Cloning is a transliteration of the English word clone, which comes from the Greek word klon. Its original intention is to cultivate plants through asexual reproduction or vegetative reproduction, such as stem cutting and grafting.
Today's cloning refers to the asexual reproduction of organisms through somatic cells and the population of offspring individuals with exactly the same genotype formed through asexual reproduction. Cloning can also be understood as copying, copying, that is, producing the same copy from the prototype, and its appearance and genetic genes are exactly the same as the prototype.
1February, 1997, the news that Dolly the Sheep was born immediately attracted the attention of the whole world. This cloned sheep bred by British biologists through cloning technology means that human beings can use a somatic cell in an animal to create the same life as this animal, breaking the eternal laws of nature.
What can cologne be?
It should be said that all creatures can be cloned.
What is cloned now?
Frog: 1962, unsuccessful.
Carp: 1963, as early as 1963, China scientist Tong Dizhou successfully cloned a female carp by injecting the genetic material of a male carp into the egg of a female carp, which was 33 years earlier than Dolly's cloning. However, because the related papers were published in a China sci-tech journal and were not translated into English, they are not well-known internationally. (From: Public Broadcasting Company)
In ancient mythology, the Monkey King turned his hair into countless bizarre stories of the Monkey King, expressing the illusion that human beings copied themselves. 1938, German scientists first proposed the idea of mammalian cloning. 1996, after Dolly the sheep was born, cloning quickly became the focus of the world's attention, and people could not help but wonder: Will we follow the sheep? This kind of problem makes everyone feel uneasy. However, the opposition to cloning has not stopped the unremitting pursuit of scientists. With the successful cloning of primates, such as cattle, rats, pigs and even monkeys, which are closest to human biological characteristics, it has been believed that one day, scientists will use a human cell to replicate exactly the same person as the cell provider. Cloning human beings is no longer a dream in science fiction, but a reality that will surface. At present, three foreign organizations have officially announced that they will conduct human cloning experiments. Professor zavos of the University of Kentucky in the United States is working with an Italian expert named Antinori to plan to clone a human within two years.
Because human cloning may bring complicated consequences, most countries with advanced biotechnology have adopted an attitude of explicit prohibition or strict restriction. Clinton said: "It is dangerous to copy human beings through this technology and should be put an end to it!" "Hong Guofan, member of Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference and director of the National Gene Research Center of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, also made it clear that he opposed the study of human cloning and advocated distinguishing cloning technology from human cloning.
Is human cloning really as terrible as the devil in Pandora's box?
In fact, the main reason why people can't accept human cloning experiments is the obstacle of traditional ethics. For thousands of years, human beings have been following the way of sexual reproduction, but human cloning is a product in the laboratory and a life created under human manipulation. Especially in the west, cloning "abandoning God to divide Adam and Eve" has been opposed by many religious organizations. Moreover, the relationship between clones is also contrary to the traditional ethical way of determining kinship by blood. All these make it impossible for clones to find a suitable place to live in traditional human ethics. However, as He Xiuxiu, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said, "The ethical issues of human cloning should be faced squarely, but there is no reason to oppose scientific and technological progress." The development of human society itself tells us that it is a historical progress for science and technology to drive people to update their ideas, while it is rigid to bind the development of science and technology with old ideas. Historically, blood transfusion technology, organ transplantation, etc. , has brought great ethical controversy, in 1978 when the first test-tube baby was born, caused an uproar, but now, people have been able to treat all this correctly. This shows that the idea of constantly updating in the face of scientific and technological development has not brought disaster to mankind, on the contrary, it has benefited mankind. As far as cloning technology is concerned, "therapeutic cloning" will make a breakthrough in producing transplanted organs and overcoming diseases, and bring revolutionary changes to biotechnology and medical technology. For example, when your daughter needs a bone marrow transplant, no one can provide it for her; When you unfortunately lost a 5-year-old child, you can't get rid of the pain; When you want to raise your own children but can't have children ... maybe you can realize the great scientific value and practical significance of cloning. The research of therapeutic cloning and the experiment of complete human cloning complement and promote each other. The end point of therapeutic cloning is the emergence of complete human cloning. If used properly, they can and should bring good news to human society.
Science has always been a double-edged sword. However, whether a scientific and technological progress is really beneficial to human beings depends on how human beings treat and apply it, rather than choking on it just because it is temporarily unreasonable. Cloning technology may indeed be the same as atomic energy technology, which can not only benefit mankind, but also cause endless harm. But the essence of "fear of technology" is the fear of misuse of technology, not the fear of technology itself. At present, the attitudes of all countries in the world towards human cloning are ambiguous. Last year, Britain passed a bill allowing the cloning of early human embryos with more than two-thirds of the votes, while in the United States, Germany and Australia, voices calling for relaxing restrictions on therapeutic cloning gradually sounded. It can be said that which country has mastered the technology of human cloning first means that it has the advantage and initiative, and the country that started late may suffer unpredictable losses. Just as the United States first mastered atomic energy technology, although this technology showed its evil side from the beginning, later countries had to step up research and experiments in this field. From this point of view alone, it is also worth discussing to adopt a simple negative attitude towards human cloning experiments.
As for people's fear that once the cloning technology is mature, thousands of "Hitler" will be cloned by people with ulterior motives, or another celebrity will be cloned to confuse people, that is a misunderstanding of cloning. The cloned person is only a genetic feature, and the social attributes such as thinking and personality influenced by many factors in the acquired environment cannot be exactly the same, that is, no matter how the cloning technology develops, only the human body can be cloned, but not the human soul, and there is an age gap between the cloned person and the cloned person. Therefore, the so-called human cloning is not a complete copy of human beings, historical figures will not be resurrected, and real people do not have to worry about having another "self".
