This is an excellent path for California to take. If Bush wins another term. California is ahead of the ball in this area and our state will benifit from it greatly. Arnold has been an EXCELLENT governor to date and I cannot wait to vote on this issue!!!!!

Hasn't Bush just asked the UN to make this research illegal? Or is it just a certain of stem cell research he wants to ban?

Fill me in guys!

Originally posted by Kriz_4
Hasn't Bush just asked the UN to make this research illegal?

I believe that he asked them to outlaw human cloning. ie, cloning yourself.
Not organ cloaning

Our Hosital is a MAJOR pediatric transplant center. The concept of cloning an organ and having it grow in say a pig then transplated is the holy grail. These kids (who we have to blast thier immune systems and pump full of steriods just to keep them from rejecting the donated organ) would suffer every little and would no reject thier "own" one.

It gets dicey IMHO when you want to clone a whole person. I can see rish people keeping a clone alive just to harvest organs. Does the clone have rights? Way to many socio / legal issues to deal with.

The clone is its own person, he or she will not have the benfits with our current and near future to clone his memories of his life that make him unique. What you get is a geneticaly similar younger version of you.

But even that has problems. When they cloned Dolly the sheep, they found that the cloned sheep while just having been born and younger that her clone, her DNA was at the age of the older sheep. Not good . Just one of many bugs that need to be worked on.

But even that has problems. When they cloned Dolly the sheep, they found that the cloned sheep while just having been born and younger that her clone, her DNA was at the age of the older sheep. Not good . Just one of many bugs that need to be worked on.

I believe the problem cloning a whole being, is the fact that each time we try to make a near duplicate, the Telomeres shorten thus problems start to crop up, like aging at 2x normal or somthing even weirder. We are a long way from Telomere engineering, but one thing to think about though is that if we figure out a way to repair these fine "hairs" or "caps" on the end of our chromosomes we could potentially extend the human lifspan significantly.

Well, it's the least thing he could do, after fellow actor Chris Reeve's decease.

We are a long way from Telomere engineering

Don't be too sure about this. Telomeres won't need to be engineered. The only thing that needs to happen is that the telomerase must be switched back on. The capacity to synthesize telomeres is endogenous to cell's genome. The engineering of telomeres isn't so far fetched either. Telomeres are just very basic repeating sequences of DNA. There exists a known 'consensus' sequence. Realistically, it would just involve some extra repeats of this consensus sequence being added on the the existing telomeres.

I agree, Fred. I visisted CA once and have to say it was a fine visit indeed.

This research is vital and can in no way be considered linked to cloning ENTIRE humans.

Go Californians!