I'll leave the moral questions about cloning to the philosophical area of this site, but how many of you believe cloning will become a prominent scientific field in the next decade?

The possibilities seem endless with this technology. I mean think of a world in which we can clone a lost limb for ourselves? No more rejection of donors' organs when we can clone our own when it's still healthy? Stem cell research already a major hope for solving many types of deseases. Clone animals and fish to feed the hungry? Clone trees to re populate forests?

What possibilities can you think of? What problems do you see or know of?
Should we abandon the science for the sake of moral issues alone or does cloning have other threats on the existance of our species/world?

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Originally posted by Mindtrip:
Any thoughts on the pros and cons of cloning?

I'll leave the moral questions about cloning to the philosophical area of this site, but how many of you believe cloning will become a prominent scientific field in the next decade?

The possibilities seem endless with this technology. I mean think of a world in which we can clone a lost limb for ourselves? No more rejection of donors' organs when we can clone our own when it's still healthy? Stem cell research already a major hope for solving many types of deseases. Clone animals and fish to feed the hungry? Clone trees to re populate forests?

What possibilities can you think of? What problems do you see or know of?
Should we abandon the science for the sake of moral issues alone or does cloning have other threats on the existance of our species/world?

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Well, interfering with nature can have bad effects, when things get out of control.

e.g. If we use cloning only, then disease could spread extremely rapidly as all immune systems will be similar.

I would not object to a clone of myself if ever I need one for mefdical issues.

Njorl

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It won't, period.

The cloning of entire human beings is another story, and one we are not yet ready to tell. Cloning in mice has produced obesity, who knows what other effects it might have? Even a pregnancy brought succesfully to term might result in a child with some terrible genetic deffect that does not show untill adolesence. Premature attempts at cloning people could have serious repercussions both for the unfortunate individuals directly involved and the entire scientific comunity.

As for the science of cloning; I think the mainstream fanatasies of "cloning" do not accurately reflect the reality of the state of cloning -at this point. The technology is really in its infancy.
Nico

Humanity has in the past developed two different types of society, depending on how much hard labor is required to maintain a household. Where light gardening will do the job, women become independent of men, bondings are short term, descent is reckoned through the mother, because nobody knows or cares who the father was. Men frequently live together in some kind of "long house", boys are sent there as soon as possible, to be raised by the men. Girls are kept home with mama. Such a society used to be called matrilocal, but nowadays I've seen the name "cad" society because the men become irresponsible and quarrelsome.

The other kind, where the upper body strength advantage of men is needed, develops into the kind of patrilocal, permanent bond, nuclear family patterns that ruled our own society in grandma and grandpa's time. It is called a "dad" society because the men participate in raising the kids.

So now, cloning over a few generations would drive us into a completely "cad" society. You think not? Tell me why.

Selfadjoint, I'm afraid I don't understand what you mean by "cad". You gave an example depicting how girls stay with mom, and boy go with dad and yet the fathers don't participate in raising the kids? How do you propose the fathers get quarrelsome? Because they have been segragated from their wives(and if not wives, parteners) and daughters?

as for the cell-age question, if a new lung/kidney etc is grown, the organ will be the same cellular age as the genetic host (unless the dna is harvested earlier) so what we'd be getting is a new organ, the same age as the donor/recipient, but with none of the environmentally imposed damage.

in the topic of 'interfering with nature'. what would you call medicine, domestication of animals and plants, cities etc etc...

This will almost certainly reveal new aspects of genetics impossible to predict at this time. Cloning a new lung for a man who has been shot through the lung provides an obvious solution to the ailment. However, in the practice of cloning new lungs for people who suffer from frequent and chronic pneumonia, we may find that these people still suffer the same malady. From this, we might learn that pneumonia can have a genetic cause.