SNU Professor Hwang Woo-suk is the man of the hour — check out Google and Technorati for more news and commentary than you could ever possibly go through. Nora, Kushibo and Jodi have their own things to say, which you’d do well to read on your own. Anyway, if you’ve got an opinion on the issue, my comments section is yours.
-
English Books on Korea... and More!
-
Visit My Brother's Film Review Site
69 Comments
Who would have guessed that any nation other than South Korea should lead the world in tampering surgically with Mother Nature?
Save face (or make lovely face)!
I don’t have a strong opinion on the topic of cloning in general. One basic thought of mine on it is the same as on nuclear proliferation — it is the future - whatever anyone does about it.
I don’t think even the sci-fi genre looks into the future are unthinkable - like Blade Runner and so on - where clones are used to colonize places beyond earth or like in the Dune books where a certain race on a planet uses clones to harvest organs and limbs to give to injured “real” humans.
In short, even though our contemporary mind would revolt at some of these things, even the minds of people who are in strong support of such things as stem cell research, I believe 50, 100, or 200 years from now, the advent of cloning technology will eventually alter our ethics to the point that using full clones as “not real people” to do a variety of things that we find repulsive today will be acceptable then.
“Progress” often leads to not so nice things — Columbus and colonization of the new world, atomic theory and the nuclear bomb, or even something like Charles Darwin and the subsequent rise of social darwinism that was eventually used by places like Japan to colonize places like Chosun Korea — with the theory also justifiying Japan’s actions in many contemporary minds at the time.
Once Stem Cell Research is developed into treatments for sickness, it will be a much better, safer treatment than medicine. This kind of research will lead to cures for genetic diseases that make life hard for millions. I think this man is incredibly talented, and is dedicated to helping other people. He has spent an incredible amount of time researching for a lot less money than the scientists in the states earn. I think he deserves all the honor and respect for what he has accomplished.
Right Lacy. This is not about “cloning” humans. Dr.Hwang has condemned such goals. This is about finding cures for non curable diseases. And the possibilites are endless. Take the example of a broken car. When the spark plug goes, we do not attempt to repair it because it rarely works, we replace it. The patient has a bad heart? Why not grow a brand new heart using the patient’s skin. Damaged spinal chords? Grow it using stem cells.
I am extremely interested in what Dr.Hwang is doing because my own mother is disabled due to stroke that she suffered after a serious car accident. Half of her body is paralysed, and she is unable to walk. For everyone close to her family, it has been a nightmare for the last several years. To think that that a cure can be discovered to brink back my mother’s once vibrant life, gives our family hope. And Dr.Hwang has unlocked part of the mystery with very little government financial support (despite what has been reported in the Western medias) of 65 million dollars. This shows me how extremely gifted and determined this man is. For those who are against this, they probably would change their minds once they have someone close to them being crippled, get sick, and the suffering of consequences.
There is no better way to take someone’s money than selling hope. You promise him/her better health, more possessions and more power. They will bring tons of money to you.
Dr. Hwang is a master of playing media; he has politician friends and media friends. His results have never been verified by a neutral third party yet he gets the dough.
Here is my scientific treatment of Dr. Hwang and his voodoo science.
http://koreanamerican431.blogspot.com/
Read it before regarding him to be a hero.
baduk, what’s the difference between a male masturbating and ejaculating, therefore killing the sperm which in turn is a killing of life, and the case of taking out bunch of eggs from females? The former happens every day, every second all throughout the world, yet no outcries about “killing babies”. Come on. This so called “ethical” battle is a voodoo science in itself.
I have no doubt that Dr. Hwang is a brilliant scientist and that he has worked hard on this project. I consider it ridiculous to argue over whether or not cloning is ethical, right or wrong it is bound to happen at some point in time. I see it as being similar in principle to swapping music or video files-unethical? Absolutely! Does that stop people from doing it? Not in a million years. Where there is personal gain to be had at a relatively acceptable level of risk, there WILL be people who will take advantage of, in this case, technology. I am confident that at least part of the motivation Dr. Hwang felt in studying this is to help patients and that is the way that doctors should think. I cannot help but be certain; however, that he has also calculated any possible earnings and honor that would come from successfully developing this as a viable treatment for people for whom at this point in time, there is little if any hope of recovery. Thoughts of Nobel prizes, patents on technology and medicine and the thought of exporting that to a world desperately in need of this kind of treatment have, to be sure, happily danced though his head for a long time. Perhaps I am too hard on him, I certainly have never met him but given the basic premise that western medicine holds to that if it hurts enough, you will pay the price, I do not consider myself having gone too far. To this, add the fact that EVERY time a Korean develops something new, the first thing the news reports is how much they anticipate the exportation of said technology or product will bring, all in a country where organ sales are considered acceptable and I think that my opinion is reasonable. A true test of his nobility would be if he were to make any such technology free for doctors the world over to use. The credit, honor and fame he deserves and I have never argued that he doesn?€™t. The thing about this that really makes me angry is the fact that politicians in my home country have buckled to pressure from ultra conservative right wing religious groups and have stopped the type of funding necessary for this type of research to continue, hopefully bringing a treatment sooner.
Scientists are humans too. Of course any normal human being wouldn’t mind a little accolade which they richly deserve. Having said that, when I read that it was his ideal to get together all the greatest scientific minds in this field to work together to come up with breakthrough research that will lead to discovery of treatments for illnesses that once were thought to be incurable, my respect for the man went up one notch. If he had something to hide or if he wanted to hog the knowledge for himself, why would he cooperate with others in this way and offer to share the knowledge? We still have to wait and see, but I’m hoping and hoping that the collaboration of these great scientists will happen soon, and that one of them will come up with another breakthrough soon.
Kimbob ejaculating sperm or removing eggs has nothing to do with killing life. Sperm has only half the DNA and none of the cellular machinery required to create a life, therefore cannot be considered a life. Likewise eggs are not lives.
