocent animals who are subjected to biotechnology.

By all means, since scientists don’t understand exactly how genes work, it seems obvious that the only logical conclusion is that research into how genes work should be banned. How did everyone in the scientific community miss the sort of simple logic that BUAV grasps so easily?

Joyce D’Silva of Compassion in World Farming chimes in as well, telling the BBC,

I think the hundreds and hundreds of other cloned lambs who have been born and had malformed hearts, lungs or kidneys. They have struggled to survive for a few days and then had their lungs filled with fluid and gasped their way to death or had to be put out of their misery by their creators. That is the real story of cloning.

Note, however, that Compassion in World Farming is on the record as being opposed to animal cloning even if researchers figure out how to avoid the problems seen with some cloned animals. The group’s web site says of cloning,

Even if cloning becomes more efficient, CIWF believes it is likely to be a welfare disaster for farm animals. Selective breeding has had a bad record for welfare. Herds of identical cloned animals would lead to even greater loss of genetic diversity with unforeseeable results in terms of illness for the animals. Transgenic pigs used for xenotransplants would have to live their lives in unnatural, sterile conditions. CIWF believes that the suffering involved in cloning and genetically engineering cannot be justified by the benefits claimed by the scientists and multinational biotechnology companies.

In other words, even if researchers succeed in creating a cloned pig whose heart can be successfully transplanted into a human being suffering from heart disease, “the suffering involved … cannot be justified by the benefits.”

Source:

Dolly’s arthrities sparks cloning row. The BBC, January 4, 2002.

Genetic Engineering Campaign. Compassion in World Farming, Factsheet, June 28, 2001

Dolly Researchers Turn Skin Cells into Stem Cells

Researchers who helped clone Dolly the Sheep have turned what they learned there into an incredible breakthrough. Researchers at the U.S. subsidiary of PPL Therapeutics last week announced they had managed to turn cells from the skin of cows into stem cells. They were then able to turn the stem cells into functioning heart cells.

This has a number of important implications for human research. Stem cells of the sort announced by the researchers are typically found only in fetuses. Those stem cells can become literally any other type of cell if given the correct signals.

As organisms grow and age, however, the stem cells become differentiated and able to transform into fewer and fewer different types of tissue. This is necessary to control development of the organism.

For this reason, research involving stem cells in human beings has to date required the controversial use of fetal tissue. Experimental treatment for |Parkinson|’s disease, for example, uses fetal tissue in an attempt to spur growth of neurons in the brain.

Because of the ongoing controversy over abortion, use of fetal tissue has proven to be a political minefield (Great Britain is the only government in the world that currently allows government funding for such projects), and there are other limitations. Taking adult cells, such as from the skin, and turning back the clock, so to speak, to transform them into undifferentiated stem cells has been one of the ultimate goals of genetic research.

Dr. Ron James, managing director of PPL Therapeutics, told the BBC, “The results of this experiment give us confidence that the method we are developing as a source of stem cells is working and I believe it will be equally applicable to humans.”

If that proves to be true, which is an enormous if, it could revolutionize medical treatments leading to such science fiction-like scenarios as growing replacement for defective hearts and other organs.

Source:

Tissue transplant advance. The BBC, February 23, 2001.

Cloning pioneers consider creating sheep with cystic fibrosis

The team that created a firestorm
of controversy after successfully cloning Dolly the sheep is considering
helping a group of researchers at Edinburgh create a genetically engineered
sheep that has human cystic fibrosis.

Cystic fibrosis is a genetic
disease caused when a child receives a specific faulty gene from both
parents. Cystic fibrosis causes a variety of health problems, which tend
to vary from individual to individual, but is marked by severe respiratory
problems. People with cystic fibrosis have mucus secretions that are much
thicker and stickier than normal human mucus secretions, and the thick
secretions can cause severe respiratory problems from difficulty breathing
to higher risk of infection. A lot of advances have been made in extending
the life span of people with cystic fibrosis, but even today only 50%
of those with the disease will survive into their 30s (many of those patients
have to take up to 40 pills a day to prolong their lives).

Scientists have already managed
to create smaller animals, such as mice and rats, with cystic fibrosis,
but nobody has attempted to do so with larger animals. Sheep are a particularly
good candidate for cystic fibrosis research because they have lungs similar
to human lungs, and they tend to suffer from similar respiratory ailments.
The research under consideration would create at least two sheep with
the defective gene and then require breeding those sheep to produce a
sheep with a copy of the defective gene from each parent.

The Edinburgh researchers already
have a gene therapy treatment for cystic fibrosis that has received approval
in Great Britain for testing in normal sheep, and if those experiments
are successful an experiment in sheep that have the human disease would
be the next logical step.

References:

Dolly
team to create sheep with cystic fibrosis. The Times (UK), February
8, 2000.

What is cystic
fibrosis?. Michigan State University fact sheet.

Patent Office Rejects Patents Containing Human DNA

Jeremy Rifkin is at it again.
In June, Rifkin and biology professor Stuart Newman made the national news
when the US Patent Office rejected as unpatentable their proposal for
a human/animal hybrid species. The Patent Office ruled that allowing
any partially human organism to be patented would violate the 13th
amendment, which abolished slavery.

Rifkin, who generally opposes all
genetic engineering of organisms religiou grounds (his 1993 book, Algeny,
cited creationists in its attack on Darwinian evolution), plans to appeal
the decision and force the government to draw its regulations on the patentability
of life forms more clearly in the apparent hope the government will decide
to reject all patents on living organisms.

The obvious way out is for a court or the Patent Office to rule that it erred in its bizarre interpretation of the
13th amendment. Since a patent on an organism or a derivative
of that organism (such as a genetically engineered human insulin-producing
goat) does not grant anyone ownership of persons under U.S. law, the application
of the 13th amendment in this case was patently absurd and
represents a gross misunderstanding of the status of genetically engineering
animals with human genes. This is a widespread misunderstanding, however,
as the Internet is now filled with discussions about how corporations
could one day own human beings (this line of reasoning makes about as
much sense as claiming that the companies who make ultrasound equipment
have an ownership stake in the fetuses their equipment helps diagnose).

In fact, in contradiction to
the Patent Office’s rejection of Rifkin and Newman’s patent, the Patent
Office has already issued several patents for animals that contain human
genes or organs.

The danger, of course, is
that politicians will react out of the same ignorance and misunderstanding
as they rushed to act when the news broke about the cloning of Dolly the
sheep. Without patent protection, many of the next generation of medical
treatments that are already under development will be stymied and in many
cases killed outright since it will be incredibly difficult for companies
to recoup their development costs without such protections.

Rifkin himself is responsible for
a lot of the misunderstandings of cloning and genetic research that many
in the public have. Rifkin has a serious problem with reality — he convinced
numerous religious leaders to sign a petition in 1991 against genetic
engineering by sending out a letter claiming that a biotech company had
gained a patent for “an unaltered part of the human body.” In fact the
company in question, SyStemix, obtained a patent for a process of obtaining
a modified version of human bone marrow stem cells that may someday have
uses as a treatment for AIDS, cancer and other human diseases.