Sheep: 1996, Dolly
Macaque: Tetra, female, June 5438 +2000 10.
Pigs: in March 2000, 5 Scottish PPL piglets; August, Xena, female
Cattle: 200 1 year, alpha and beta, male.
Cat: 200 1 ending, plagiarist (CC), female.
Mouse: In 2002.
Rabbit: It was independently realized in France and South Korea from March to April, 2003;
Mule: May 2003, Gem, Idaho, male; June, Utah pioneer, male
Deer: Dewey in 2003.
Ma: Prometea, female, 2003.
Dog: 2005, experimental team of Seoul National University, South Korea, Snaby.
Although great progress has been made in cloning research, the success rate of cloning is still quite low: before Dolly was born, researchers experienced 276 failed attempts; After 9000 attempts, 70 calves were born, and one third of them died at an early age. Prometea also made 328 attempts to be born successfully. For some species, such as cats and orangutans, there are no reports of successful cloning. The cloning experiment of dogs is also the result of hundreds of repeated experiments.
Dolly's age test after birth showed that she was old when she was born. At the age of six, she developed arthritis, which is common in old age. This aging is thought to be caused by the wear of telomeres. Telomeres are terminal chromosomes. With cell division, telomeres are constantly worn during replication, which is usually considered as the cause of aging. However, after successfully cloning cows, the researchers found that they were actually younger. The analysis of their telomeres shows that they not only return to the length at birth, but also are longer than the telomeres at birth. This means that they can live longer than ordinary cattle, but many of them die prematurely because of overgrowth. Researchers believe that related research can eventually be used to change human life span.
Human cloning violates human bioethics.
Should modern science and technology, especially modern life science and technology, respect ethical principles and listen to ethical voices? Experts point out that some scientific lunatics secretly clone human beings in the United States-cloning human beings violates human life ethics.
Recently, many domestic media reprinted an amazing news reported by foreign media: a group of scientific lunatics manipulated by cult organizations are conducting a secret human cloning experiment in the depths of the desert in Nevada, USA. According to the same principle that British scientists created Dolly, the world's first cloned sheep, they extracted cells from an American baby girl who died in February this year, and made clones. It is said that "if all goes well, the world's first clone will be born at the end of next year."
After the news was disclosed, cloning technology and its ethical issues once again became a hot topic of discussion. If this news is true, how to treat this matter and how to correctly evaluate and think about this issue, the reporter visited the director of the Ethics, Law and Society Department of the Southern Research Center of the National Human Genome and researcher Shen Mingxian of the Institute of Philosophy of the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences.
Professor Shen said: Since Dolly sheep was successfully cloned by Roslin Institute in England in 1997, driven by fame and fortune, people abroad have been proposing and trying to engage in human cloning research. Although governments have banned it, reports related to human cloning have appeared in newspapers more than once in the past two years. However, it is really shocking that this time the speed is so fast and it is related to cult organizations.
It is understandable that parents who have lost their beloved daughter hope to revive their daughter through cloning technology. But if scientists use this to carry out experiments on human cloning, it is worth discussing. Professor Shen believes that even if cults are abandoned, this practice is not desirable. As far as "human cloning" is concerned, he will live in the shadow of "I am a replica of the dead". How will this affect his psychology?
According to the viewpoint of bioethics, science and technology should proceed from long-term interests and benefit all mankind. It must follow the four internationally recognized ethical principles of "doing good, not hurting, being independent and just". Dolly's sheep cloning has successfully experienced more than 200 failures, and there have been deformed or aborted sheep. However, human cloning is more complicated and will undoubtedly encounter more failures. If unhealthy, deformed and short-lived people are created, it is a violation of human rights.
The diversity of human genes is the biological basis of human evolution, and the so-called "immortality" that those scientific lunatics want to create is actually a copy of the same gene, which may reduce the diversity of genes and is not conducive to human evolution. Therefore, we should resolutely oppose human cloning from the perspectives of individuals, the whole, social evolution and bioethics.
Professor Shen pointed out that at present, the scientific community divides cloning into therapeutic cloning and reproductive cloning. The former uses embryonic stem cells to clone human organs for medical research to solve the problem of insufficient donors for organ transplantation, which is supported by the international scientific and ethical circles, but there is a premise that the embryos used for therapeutic cloning cannot exceed the limit of pregnancy 14 days. As for reproductive cloning, that is, human cloning, on the whole, it violates the principles of bioethics, so the mainstream opinion of scientists is firmly opposed. UNESCO, the World Health Organization, the International Human Genome Ethics Committee and governments all expressed their opposition to reproductive cloning very clearly. Even if human cloning is really born, we still have to stick to this basic position.
Modern science and technology is a double-edged sword, which will bring some negative effects while benefiting mankind. This raises a question for us: should modern science and technology, especially modern life science and technology, respect ethical principles or listen to ethical voices? Professor Shen pointed out: Now some scientists suggest that it should be done as long as it is scientifically possible. Actually, this is a wrong view. If technically we can create super life that seriously harms human beings, can we also create it? Some scientific lunatics are doing things that are harmful to mankind under the banner of "scientific freedom". Therefore, we should be wary of modern science and technology being used by some people with ulterior motives. In addition, the freedom of science and ethics cannot be opposed. The fact of the development of modern life science shows that the standardization and guidance of ethics does not restrict the development of science. Listening to the voice of ethics is conducive to the healthy and smooth development of science.
(From Wen Wei Po, June 5438+1October 8, 2000)