The ethical problems associated with stem cell research come from the use of embryos to derive the cell lines. The problem is similar to that of abortion. At what point in human development do you call a life a life? When it’s just a bundle of cells? When those cells have differentiated into head, body, arms and legs? Is it acceptable to create a life in order to use it for spare parts for sick people? If we can create a clone for stem cells, why not create one and grow it to full size incase I need an organ transplant or a new leg at some time in my life?
These are ethical questions that most countries agree need to be debated and carefully considered before stem cell research is liscenced. My only real concern about this research in Korea is that these debates seem to have been swept under the carpet. The main concern here, as usual, seems to be making sure Korea is at the forefront of the field. To that end, Dr. Hwang is a scientist with almost unlimited freedom and power, power he would not be given in most other countries for a good reason.
Just as an aside….
The current American position on stem cell research is a ban on FEDERAL funding toward research with newly-produced embryonic stem cells. There has been no injunction on State funding, nor has there (or will there) be any injunction regarding the private-sector funding of this research. If Hwang Woo-Suk and his merry crew of bio-pirates can accomplish what they claim to have accomplished with only 65 million dollars (I got this figure from the above post…I haven’t vetted it, but it seems like a reasonable amount…), then it’s clear that a lack of federal funding certainly didn’t prevent Americans from developing this technology.
If there is clear benefit in it, I’m quite sure the private start-up and development capital is out there for the taking. 65 million dollars would be chickenfeed to capitalists who honestly believed that stem cell research will yield the panacea it’s been cracked up to be. Hell, the cast of Spin City could probably scare up 65 million in a couple months. Ray freakin’ Romano could fund it by himself. Or Paris Hilton.
I guess I don’t see the evilness of the fundamentalist theocrat American Taliban in this development. I don’t really think that a ban on federal funding constitutes a discontinuation of any research in America. Private development continues to move forward in a host of fields in which federal funding is slight or non-existent. And, in terms of state funding, I believe California is attempting to pass a 3 billion dollar allocation of state funds for stem cell research…so clearly the situation isn’t as repressive as others seem to think.
In addition, my work centers around biochemistry and biomedical technology, and I am in NO WAY complacent about the ethical and possible societal impact of this technology. Although George W. Bush is thought of by some as an idiot or a crazy religious fundamentalist, his position on stem cell technology is by no means unique to Christians, and is certainly shared by a large percentage of actual scientists.
I understand that some scoff at the “crazy” notion that life begins at conception, and previously, that notion really only impacted on arguments regarding abortion.
However, recent advances in in vitro techniques make it clear that physical pregnancy will not always be a necessary process in the generation of a human being. In the absence of such an important biological marker as delivery (which has already been completely obviated as a marker for “life”–now we talk more about “viability”),
the determination as to what is a human life becomes even less clear.
So, if I can create a zygote (which is, of course, not the same thing as a sperm cell or an egg—re: one of the above comments), and that’s not a human life, what is? In the absence of a need to implant the cells in a human female, how much of a baby do you need this zygote to become, before you concede that you are growing people for spare parts? Does it have to have eyes? Does it need to respond to electrical shocks? Does it need to talk?
What Dr. Hwang has done was accomplished at a point in this process before such questions become salient to folks who don’t understand what they’re looking at. Looking at the cells with which the man was working, no maternal instincts would be triggered. Does that make it okey-dokey? I haven’t figured out what to think about that. What bothers me is that a lot of people, who clearly know less about this even than I do, act as if it’s a stupid question, or as if it’s easy to answer. I don’t think it is easy to answer, and I think it would be a good idea to really figure it out as much as possible before we just start making people to take them apart.
Anyway, cheers to Dr. Hwang (although I did read what Baduk had to say about this, and the article to which he links certainly deepened my suspicions about this researcher…)
Oooops…ddongjip, you beat me to much of the punch….
Guilty-I am ignorant as to the details of the science behind what Dr. Hwang has done. I agree that we need to become better educated on the issue because there are some real ethical issues involved and it should be obvious to everyone that the research is not going to stop, at least not on it’s own. I tend to heavily discount any argument which smells of the American theocratic taliban but all that aside, I can see the ethical delimas this issue presents. Good job of articulating the issue for the rest of us.
If you ask any Molecular Biologist/Immunologist/Geneticist (I have degrees in all 3) what they think about this, the answer will most likely be a simple shrug of the shoulders. What Dr. Hwang did is nothing, it is not a major scientific breakthrough, it does not involve any cutting edge technology or any of the science fiction type images which are probably whizzing through the heads of the unwashed masses right now. The only reason this hasn’t been done before is because there is really no reason to do it. Mammalian cloning, starting with mice, has been around for a really long time. It’s very simple, extremely easy to do. I could teach any 18 year old with a steady hand how to clone pretty much anything, so long as they followed the instructions given to the T.
When people talk about cloning they think about the science-fiction type cloning which they have been exposed to. There will never be large numbers of cloned copies of humans walking around serving as organ repositories for their originals, this isn’t going to happen, there is no reason for it to happen. The only reason a cloned human would ever be raised up to semi-adulthood is to shock the masses.
Stem cells are not a magic bullet for treating disease, and certainly not for creating organs. Furthermore, stem cells need to even come from such fear-instilling sources as cloned embryos. If you’ve got a few pounds of fat on you, you can go to the doctor and have it liposuctioned out. If you carefully screen the cells in that liposuctioned mass you can isolate a pretty large volume of adult-type stem cells. While these aren’t fully differentiable into every cell line which makes up the body, they can be guided to differentiate into a large number of cell-lines that are prone to failue, brain tissue, liver tisse, heart-muscle tissue etc. Making organs out of stem cells is extremely impractical though. In order to guide a stem cell into a specific cell in the human body you have to very carefully control specific factors to which the cell is exposed. If you wanted to grow a kidney from stem cells, you would need a 3-D molecular scaffold on which to grow the cells, and some way of controlling exactly what chemicals each individual cell was exposed to. You’d have to grown perfect little veins and arteries through the tisse, etc. However, there are some cases where exposure to neighboring fully differentiated cells will guide the stem cells present down the same path. This is where you get all the tales of amazing cures where you just inject a was of stem cells into a certain area and the area is repaired.
