28 replies to this topic

[Drewry]

Suppose the year is 2020. Cloning is perfectly legal. If you could afford to have a clone insurance of yourself at your current age, would you? This would mean that if you ever needed an organ transplant, a new arm, or anything like that, you would be able to have one as easy as pie from your real cloned self. Would you think something like this is fine and perfectly okay to do? Personally I think it is fine, as long as those clones arent actually living real lives or anything. They are kept under sedation, maybe having some muscle electric shocks sent into them to keep the muscles fresh and active. What do you think?

Edited by Drewry, 09 February 2006 - 06:32 AM.

[Ash]

There's a moral grey area in my mind, but on grounds of life preservation...we have to die somehow. If illnesses don't kill us, what will?

[MSpencer]

Well, it's not like I'd clone a little Spencer and chop his head off and use his heart if I had heart complications. One of the key things about stem cells is that they're totipotent, which means they can become any type of cell. With certain genes activated, such as the MyoD gene, they can become muscle cells. With different genes, they can become nerve cells, brain cells, skin cells, or intestinal cells. It all depends on how they're manipulated. We can do that artificially, and we've grown several organs as well as an entirely new set of sex organs for mice that worked when we put them in surgically. Give it five or ten years and you won't have to worry about a shortage of kidneys for people who need transplants. All we'll have to do is take a blood sample, maybe take a desired organ swab (Maybe not, it depends on what method you use. The growing process is much like growing a tumor, it happens the same way and there are a couple ways you can do it), and wait two hours and you'll have a fully functioning organ grown totally in a lab. From there, it's just a matter of making sure your body will accept it (Same blood type) and putting it in.
Total cost: No more than $10,000 without insurance.
No clones required.

[duke_Qa]

and wait two hours and you'll have a fully functioning organ grown totally in a lab.

hehehe, now that i would find more unnatural than using the stemcells to create organs. if it took two hours to get a new organ to grow up, how the hell did you do that? two hours sounds explosive in my ears when it comes to biology.

and if you created an organ that grows in two hours and stabilizes there, implants it. and then BOOM! new organ gets, cancer and develops with the same speed as the organ initially did. after 1 hour the body might have burst open from the pressure of the tumour, after a few more its just a pile of blood and gore on the floor.

anyway, thats the only thing i really worry about when it comes to cloning and the likes. adding stuff like supergrowth and new genes is alot harder than to copy-paste. using stem-cells and just recreate a 100% copy of a organ for a person without anything new except the fact that its brand new... doesnt seem like a problem to me. the main thing is though that this is done on a small scale, without a brain or anything with the opportunity to develop a conscience. try to stay away from "the Island" scenarios (ppl should see that movie, the beginning is really good, and then it kinda deflates, but the story is good).



also, got "Dream Theater - the great debate" on my winamp atm which is about stem-cells and research on the topic. i havent really tried to interpret the lyrics though, they are tricky in this song. but kinda funny that i was playing that song while replying here.

[MSpencer]

Well obviously you'd use chemicals to induce mitosis to make the organ grow more quickly, otherwise it could be weeks! Of course there's a lot of work to be done, it's five years down the line, and it shouldn't take more than several hours to grow it. And no, it wouldn't keep growing because you would have stopped chemical, temperature, and electric treatments to induce mitosis to make it grow.

[duke_Qa]

hmm, i must say, i don't want to get touched by any US biological weapons if you ever get a job in the military

take it as a comment. anyway. what you say does make sense. if it all is affected by the chemicals you put into it, and there is no chance that the body somehow in the future should start developing such chemicals. it wouldnt be a bad idea.


but something i would have been more interested in would be cybernetics and getting the body to interact with mechanical and electronic devices. making organs within hours should be helpful in that area aswell...



what would be the easiest; injecting fresh stem-cells into the body to repair, or create the organ in some vat and then punch them into the body? personally i would have thought the first would have been the best, but there probably are some risks on that aswell.

