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Italian scientists clone first horse!

edesignuk

edesignuk

Moderator emeritus
Original poster
Mar 25, 2002
19,232
2
London, England
Not Mac related I know, but interesting none-the-less.
From BBC Article:
The foal, called Prometea, was born 10 weeks ago and appears to be perfectly healthy.

To create Prometea, scientists took a skin cell from an adult mare which was fused with an empty equine egg.

The mare then acted as a surrogate mother for Prometea - so giving birth to a carbon copy of herself.

The development is reported in the journal Nature. It means that scientists have now cloned sheep, mice, cattle, goats, rabbits, cats, pigs and mules. The mule, called Idaho Gem, was born earlier this year in the US.
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Full Article
 
Well, William Gibson had written off the horses in his future vision, due to some sort of horse plague, so this might help secure that from happening.

What I'm curious about, though, are we going to go through a Noah's Ark of clones? Here they go, 1 by 1, until someone actually does a human.....

D
 
Remember that cat that was cloned?

CNN said that it neither looked nor acted like the original. It had a different coat pattern, texture, and thickness along with a different temperment. I wonder if this horse will be anything like the original. And if it's not, what does this say? Does this mean that even if we cloned humans the clone would be a totallydifferent person?

If that were the case, I think people wouldn't think about cloning. Honestly people, there are NO benefits of cloning humans. The earth is overpopulated as is. It would be unethical to overpopulate our planet any more than it already is.

But i definitely see real uses for organ transplants, livestock, fish, repopulating an endangered species.... etc.
 
Originally posted by Mr. Anderson
Well, William Gibson had written off the horses in his future vision, due to some sort of horse plague, so this might help secure that from happening.


D
Click to expand...

Man, I was totally going to bring that Gibson/horse stuff up. That was such a cool detail in Neuromancer.


"Hey, Christ," the Finn said, taking Case's arm, "looka that." He pointed. "It's a horse, man. You ever see a horse?"
Case glanced at the embalmed animal and shook his head.
It was displayed on a sort of pedestal, near the entrance to a place that sold birds and monkeys. The thing's legs had been worn black and hairless by decades of passing hands. "Saw one in Maryland once," the Finn said, "and that was a good three years after the pandemic. There's Arabs still trying to code 'em up from the DNA, but they always croak."
 
Originally posted by NavyIntel007
Honestly people, there are NO benefits of cloning humans.
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I guess enough people would be interested in having more influence in the selection of their offspring... eliminate unwanted genes and such. *big sigh*.

But I agree that there would be not much benefit. The "perfect child" will still be very different from the parents' expectations. Imagine the psychologial implications...
 
I just pray that the horse will be healthy. The name Prometea is very catchy!
 
Originally posted by NavyIntel007
Remember that cat that was cloned?

CNN said that it neither looked nor acted like the original. It had a different coat pattern, texture, and thickness along with a different temperment. I wonder if this horse will be anything like the original. And if it's not, what does this say? Does this mean that even if we cloned humans the clone would be a totallydifferent person?

If that were the case, I think people wouldn't think about cloning. Honestly people, there are NO benefits of cloning humans. The earth is overpopulated as is. It would be unethical to overpopulate our planet any more than it already is.

But i definitely see real uses for organ transplants, livestock, fish, repopulating an endangered species.... etc.
Click to expand...

The differences aren't really a shock. Identicle twins aren't always that identicle and are often very different kinds of people. Twins are natural clones remember.

There may not be real benefits to society for a fully clones human, but studying how to grow cells and differentiate them is related to cloning research, and there are certainly huge benefits to that. Cloning research is legitimate. And of course some couples with one partner who is infertile might see some benefits to cloning so they can have a baby that doesn't have someone's else gentic material.
 
Its not about benefits of cloning humans.

Its the ultimate act of vanity to have yourself cloned. If it was available today people would be lining up for it.

I think its just a matter of time, which is a bit sad.

I saw Pluto Nash a couple weeks ago - the not so great Eddy Murphy space movie. One funny thing about it was a passing comment - 'Wasn't he the guy who cloned that old basketball player and made a whole team of clones.....what were they called.....Air Jordans' :D

D
 
From what I read about this, the big deal is that the cell that this horse was cloned from came from the mother that carried the foal to term. No one was sure if this was even possible before, it is somewhat like giving birth to your genetic twin. Very strange.

Humans do not need to be cloned. We fornicate enough to provide a steady increase in our population already! However, we do need to do research into therapeutic cloning whereby we can grow new organs, limbs, tissue, etc. for people with disfigurments, injuries, disease, etc. so we can replace the defective part. Animal cloning is useful for ranchers who would benefit from a higher quality herd, but there are many questions to be answered before we do a whole lot of this. Same with the whole GMO thing with crops. Who wants corn that can't reseed itself? Oh yeah, the company that sold it to ya!
 
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