The best option for creating replacement organs for failed parts is, in my opinion, immunotransgenics applied to xenotransplantation. Take a pig, and perfectly match the immune system to a human organ recipient. The pig’s brain will still be a pig brain. I’m not talking about a pig that is laying around the sty philosophizing about life, it’s just a pig that happens to be immuno-matched to a recipient. We can do this now, there are pigs in little ultra-clean rooms right now that are very closely matched to humans immunogenetically. The only reason they aren’t being used for transplantation is because there are fears of retroviral fragments recombining in human hosts and forming some new sort of plague, which is pretty far fetched, but I understand people’s desires for cautions.
I’ve cloned mice, I’ve made mice with alien genes inserted into them so they glow in the dark, I’ve made flies with legs where their eyes should be, all sorts of wacky crap….
“Furthermore, stem cells need to even” - “Furthermore, stem cells need not even”
“inject a was” - “inject a wad”
I should really preview
I think an important point is getting lost in the shuffle here: Dr Hwang isn’t using or growing embryos that would have developed into human beings had he killed them off. His work is limited to blastocysts - embryos of less than a couple hundred cells - which have specifically been derived from unfertilized eggs coaxed into producing new cells. His research does not make use of fertilized eggs which will ultimately become human.
- Eggs used by Dr Hwang remain unfertilized. To me this means he’s using eggs (not human beings) in his research. The eggs are the property of the donor, who can do with them what she wishes.
- Even *fertilized* human embryos at the blastocyst stage have not yet developed nerve cells or a nervous system and are incapable of anything that can be construed as feeling or pain - let alone thought or self-cognition.
- Dr Hwang has publicly stated his explicit opposition to reproductive cloning (which would create new individual humans rather than new cells).
Given the above, I’m convinced that Dr Hwang’s research does not constitute “growing people for spare parts”. He appears to be staunchly against anything that could, using cold science as the basis for judgement, be considered as such.
It would be interesting to hear from anyone well-versed in international human rights law. Under current American/Korean/European laws, at what stage in the development of a human egg (ie, a zygote, an embryo, a fetus, a baby, a child) does the egg cease to be the property of the female producer? At what point does the derivative of a egg gain human rights? Is there any overlap between the two periods?
(Forgot to close the bold text above… sorry)
Thanks for the post KrZ. Can you confirm or refute my understanding of the science behind Dr Hwang’s research?
KrZ,
But, have you actually used a skin cell (fully differentiated one) to do your cloning? I have a suspicion that there is a time clock embedded to every cell in the form of “telomere”. And, the skin cell DNA with necessary informations chopped off will not make a stem cell.
This is why I challenge Dr. Hwang to share his cell line with other labs. While he is advertising his cooperation with other labs, his group in my knowledge has not shared any of techniques, nor cells.
I believe that he wants to sell his “technology” to a company and hide his lies. The same technique that Wilmut used. I do not know of any result coming of the company that bought the Wilmut’s technology(=lies).
Dr. Hwang should be carefully watched and his group interviewed for possible falsifications. He claimed that he never bought any eggs. However, I read someone posting that some Seoul National university researchers are out on the street paying for them.
Today’s MBC news contained a segment where a doctor was questioning if these women,who took drugs to produce abnormal amount of eggs, have been warned about the possible consequences, such as barrenness and even possible death.
And, WTF is about Dr. Hwang’s flag waving. “I am doing this for Korea”, “this technology can bring more money than SamSung within three years”, “I was invited by America but I did not go because I want to keep this technology Korean”. WTF! I have never seen a scientist shooting off his mouth like this while eating up all the biomedical research money in Korea.
WTF! A liar!
libertine,
The cells are complete humans, according to Dr. Hwang. And, he says, if you put these cells into a woman’s womb it would grow up to be perfect babies.
Basically he is making a lifeform, a precursor to a human, and playing with it, applying chemicals to it, putting it into a dog or a chicken(Dr. Hwang has done it) and seeing what happens.
It is sickening. He could do this with mouses, pigs, dogs and other animals. There is no reason to waste human eggs this way. He could complete his technique in other organisms first.
And, about the human life. You as a Japanese probably does not know about God who created this world and still holds it together. If there were no God, humans could do anything that please them. But, once you realize that there is the Creator of Heaven and Earth, you cannot do these evil things with His creation.
That is the difference between a Christian and an Atheist.
Bye, bye, Dr. Hwang and his lies,
there is a possible cure for some diseases using umblical cord stem cells.
http://stemcellkorea.blogspot......-cell.html
These guys should be funded. Cancel Dr.Hwang and his groups budget. There is a better way of doing things. Or, are these guys lying as well?
I couldn’t resist.
http://ianswallow.blogspot.com.....tates.html
Baduk, can you link to any sources where Dr Hwang says that the cells are complete humans? That would be interesting.
Also I would argue that Christians do not “know about God” but rather “believe in God”. To me, using terms like “know” and “realize” connotates an understanding based on factual, tangible evidence. In contrast, “belief” implies an understanding based on faith. Christians seem to have no issues using the term “faith”. Are you using the term “know” as a synonym for “believe”, or do you have irrefutable evidence of God’s existence?
As a side note, I would advise caution on making assumptions based on perceived nationality. The fact that my proxy server’s IP address registers as Japanese has no bearing on my understanding of morality, religious faith, superstition, or other other guiding philosophies or worldviews. Nor does it mean I am Japanese. Nor does it mean I am located in Japan. Nor does it mean that I am not Christian.
