Cloning...

So we#re gettn all political now...do we believe in cloning?> SHould be it be allowed? Now I should havih an opinion as a biomecial scientist but my brain isnt at it's best right now. so it's upt o you! yay or nay?!

Honjestly I just wanna talk to y'all again, I dont care if it's about cloning or zebras or booze...

I miss y'all!! *cries*

Ally!!!

No, I don't like the idea of cloning. I don't like ppl acting like Gods. I don't think it will end good.

I am interested what you as biomecial scientist think about it though

Ally what?!?!

My personal opinion is that cloning is a slippery slope. I can see some benefits of advancing the methods behind cloning, though. It can help us with regenerative medicine, so growing organs to replace broken ones. It can help us understand how organs grow, which helps us understand disorders in growing children.

But I think complete human cloning is weird...

but I am not sure if those organs are ok if theyare not made by nature but by chemical something. I just don't trust all those chemical things. It seems weird to me and unhealthy.

GAH this site is NOT posting my replies!!

What I said in my last reply which didn't post was that I can understand why you'd be apprehensive about artificial organs but they're actually healthier than organ transplants because you can control for all the variables because you're creating the organ. When you take an organ from someone else, you're trusting that their medical records are corect and that the organ is healthy. It's an assumption. With an artifical organ, you can make sure it's healthy.

But I think it will go wrong after all. Just like human also wanted to make a perfect fruit by adding all kind of chemicals to make it bigger. But how can something be healthy if they are made by chemicals?

I just think it could lead to some disasters and really change our life. Just like nuclear power. Ppl invented cause it supposed to work but one mistake and the world is gone, similar to Japan accident.

I think Murphy said it his laws - what can go wrong, will go wrong and I agree with that. Sooner or later.

Oooh we're heading to philosophy here, I feel out of my depths lol. And anyway, creating arftifical organs doesn't involve heaps of chemicals, like GM fruit and veg. My friend in my lab is creating artificial skin, and I watch what he does. It's mostly biology, and using chemicals that are already found in our bodies. It's not adding strong weird chemicals to things. It's using what we find in our bodies usually.

how can organism grow by itself in laboratory? I mean, how can you grow for example a liver without a body? It is something I have no idea about but am interested.

Well, it's pretty simple really... how does anything grow? It needs energy and for that it needs food. It requires an ideal environment and a medium that promotes this environment so really it's just like making a plant grow. Take a seed (the liver cell in this case), plant it in some soil (the growth medium), give it everything it needs to grow and reproduce like fertiliser, (proteins, sugars, water, enzymes, amino acids etc) and maintain it's environment, like a greenhouse (warmth, humidity, moisture, or lack of moisture etc). Control all of these and over time you will have a new liver forming in front of your eyes.

I understand that in practise there is probably more to growing an organ that way but that is simplifying it I suppose...

Incidentally the liver doesn't necessarily need to be regrown this way, because it regenerates itself normally. You can have 3/4 of your liver removed and it will grow right back. Amazing organ.

Now on the cloning topic...

I think that cloning for strictly medical purposes is ok. Buuuut choosing the sex of your child or making a twin for no reason is unacceptable. I'm all for stem cell research into like parkinson's or Motor Nuerone Disease or anything else autoimmune or cancerous or injury related is essential but there is no real need to clone humans in my opinion.

Hmmm... Cloning has a lot of positive and negative stuff.. It's gona be useful if it saves someones life, but I'm totally agree with Partner it's wrong to be choose your child's genre and things like that.

But I think we don't know if somewhere in the world they don't cloning humans.. Ans I think they do. And that's not right.
I'm tottaly agrees with the organ part... you don't know when will you need a new one, hopefully never, but there are a lot of ifs...

Jasper'sMineForever wrote:Well, it's pretty simple really... how does anything grow? It needs energy and for that it needs food. It requires an ideal environment and a medium that promotes this environment so really it's just like making a plant grow. Take a seed (the liver cell in this case), plant it in some soil (the growth medium), give it everything it needs to grow and reproduce like fertiliser, (proteins, sugars, water, enzymes, amino acids etc) and maintain it's environment, like a greenhouse (warmth, humidity, moisture, or lack of moisture etc). Control all of these and over time you will have a new liver forming in front of your eyes.

I understand that in practise there is probably more to growing an organ that way but that is simplifying it I suppose...

Incidentally the liver doesn't necessarily need to be regrown this way, because it regenerates itself normally. You can have 3/4 of your liver removed and it will grow right back. Amazing organ.

Now on the cloning topic...

I think that cloning for strictly medical purposes is ok. Buuuut choosing the sex of your child or making a twin for no reason is unacceptable. I'm all for stem cell research into like parkinson's or Motor Nuerone Disease or anything else autoimmune or cancerous or injury related is essential but there is no real need to clone humans in my opinion.

in ENTIRE agreement. I knew there was a reason I missed you!!! *cuddles* And yes, the liver is spunk-tastic...I really should be kinder to mine. And BTW I'm working on stem cell stuff right now...well i will be in a few months - I can't wait!!

That's sounds exciting!!

At uni we work with foods and microbes.. I know it's not belong with cloning, but I don't know why did I say it

Anyway cloning could be a good and bad... I think.

It is pretty exciting actually - so far I have certain days where I'm really loving my PhD project. The work is really interesting.

Microbes are kinda cool - I almost went into a PhD on microbiology - I love those little guys xP

I feel like I am in the middle of scientists. What as strange world I suddenly appeared in lol

Oh... you are really not in the middle
I'm only studying it but Ally really a scientist hehe

magic wrote:I feel like I am in the middle of scientists. What as strange world I suddenly appeared in lol

Me too, actually. I can't relate. Hahaha. I wish I understand. But I know cloning in general, just not the process on how it's done.

Do microbes look like this?

Hehe

Not really, Rai, lol. It's hard to describe what microbes look like, and besides they don't all look the same. There are lots of different types.

and they have a lot of names that really heard tos tudy lol

no cloning.

I'm just wondering, is cloning a distant cousin of invitro fertilization? And how is it connected to stem cell-something-something? LOL. I think I am not making any sense. But I hope you can enlighten me.

Ok, ummm VERY distant cousin lol. I'll try and explain some of those concepts briefly.

Cloning is where you artificially create an organism from their DNA. Which means that they're identical to the source.

In vitro fertilisation is where you basically create a baby out of the bosy. So inside the body, during sex, the sperm hits an egg, enters it, and fertilises it, which leads to the formation of an embryo. In IVF, you take the egg out of the woman, take the sperm out of the man, inject the sperm into the egg so it fertilises it, and then you put the fertlised egg back into the woman.

Stem cells are cells that can grow into lots of different types of cells, and then grow themselves back again if that makes sense. So they're possible of becoming lots of different things, they can be nerve cells, they can be muscle cells, they can be skin cells etc...That's a VERY simplified explanation, mind you.

Did that make any sense??