The army of clones

Recently, due to advances in cell cloning of human embryos and again raises the issue of the inadmissibility of human cloning. The participants of the discussions that ensued around the modern biological technology, somehow overlooked the fact that, in fact, no one has ever clone humans and is not intended to.
Activists of the possible movements protesting against the creation of genetically identical human beings, apparently, does not represent what all has been proposed and developed the technology. Oddly enough, the initial task of cloning had the opportunity to facilitate the work of breeders and cheapen the process of developing new breeds or varieties of plants. More precisely, no inference as such, and their subsequent maintenance.

Anyone who is involved in breeding, knows that to bring a new breed of easy. To do this we need only to hold a series of successful crosses, carefully keeping track of all the manifestations of symptoms, which should have a new kind of domestic beings, the descendants of these ' marriages '. But to make a new breed lasted longer than the life of its founder, is several times harder.

This process scientists call ' maintenance breed '. It is difficult, because the front of the breeder, there are two problems. On the one hand, to avoid the appearance of the breed of negative tendencies that might be caused by the influx of ' new blood ' (that is to come together with the new genetic material in crosses with other breeds of animals ). On the other hand, prevent the degeneration of the rocks caused by the absence of the above ' new blood '. So, we must simultaneously act in two opposite directions.

A good example of this paradox is the story of the creation and maintenance of the breed famous Orlov trotters. It is still not entirely clear, as to Count Orlov and his assistants managed to bring these wonderful horses in such a way that Orel were very unstable to the appearance of the breed of foreign genes. But this is reality - the crossing of data with other horses, trotters their descendants lost all of its unique quality of racing.

It turns out that Orel, which could hybridize only with each other, for nearly 200 years of doing exactly this. As a result, the genotype species accumulated so many negative changes in DNA that several times she was close to a complete degeneration. And finally save it as all these species, allowing only intra- crossing, it could be cloned.

After all, what is it? . As a result, the resulting body possesses all the properties of the initial sample. That is, once received a perfect Orlov trotter, you will no longer worry about how to find him a suitable pair, and that happens as a result of their crossing, and quietly make copies of it in unlimited quantities ( most stallion and you can give the right to free choice of any .

It is to solve similar problems in the late 50 's - early 60- ies, American, British, and, by the way, Soviet biologists were independently developed cloning technology. Originally cloned mostly newts and frogs, after switching to the mice, and in the early 90s the first clone was obtained from five sheep ( one of which - the famous Dolly - the whole world knows ). It would seem that the dream of breeders around the world become a reality: now you can forget about all the difficulties associated with the maintenance of species. However, all is not so easy.

First, the clones were obtained rather weak and painful, as well as short-lived. Second, a viable clone could not the first, and the best efforts of the two hundredth. Well, the process of cloning proved to be expensive - to create the first cloned sheep have spent as much money as would suffice for the establishment and maintenance of six new species of ungulate species.

Hence, it becomes clear that human cloning is initially no one was planning. And anyone can get a similar copy? .

Play as human clones just for ' scientific interest ', first, expensive, and secondly, it is absolutely meaningless - and our planet is so close to overpopulation. So, in scientific circles that question has never been considered seriously and not considered because of its complete futility.

But in recent years due to advances in cloning human embryos for cell opponents of this technology once again began to resent the. In their view, copy, embryos in order to then ... However, they do not understand the essence of technique, so just do ' much ado about nothing '.

In 2004 at Seoul University, the world's first cloned human embryo created from hundreds of cells and extracted stem cells from it. Initially available in Korean biologists had 242 eggs donated by 16 women volunteers. They also gave scientists their ovary cells (absolutely, by the way, free of charge). The researchers worked on an improved method: instead of an egg with a pipette to extract the kernel, which can damage proteins, they made a tiny hole in the membrane and gently squeezed through a precious repository of the genome.

Then in its place was a kernel ovary cells (cumulus cell), taken from the same woman who belonged to the egg. As a result, 19 ( according to other reports, 30) of 66 cloned eggs could develop into a blastocyst. At this stage the embryo is a hollow vesicle with the accumulation of cells on one side. Incidentally, planted it, they say, 'in vitro ', without the proper surrogate mother.

From the blastocyst is already available stem cell biologists, and Korean, of course, made ​​it. Moreover, they forced them to turn into other cell types, including cells of muscles, bones and cartilage. So, as you can see, this embryo could not make out anyone on the bodies - for the simple reason that they had not yet been. All stem cells have been transformed into various types of human tissues.

Print Font Size Send druguDa himself embryo at this stage is difficult to consider a person. It is a mass of undifferentiated cells, and rather resembles a primitive multicellular organism like a sponge ( which cloning is perfectly legal and ethical ). Therefore, the term ' human embryo clone ', which appeared in many media, is not quite correct - up to this stage, it just does not come down ( to consider the fetus a human embryo is possible only when it appeared the beginnings of organ systems, it is peculiar to humans).


But this trend is unlikely to be further developed due to the fact that the cloning procedure itself - a very expensive. Much easier to grow ' spare ' organs from cells obtained from a direct ' client ' ( such a technology already being used in the United States during the growth of new teeth in the mouth right client). You can take a person required stem cell, copy it as many times as needed, to create a kind of in-vitro ' initial stage ' of the body, and then return back to the body. All this is easier, cheaper, and most importantly - more logical: a body grown from their own cells, as we know, better get accustomed.

So, we should not blame the scientists in vain that they are going to create a ' clone army '. These armies are unlikely to be necessary to someone. And therefore, these developments simply no one will fund....


Anton Evseev.






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