KrZ wrote:The only reason this hasn?€™t been done before is because there is really no reason to do it. Mammalian cloning, starting with mice, has been around for a really long time. It?€™s very simple, extremely easy to do. I could teach any 18 year old with a steady hand how to clone pretty much anything, so long as they followed the instructions given to the T.I thought I read somewhere, about two years ago, that there were certain technological obstacles to human cloning (and the cloning of certain other primates) that didn’t exist or were far easier to overcome for other mammals. Thus, what Dr. Hwang’s team is credited with doing goes beyond just pushing the ethical envelope, but represents an actual technological breakthrough.
In a completely separate issue, I agree that we have a problem (and we did even before Dr. Hwang’s announcements this year and last) where technology is proceeding at a much faster clip than is ethnical debate, much less ethical consensus.
Is this the fault of the scientists, or is it the fault of the ethicists? Or is this the fault of the politicos and the religious leaders? Or is this the public’s fault?
How can we possibly be expected to reach a consensus on whether the cloning of blastocytes (or are they blastocysts?) is ethically sound when we can’t even reach a consensus that early-pregnancy abortion is acceptable or not?
Is the lack of consensus a lack of real dialogue, which would be necessary to reach a halfway point between positions (not necessarily a compromise, but common ground)?
For example, we can agree that it is wrong to take human life, because human life is worth protecting, but there are so many exceptions to this (which is exacerbated even more when one side declares that human life is “sacred”).
One major side believes that life that has not formed into a viable mass of cells is not as protected as a body that is viable outside the womb.
Another major side believes that even a freshly formed zygote at the unicellular level is equivalent to a fully formed human, perhaps even “sacred.”
And yet many on one side, and some from the other, feel it is okay to TAKE the life of a fully formed human under certain legal circumstances.
If we cannot lower the barriers of our entrenched ideology enough to agree on capital punishment, early-pregnancy abortion, euthanasia, doctor-assisted suicide, etc., how can we reach anything approaching that on something like this?
As long as both sides preach to their base instead of listening, no consensus will be reached. But technology will keep trudging along, just like it always does, and civilization won’t be prepared for it.
Libertine, if that’s really what Dr. Hwang is doing, then to me that takes much of the wind (but not all) out of the sails of the “all life is sacred” argument. This is not even a fertilized zygote then.
The thing is, I knew this, but I let all the negative buzz about the monstrous repercussions about this cloud my judgement when it had been clear earlier.
libertine,
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05.....clone.html
Dr. Hwang claims he has made about 20 human embryos. He killed them all and harvested one stem cell line (cells that can stay in suspended growth mode so that he can play with them). A human embryo has full set of human DNAs. If you attach this embryo(this is the same thing as a fertilized egg or a “sperm-penetrated” egg) to the wall of a womb, it will start to grow and will become a baby.
I appologize for assuming things. And, I cannot give you the irrefutable proof of God’s existance, other than what is written in the Bible. What Jesus taught his disciples and what he promised. Unless one thinks that he was a lunatic or a very evil person who liked to lie big, his words deserve serious consideration.
The article that I quoted goes to the ny times subscription service.
Well, try typing in “Hwang stem cell human” at Google search and look for nytimes article. And, click on it. You should be able to read the story. Sorry for the inconvenience.
Um….okay.
From what I’ve turned up, SCNT is pretty much the same thing as reproductive cloning. Most “pro” sites push the idea that it circumvents rejection by replicating the donor’s MHC, which….duh….but the difference between SCNT and actually growing a clone is only a matter of degree.
Again, unless I’ve missed something, this approach does NOT circumvent the ethical concerns inherent to the creation of a new life, and its subsequent destruction. Actually, it appears to represent an act of auto-cannibalism by the donor. I create a baby square-one-chill, and then (in the words of Bob Marley) kill it before it can grow.
I said, kill it before it can grow.
Then, I inject the remains of the baby square-one-chill into myself, where it becomes…you know, whatever. You know the drill.
Yeah, I don’t really see therapeutic cloning as having any ethical advantage over reproductive cloning. In fact, I think it’s pretty much just a matter of semantics.
And, as KrZ wrote earlier, this isn’t a technological leap. This SCNT stuff has been conducted with mice and other experimental animals since 1988. Nothing new technologically. The reason nobody else has done it is because they decided not to.
Because lots of scientists do feel that there is an ethical line being crossed here.
The more I look into this, the more I find myself agreeing.
square-one-chill wrote:And, as KrZ wrote earlier, this isn?€™t a technological leap. This SCNT stuff has been conducted with mice and other experimental animals since 1988. Nothing new technologically. The reason nobody else has done it is because they decided not to.I don’t think that’s quite correct. Looking back at pre-2004 stories and current background stories on this development, there is a general consensus that it is technologically much more difficult to do this with humans (and certain other primates) than with other mammals for which it’s been tried. Dr. Hwang’s “success” is a technological one, not one that merely comes from having crossed an ethical line others haven’t been willing to try.
Kushibo,
No…you’re right. Kind of. The difference between cloning higher primates and mice was, to some degree, a technological barrier, primarily involving spindle assembly proteins and motor proteins involved in the distribution of genetic material along the spindle during division.
However, this hurdle was not a huge one. What I said, with the exception of the “Nothing new technologically”, appears to be true. That is to say, this problem was not solved because no one decided to solve it. Because solving it requires cloning human beings.
I don’t want to look like I’m down on SK science. I say, “Yay” for the scientists. It’s quite a coup, really. And to whatever degree it is important to say that Dr. Hwang is clearly way smarter than me, great. He’s super smart. My contention would be that, smart or no, he’s making human life in a laboratory….and a lot of people smarter than him could have done the same, but decided not to.
My original post on this thread made the same assertion.
So, to recap: Dr. Hwang–super smart. “Therapeutic cloning”= cloning.
This debate brings up multiple issues with no precedent in law, let alone human experience. Clearly we can only argue for or against based on our own personal opinions.
I believe science should be limited by the boundaries of federal law, specifically, one that is informed by logic and reason rather than by interpretations of Christian religious texts. Federal law should eliminate grey areas by drawing a clear line between “a human with rights” and “a pre-human entity with no rights that is the property of its natural producer”.
