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During the last few months people around the world have been shocked by news that humans are about to be cloned. The reports come from two sources. An expected one came from The Rael Church, which made its first announcement less than six months after Dolly's cloning in 1997, and the other was issued by a team of so-called scientists, Panayiotis Zavos from the US (NOT an MD), Severino Antinori (MD) from Italy and Abi Ben Abraham (MD) from Israel.
a.- The cloning process is highly inefficient, meaning that there are a lot of abortions. This implies that for one successful cloning you will need an unknown number of uteruses. b.- There is a high risk of a gross enlargement of the placentas, which could put the life of the surrogate mothers in danger. c.- Because of shorter telomeres there a possibility of the cloned babies being, DNA-wise, older than the natural newborn ones. Nobody knows what this means. d.- The accumulation of mutations in the genome could lead to problems in the clones, some of which could take years to be expressed. This means that even if one of the fetuses gets to term, the cloners will not be sure that it is healthy until it is a least 15 years old. e.- More than 60% of cloned animals is born with deformities both physical and physiological. In particular, as much as 60% are oversized. f.- It has been found that at least one gene coding for a protein that promotes growth is randomly activated in the embryo's cells. How many others could be activated or inactivated is not known or nor is how this could affect the embryo. g.- The in-vitro fertilization (IVF) process is also highly inefficient. Even though the women are given a series of hormone injections, no more than 25% of the attempts are successful. Thus, at this point in time an attempt at human cloning can be considered as a criminal act or, at best, an exercise leading to the death of an unknown number of babies and women and to the births of who-knows-how-many deformed babies. Thus, you might rightfully ask, why do it? Fame and money.
The copyright of the article IGNORANCE-BACKED EXTRATERRESTRIAL, IRRESPONSIBLE HUMAN CLONING in Molecular Biology/Medicine is owned by Juan C. Mendible. Permission to republish IGNORANCE-BACKED EXTRATERRESTRIAL, IRRESPONSIBLE HUMAN CLONING in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.
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