[MSpencer]

If you insert stem cells, there's no telling what they'll do. Stem cells are valuable because they're totipotent, and can become any cell in the body. Bone marrow stem cells are pluripotent, and can become things like blood cells. If you insert your totipotent stem cells, there's no telling if they'll become muscle cells, nerve cells, or just plain old enucleated erythrocytes which are recycled every thirty days. If you grow an organ in a controlled, laboratory environment, you know that the only morphological signals and factors affecting your cells are those under your control. The human body by its nature cannot be controlled, especially the cellular biology part of it, so it's always best to do something in a lab to ensure you're not wasting resources.

[milbot]

I suggest all of you go and see the movie: 'the Island'

[Drewry]

I have seen it, and that whole part about the need to develop a consciousness part being necessary to making working organs in my opinion is total bull.

[MSpencer]

There's a reason why movies are entertaining. They're fictional, and the science behind them is often originally done by a qualified professional, then torn apart by writers, directors, technobabblers, and "technical consultants" (Teamsters) until any shred of scientific validity has been put through a "quantum inverted flux regenerator" and spat out at your face in a grandiose SFX-happy theatrical performance.

[duke_Qa]

If you insert stem cells, there's no telling what they'll do. Stem cells are valuable because they're totipotent, and can become any cell in the body. Bone marrow stem cells are pluripotent, and can become things like blood cells. If you insert your totipotent stem cells, there's no telling if they'll become muscle cells, nerve cells, or just plain old enucleated erythrocytes which are recycled every thirty days. If you grow an organ in a controlled, laboratory environment, you know that the only morphological signals and factors affecting your cells are those under your control. The human body by its nature cannot be controlled, especially the cellular biology part of it, so it's always best to do something in a lab to ensure you're not wasting resources.

hmm, after what i remember, one of the hopes for stem-cells in the future is that they would be able to just inject them into the organ in need of upgrading and magically make the stem-cells repair the organ. naturally it might be easier to start with to grow them in controlled enviroments outside someone's body. but consider the advantage if all you really need to do in the future is to stick a needle into someone to fix a organ which is very sick. compared to opening up the bodies and removing the old organs and transplanting in the new ones, leaving risk for infections and a long recovery period.

[MSpencer]

However you may end up creating erythrocytes instead of liver cells. A longer recovery time is better than being dead because the stem cells they put into you became blood cells and they couldn't tell what went wrong.

[duke_Qa]

well its pretty rhetoric that they wouldnt just take a bunch of stem-cells and inject that into you if they had no clue if they would be doing the right thing.

some sort of control of the new stem-cells would be required to be able to have a safe method of controlling the growth of new organs. if they managed to do that i don't see a problem in using such methods.

[MSpencer]

Yeah there's a control. They don't divide normally unless given specific trigger signals. Withhold those and they should stay in interphase the majority of time, only dividing to replace cells that are sloughed off or die of natural causes. This is pretty much the case with any organs (Except for any nerve or skin cells). All you have to do is get some stem cells, introduce a differentiation factor, then induce division. Eventually, you stop adding the division signal and the ligands are metabolized via normal metabolic procedures of the cell (A ligand is the actual particle that activates a protein which activates a G protein which activates a phosphorylation cascade, the method of signalling most used in eukaryotic organisms). Signal factors tend not to last very long, and normally require near constant secretion to cause a noticeable change.

[Komataguri]

If cloning is so precise, why not just clone the selective organs?


We can already grow simple organs like bladders in labs.

[MSpencer]

That's... exactly what we've been talking about for a while now...

[Komataguri]

That's... exactly what we've been talking about for a while now...

I thought my reputation for laziness preceeded me, apparently not.


I am lazy, I didn't bother to read the entire thread...to many words.

[MSpencer]

Yeah, I know what you mean. Hell, some of those words even I don't completely understand. Hell... how'd I get to the point where I'm using the term phosphorylation cascade in casual conversation?

[Jeeves]

Using the term phosphorylation cascade in casual conversation is not scary.
It is when it is used correctly in casual conversation that it becomes really freaky...

[MSpencer]

Well, if you don't watch it I'll put a substance in your drink that activates a phosphorylation cascade which triggers the deactivation of the MyoD gene, making it much more difficult for your muscles to grow.