I believe that human life requires the fertilization of a human egg with human sperm. Therefore an unfertilized blastocyst is not a human life and should rather be considered as a modified egg. Therefore stem cell research is fine.
If a blastocyst arising from unfertilized eggs is considered a human being with human rights, why stop there? Why not consider unfertilized eggs to be humans? In that case, menstruating women prisoners who are denied conjugal visits could sue the government for murder. A wet dream would constitute mass homocide.
I’m still very interested to hear from anyone familiar with human rights law. Specifically, what is the basis of human rights? At what point does a living entity cease to be the property or part of its producer, and at what point is it granted human rights?
Ddongjip,
Right. Thanks for clearing that up. Like I said, therapeutic cloning is the same as the good old icky reproductive kind.
As to the second assertion, that a blastocyst cannot be termed a human being…..mmmmmmmm…..I’m not sure that IS the main point of debate.
I’m willing to concede (I’m HAPPY to concede) that a blastocyst does not feel pain, or ponder its existence. But let’s get rid of that right away. It would be a bad idea to peg our definition of a human life on the point at which one can think or feel. Several reasons for that, but the best one, and the least complicated, is that consciousness is a clinical phenomenon. That is to say, we can’t point to a marker or a point in development at which it emerges, although we can track general trends (re: Piagetian development) once it has emerged. It seems clear to some that an infant within the womb is conscious: that it thinks and feels. No way, really, to prove that, but most people would agree that it is true.
So, where would we draw that line, if indeed consciousness was our defining criterion for “human life”? I don’t know the answer. I can’t imagine anyone out there has a good one. I’ve read Penrose, Minsky, and Kurzweil, among others, on consciousness, and they don’t have a good answer.
Your other contention, that a blastocyst can split and become 2 or 3 people, or a chimera, clearly supports your assertion that a blastocyst cannot, with 100% certainty, be termed an “individual”. Sure. I’ll give you that. But that is surely not the crux of the debate.
When Christians speak of a soul, a lot of people get turned off, and immediately think of the speaker as a troglodyte, a rube (one of the great unwashed, KrZ?) However, it appears to me that science has not, and at this point cannot, nearly so neatly delineate the phenomenology of individual existence. I am probably closer to being a scientist than a Christian (although I’m not either one–I’m a piano player), but the crux of the debate here—-make no mistake
Libertine,
Okay…the whole “unfertilized” thing? That’s just a red herring. There’s no sperm, but it’s not “an unfertilized egg”. It’s an egg fertilized in an unorthodox manner. The whole sperm-and-egg schtick is the way nature found to really mix the hell out of the genes as quickly as possible in higher organisms. But cloning does the same thing, without mixing up the genes. For example, I take your genes, put’ em in the egg, and under the right circumstances, a baby Libertine pops out.
So the word “unfertilized” is literally true, but it’s a bugaboo. It’s misleading.
Mr. Baduk, I checked out your blog, we have spots of disagreement but I enjoy reading how you are taking on the “commies.” Really, where else but in Korea would Gen. MacArthur be a topic of current debate? Also, your comments on Kwangju have some people’s goat, but they’re no less rhetorically loaded than what the Hankyoreh prints every day from the other end of the spectrum, so, cheers.
Square one - good point. Curious to hear your opinions:
1) Do you own your own DNA? Why or why not?
2) Is a cloned baby Libertine actually ME, or is it a distinct individual? On what grounds
3) Where would you draw the line between that which Shalt Not Be Killed and that which is the biology/property/a part of the male or female that produced it using their own reproductive organs?
4) If you were the tiebreaker in a Supreme Court case that would either ban or allow stem cell research in general, how would you rule, and on what grounds?
These are not loaded questions, I’m sincerely curious to hear your thoughts.
How would you answer those questions?
I agree in principle with Baduk’s interpretation of the dubious nature of of Dr. Hwang’s research. Funding of such should be scrutinized and de-politicalized as much as is necessary to determine the facts and feasibility of it before undertaking yet another glorious, greed-driven, “blitzkrieg” on the part of the Korean Government to push Dr. Hwang’s research. Politics do play an important role in what research gets funding, especially in America.
I can not believe that that quote ?€œI was invited by America but I did not go because I want to keep this technology Korean?€?. He is really pandering to the government here since I know from some research that technology is not mature enough to generate the profits that he has claimed — yet.
MichaelMichael,
I don’t think anywhere in this debate was the issue of “consciousness transplants” raised….much less physical brain transplants.
Nor do I think that the first point, “none of these techniques provide exact clones”, is really germane to the argument either. People don’t oppose the pursuit of this technology because it makes a mirror image of you (although that is creepy). There are plenty of other reasons to oppose it.
As for “an identical human clone is impossible, so most respectable scientists won?€™t bother pursuing it”…
Unless Hwang Woo-Suk is totally lying, he has, in fact, just made an identical human clone (mitochondrial DNA and possible mutations notwithstanding, and not relevant). The fact that he destroyed it at an early stage is just begging the question. Somebody’s DNA was implanted into an empty egg, and then became an embryo. That’s what happened. Again, unless he’s lying, and even if he is, it appears that it is far from impossible.
And why would it be impossible? What mechanism would truly put cloning a human beyond the ken of modern science? Or the science of 5 years from now? Teleportation isn’t impossible. Time travel isn’t impossible. The exploration of the outer reaches of the universe isn’t impossible.
This from today’s NY Times.
“House Approves a Stem Cell Research Bill Opposed by Bush ”
So why now all of a sudden? There seems to be a lot of people in politics and in science who are making an awful big deal over this.
Not only that, California is seeking to expand their stem cell research programs with help from Proposition 71, the state’s $3 billion stem cell initiative.
I can tell you right now, Korea isn’t the only country waving their flag and making this into an enhancing of international competition issue. In Canada for example, there have been moans and groans that “we’re going to be left behind technologically and economically, if we don’t do something now”.
This reminds me of the 1950’s race to the space which got started, when the Russians put men in space, or the 1940’s race for the nuclear bomb. Damn the debates, let science progress before the other guys come up with the discoveries.
One thing about Bush’s stance that’s interesting. If he is so against stem cell research, why he does not ban it outright. His stance is that the government will not financially support it only. The US governemnt will not and has never banned private financial support for the research. This to me, looks like a tacid support for the research without overly offending his main political supporters from the Christian fundalmentalists in the United States.
Square 1, you yourself mentioned the consciousness issue in the “baby libertine” comment, and the relevance of “exactness” in cloning seems rather germane to all this debate if tailored disease treatments are to come to pass. I disagree about people being against cloning on the (erroneous) assumption that it creates spitting images of the cloned person–that’s exactly why the general (misinformed) public is against it. Also, why is mitochondrial DNA not relevant to Hwang’s claims? My point is that the opposition to cloning is based on some false assumptions, because it seems to be self-limiting in a way that a lot of ethical concerns can be assuaged. I’m all for science making the impossible happen, just skeptical about a lot of the recent claims. As for time travel, well: http://www.sciencedaily.com/up.....mholes.xml
Yes, Square-one, I agree with what you are saying regarding the Soul. As I said in my first post here, “at what point does a human become a human? Frankly, I think that question will never be answered. Is the Seoul inherent in the zygote from the instant of fertilization (or creation)? Is there any such thing as a soul? There is no scientific answer to that. The answers people will give depend largely on faith.
Many religious groups believe that to be the case and vehemently oppose the creation of blastocysts for therapeutic use. Some go even further. Catholics for example hold that masturbation is a sin because it destroys “potential” life. Not everyone holds that view though, and there is another side to the question that no-one seems to be asking here. Is it not unethical to withhold treatment (or prevent research leading to potential treatment) from suffering people because of someone else’s beliefs that they may not hold? I wonder how many people’s views would change if they or a loved one were diagnosed with an incurable genetic disorder.
MichaelMichael, mitochondrial DNA is not really relevant to Hwang’s claims because his aim is to produce stem cells that are immunologically compatible with the patient in order to rule out the possibility of rejection by the immune system. The genes responsible for telling “self” from “non-self” are the Major Histocompatibility Complex (MHC) genes. These genes make “markers” that are present on the surface of cells to allow the immune systen to determine what is “self” and what is not. The MHC is located in the nucleus, not the mitochondria, therefore different mitochondrial DNA should not affect the goal of creating genetically compatible stem cells.
Thanks Ddongjip (what a name…) for the great explanation.
MichaelMichael,
You wrote: “Square 1, you yourself mentioned the consciousness issue in the ?€œbaby libertine?€? comment.”
True, but I didn’t mention consciousness in the context of transferring it from one body to another. I think that’s pretty outside this discussion (although completely fascinating).
Also: “I disagree about people being against cloning on the (erroneous) assumption that it creates spitting images of the cloned person?€“that?€™s exactly why the general (misinformed) public is against it”.
Really? Is that why the general public opposes cloning? I guess that’s possible, but that isn’t the argument that I’ve heard. There are a lot of reasons to oppose cloning technology. I think you’d find that a lot of people oppose it for a lot of different reasons.
Also, I think a successful clone WOULD be a “spitting image” of the original DNA donor. There might be a few differences, and different environments during growth would take their toll and attenuate that similarity somewhat, but a successful clone would pretty much look like the original. Would a clone THINK like the original? Hard to say, but probably to some degree, yes. Many character traits appear to be inborn, and even heritable. There is a good case to be made for their genetic origin. Regardless, I don’t think that is the major objection raised to cloning.
With regard to the relevance of mitochondrial DNA in the context of Hwang’s research….I referenced in an earlier post the MHC, which Ddongjip appears to have also invoked, again beating me to the punch. Therefore, I am left with nothing but time travel.
Wormholes are not the only approach to time travel. The simplest remains the exploitation of time dilation, an effect inherent to extremely high-speed travel. Of course, it’s a one-way trip. Okay, that’s enough of that. Anyway, your points are well taken, but I still don’t get the thing about the general public’s opposition to cloning. If you could clarify that a bit, maybe it would help me. Thanks.
Oh, and for the record, I actually think Dr. Hwang is lying. I wasn’t going to say that, because somewhere, someone is lurking and waiting to call me a racist. But….I think Baduk is right. I think Hwang has been under a lot of corrupting influence for a long time, and I think he has already demonstrated a predilection for falsification and ethical shortcuts. Maybe he’ll prove me wrong, but his credibility in my eyes is right there with MJ. We’ll see.
Ddongjip,
you wrote: “As I said in my first post here, ?€œat what point does a human become a human? Frankly, I think that question will never be answered.”
I agree. Not only that, I think the question will become much harder to answer in the future, rather than easier. I dont think we have a hope in hell of pinning it down precisely, so I think we should start practicing line-drawing, and learning to exercise some discipline over our abilities.
Square 1, interesting comments from you and the others–I was just saying that there’s another aspect to people’s abhorrence or whatever of cloning. Also that bit I quoted wasn’t exactly what I wanted (should have edited it a bit), except for the bits about genetic material outside the nucleus and premature aging (a la Dolly the sheep). Wouldn’t these be barriers to fully adult clones, and so not worthy of pursuing that sort of cloning? That’s more what I had in mind–cloning for disease treatments should be done, and in whatever expedient way.
The slams against Dr. Hwang here are also interesting–”corrupting influence”? Tell us more… And time dilation, yes of course, and what about when it meets up with the “many universes” theory? Then I can go back and invest in Microsoft when it was a dollar a share….
James, yes I believe that the creators of Dolly, as well as others who have cloned mammals, have found that there may be a problem with premature ageing. The problem is believed to lie in the way DNA is copied during cell division. Each time cells divide the entire genome must be copied. This is done by a complex of enzymes and other protiens in the cell. However, the enzyme complex cannot replicate the very ends of the chromosome. Nature’s solution is to add bits of junk DNA to the ends of each chromosome. Called “telomeres” they are simply repeating segments of DNA that don’t actually do anything. The telomeres job is simply to be destryoyed bit by bit during each cycle of cell division, thus protecting the important DNA.
The problem with cloning is that as the animal gets older, the telomeres obviously get shorter. If you clone an animal from DNA that is already quite old, it will be born with already short telomeres. Before long it’s telomeres will be gone and each further cycle of cell division will start to damage important genes.
As far as I know, this has not yet been proven to be the cause of the observed premature ageing, but is widely believed to be the most likely cause.
i remember discussing the ability for korea to lead some of this research back in 2000 at a gathering in LA put together by alvin toffler. a Time Asia reporter was shocked when i told her korea had best be conducting such research as it was their window of opportunity while the US was mired in religious concerns. funny to see it come to fruition. i also remember an american scientist around that time that was moving to mexico to clone himself and have his wife gestate the baby. anyone ever hear what happened with him? as i recall he was a pretty high level US scientist and university professor.
Ooops,
“even” should be “enough” in the last sentence.
Dr. Hwang is rolling in the dough. Meanwhile, other good Korean scientists are getting no money. All regular and important bioscientific researches such as DNA seqencing are standing still or disappearing from Korean scientific circle because Dr.Hwang is soaking up all the money.
Now you know why he lies.
One day, and suddenly, Dr. Hwang will sell all rights to his research to a Korean biotech company. And, his “techniques” and results will be all sealed to the public as the proprietary technology owned by that company.
That was the way Wilmut escaped. No Nobel prize for that liar.
Really baduk, do you have the faintest idea what you are talking about? I’m beginning to wonder if you are writing this stuff to get a laugh from people’s responses or if you might be in some kind of paranoid delusion. Most of your posts, on this and other topics and in other blogs go something like this: “I think blah blah blah LIES, blah blah blah blah blah blah HE’S a LIER, blah blah blah blah ALL LIES, etc. etc.” I can assure you that Wilmut’s research has been published in the most respected scientific journals and peer reviewed by some of the worlds most eminent scientists. I can’t say I’ve read anything of Dr. Hwangs research but I’m fairly sure it wouldn’t be too hard to find if I could be bothered making any effort to prove you are talking nonsense. Frankly, it’s just not worth the effort.
hwa ha ha ha.
Ddongjip,
I only know many of these so-called “respected” journal articles later have to be retracted by the authors because there were infractions involved.
Nobody checks anybody’s work in biology. Wilmut got away. Let’s see if Dr. Hwang gets away. He can always say one of his lab worker ejaculated his sperm and he did not know about it.
Not knowing about daily activities in the lab is a good excuse for any administrator like Hwang. After all, he is too busy giving talks to politicians, policemen, and reporters. He wants to be a rock star.
A third party verification is necessary. Peer review does not do a diddly squat. As I said, it is good for the business to publish Dr.Hwang’s lies. After all, they are like newsweek magazine; the Nature magazine and the Science magazine are private enterprises. Publish it first even if the results are questionable. The authors say they will vouch for the results. No harm will come to the magazines.
The journal publishers, along with scientists, have to eat too.
So who would be this “third party” who can verify this, if not his peer scientists?
There are other institutions that have cloned animals Texas AM being one of them so I don’t think Dolly was a lie like Baduk is claiming. I have to say that I am finding this very interesting-bubble gum for the brain you might say. I agree with what ddongjib, chil-one-square, libertine and others have said-thank you for laying out the argument here. Now, I seem to recall reading somewhere (this is not my line of work or study so I may be wrong but…) that there are a number of things they have found about cloned animals. Statistically, there tends to be a relatively small (but not minescule) probability that any cloned organism would make it all the way to full development even given an optimum growth environment. The other thing about it was that the age of the DNA doner plays a factor on the overal health of the clone as it progresses on to adulthood, I want to say that I read there tended to be a propensity to age related ailments earlier than would have been considered normal. Does anyone know anything about this?
square-one-chilled (might I recommend S1C),
To answer the questions I posed to you:
1) Do you own your own DNA? Why or why not?
Yes, I definitely own my own DNA. MINE MINE MINE!
2) Is a cloned baby Libertine actually ME, or is it a distinct individual? On what grounds?
3) Where would you draw the line between that which Shalt Not Be Killed and that which is the biology/property/a part of the male or female that produced it using their own reproductive organs?
I hadn’t thought about my answer to these two when I asked you this before but thinking about it now only cements my support for embryonic stem cell research.
I think a cloned baby Libertine… IE, a baby with my nuclei but with its own distinct nervous system/brain/sense of perception is NOT me and is a distinct individual.
However, before it develops the ability to sense, it is still just a collection of donor cells with my DNA. It’s up to me what I want to do with my nuclei, and it’s up to the donor female what she wants to do with her egg. If we willingly give our property to researchers, they can do with it what they please, so long as the embryo never develops a nervous system.
4) If you were the tiebreaker in a Supreme Court case that would either ban or allow stem cell research in general, how would you rule, and on what grounds?
Research that uses embryos AFTER they have developed a nervous system would be a gray area that would dovetail into the neverending debate on abortion. But to me, stem cell research using blastocysts (with no nervous systems) is fine.
Dddongjib,
I looked up that Texas AMM cloning of a cat. Here are my findings.
1)They used the ovalian cell. The skin cell produced an embryo but miscarried.
2) The research was funded by the company which later got the patent! WTF. This is not a fair research. These scientists were under pressure to produce.
3) The resultant clone does not look the same. http://www.usatoday.com/news/s.....cats_x.htm
The only way to prove the cloning as you know is to do entire DNA sequencing of their DNAs. There should not be any difference with exception of telomere lengths. However, as you know, it is so costly and nearly impossible(unwinding around histones and such) to do genetic sequencing on these two animals. So, we have to take the researchers words that they did not commit any wrongdoings.
You may be a grad student and think scientists are very honest people. I differ. Especially in case like Texas AMM where their future depends on the result of their research. Too much temptation. Just get a sperm of sneak it in. And, you can $100,000 a year instead of just barely surviving.
Many including Wilmut and Hwang have fallen to this easy way to success. If not, they should open up their labs to the world. Wilmut did not. Texas AMM did not; they patented the technology and made it proprietary information. We will see if Hwang is different.
I like add Dr.Hwang was under the similar pressure. When he was cloning a cow, he had three year deadline. If he had not done it in three years, he would have failed the research and would have become nobody. He might even have lost his tenure in Seoul National University.
Too much pressure.
Scientists crumble when this much pressure is applied. Maybe he learned to lie.
And, now he is lying big time.
Baduk,
Firstly, female calico cats will always look different, even if they are genetically identical. This is because the genes for hair colour are located on the x chromosome. Females have 2 x chromosomes, one of which is expressed and one of which is not expressed in each cell. Which x chromosome is expressed in any given cell is completely random, thus the colour pattern on the cats will always be a fairly random event.
Secondly, you can’t just go around calling people liars because you don’t believe what they say, especially if you have a fairly limited knowledge of the science behind their claims. Scientists around the world, with vastly greater knowledge of the subject than either you or I, have reviewed the published results. I don’t hear any of them calling Wilmut and Hwang liars.
Science is done by proofs. All this argument comes about because entire DNA sequence on these “copies” are out of reach. Even then one could pull what Wilmut did. He said he kept a beaker of “Dolly’s mom’s blood” and he gave that to a Scottish biologist who verified the two are genetically equal. How can he say that without entire sequencing?
DDongjip, I am disappointed in you. You must willing to accept there could be different reality. As Obi Wan said, “only Siths talk in absolute terms”.
Things could change. I hope it comes soon.
Well, many suspect that, but not saying anything.
1) It is not their job to investigate other scientist’s results. There is no glory in that.
2) Most of them benefit due to these lies. They get more funding as in the case of the U.S. clone researchers.
The biologists are most awful liars and they protect their friends. They do terrible job of policing. Just ask any of chemists or physicists.
With this cloning and stem cell research, hungry biologists finally found something they can make living out of. And, they will not blow the cover off terrible liars like Wilmut and Hwang, who can claim anything they want. Nobody checks on them.
Once you get out of the graduate school you are attending, you will find the real world sciences, especially bio- and medical science, are not what you think they are.
They have to with people crying out for money, security, and resources. And most of all, power. It is dog-eat-dog world of treachery, back-stabbing, lies, and exploitation. If you are in phD program, you will find out these things while still in the grad school.
Scientists are not any better than politicians. They oppress any ideas that do not benefit their “successes” and “accomplishments”. They lie, cheat, and steal other people’s results to establish their security and power.
After all, scientists have to eat too. They roll with punches as in the case of cloning. The snowball effect is taking place - the theory is becoming well established and no one is willing to challenge it.
Biologists are like a religious sect. Punish any who oppose the established dogma. Come to my blog and read about their the dogma about evolution. http://koreanamerican431.blogspot.com/
I hereby apologize to the marmot and anyone else who has the misfortune to read this.
Baduk. You are a fucking retard. “this is a dod eat dog world…..” How the fuck would you know?? Have you ever been out in it? What the hell do you know about biology? I suspect that all you know about “dog eat dog” is trying to make it to your local 7-11 without getting your ass kicked. Stop wasting people’s time with your inane pish (scottish word, sorry) and start talking sense for the love of God..
Jesus H. Christ. Siths? What planet are you on mate? Hello??? Welcome to planet Earth .
As an aside, I apologize for what I wrote last night I was a bit drunk. Note to selfdon’t post comments after drinking copiuous quantities of alcohol.
I still think Baduk is talking crap though.
Just one last point.
Baduk, it is not necessary to sequence the entire genome to prove they are clones. If you had the faintest idea what you are talking about, you would know that. This is what I am saying. You go around calling people liars (something you can be sued for, it’s called libel) when you clearly have no idea what you are talking about.
The idea that you would have to sequence the entire genome for the cloned cell and the donor to prove that Dr. Hwang succeeded or not sounds like pseudo-science being spewed in certain pulpits in an attempt to strengthen the ethical argument by attacking the scientific argument.
Baduk, if your ethical argument is right, argue that. Don’t make up nonsense about it all being a lie. It will diminish your ethical argument in the long run.
DDongjip,
Time will tell. I think strong differentiation mechanism about cell development (a tightly bound protein or DNA sequence alteration?) may become known in the future. It has to be. Otherwise, how does a cell differentiate itself from another one?
I am just saying “do not accept the present day dogma to be the final answer”. There are much more to come in the future.
And, if I am right, these cloning cases may turn out to be lies. This type of things happened many times in science.
Perpetual motion machines, receipes for gold, cold fusion, many claims of cure for cancer, ether, etc, etc…
Baduk, there is a difference between saying, on the one hand, that these cells may not turn out to hold the promise of what we’ve hoped to achieve from stem-cell research and, on the other hand, this is all phoney crap and Dr. Hwang is a liar who didn’t really do what he said he did.
It may turn out that these cells can’t really do what we hoped they would do, especially if the telomeres from adult donors mean their cells won’t last too long.
But that’s a world of difference from what you’ve been saying, that Wilmut and Hwang are liars and cheats who have DECEIVED the public about what they have actually accomplished.
…
Someone buys a new hybrid sedan. The manufacturer says they expect the car to last as long as a regular gasoline-powered vehicle. Consumer groups warn that we don’t really know how long this car will last, because it’s brand-new technology.
In contrast, Baduk is screaming and jumping up and down on the side of the road next to the car dealership, holding up posters that claim the car actually has no engine but is run instead by two midgets on a really small treadmill.
And when I point out that he’s nuts, he says I’m blind to the truth because the car is made by Kia.
One of the midgets is a SNU grad student. I forgot to mention that.
Hahahaha, interesting analogy Kushibo.
brilliant, Kushibo