Latest News and Developments about Humankind's Drive Towards Biological Immortality

A field of science fiction is emerging with cures and taboos concerning medical research. Cloning is a process that replicates cells, organs and even animals. The deepest truth is that it has extreme implications on health of animals and humans. It is a solution to several joint connected problems such as famine and organ trafficking. This is how Ray Kurzweil, sees cloning.

It is certain that human cloning will soon become a reality. It will be promoted with typical reasons (contributing effects, value to society, etc.… that might have a feeble relation with immortality. Besides, almost the same approach used to clone animals can be utilized for human cloning. Today, there are only ethical barriers that are hindering this revolution to take off. So, we are faced with both controversial and valuable applications of human cloning that must be scrutinized intensely.

The Twenty First century is increasingly being shaped by a technological transformation. A type of technology associated in somehow with information. The visible part of information technologies is in the form of intelligent machines, nanotechnology, virtual reality and robotics. However, it transcends and offers valuable promises to human longevity as well as other biological revolutions. This is once again based on learning and processing information. Wisdom related to diseases, underlying sources of life, drugs, proteomics, genetic cloning, rational drug design and genomics are at the heart of this scientific evolution.

Why We Should Introduce Cloning & Human Cloning

It would be appropriate to highlight the most valuable applications of human cloning to start with. The immediate benefit of reproducing animals is that better genetic traits can be introduced. A potential benefit would be to produce clones of genetic components required in the production of medicine. Like medicine derived from animals with transgenic embryos (embryos with external genes). This could include anti-cancer medicaments such as the antiangiogensis drug, known as aaATIII, which is actually being derived from milk of transgenic goats.

A more God-alike action is to recreate animals such as endangered or extinct species. It would practically be as simply as to crypreserve cells of endangered species. In such a way, they would never be in complete threat of total extinction. If ever the last kind of an animal race would become extinct a perfect clone could be created from its preserved cells. Therefore, therapeutic cloning offers the possibility to re-create life. Yet, for pre-historic animals such as dinosaurs, it would probably be impossible to find a single cell that has been well preserved. It would thus be impossible to clone them, but they could be pro-created (created by another scientific means).

An application of therapeutic cloning that is emerging into medical science is the cloning of human organs. Here only part of a person is cloned. The organs that are cloned can be derived from your own tissues and cells. This involves taking your stem cells and clone them into the organ required. This means that organs are built up directly from a potential patient’s genetic make-up. It could even be possible that these cloned organs have longer “telomeres” (protecting ends of the DNA that gets shorter each time a cell divides). The result could be that someone of the age of 80 could have his own organ (s) replaced with a cloned one. He could practically replace his heart of 80 years by one (derived from his cells) having the youthfulness of 20 years.

Some therapeutic cloning techniques are already being used. For example, in the recent past, pancreatic Islet cells were injected into a patient with type, I Diabetes. The problem with this treatment was that it required strong anti-rejection drugs and that cell for transplant was limited. The use of therapeutic cloning makes it possible to grow Islet cells from one’s own genetic make-up. This will thus delete the problem of rejection and will increase the availability of the cell type.

Another intricate focus concerning organs and tissues is the ability to rejuvenate our body. The introduction of new and young cells into organs will make organs younger. The youthfulness created within these cells is shown through a reduction in the speed of aging.

Moreover, the problem of famine could be addressed through therapeutic cloning. Meat could be created without the need to sacrifice thousands of animals. We could instead clone entire animals, or simply produce parts that we do want to consume. This means that all the meat on earth could practically come from a single animal. The reason behind such a radical change would be to eradicate famine. The use of technology to produce meat via therapeutic cloning would lead to an exponential decrease in price as the “law of accelerating returns” will set-in. Eventually, meat produced via cloning would be much cheaper than contemporary meat bought today. It could cost as little as only a percent of the actual price of meat. Price and availability of food are a major factor determining famine in several regions of the world.

Animal suffering will be reduced by the advent of consuming less pure animal meat. Farming would become more geared towards the lifestyle and well being of the animals. The animal activists are certainly more eager to make everyone vegetarians, instead of finding a substitute. However, from a scientific view it would not be nutritionally beneficial to all of us to stop eating meat. Yet, animal suffering could be eliminated and stopped with the use cloning of meat. The byproducts derived from animals such as dare, fur and leather could also be cloned and grown in laboratories. The whole process would become ecological and cost effective.

Why Should We Fear Human Cloning

There are, however, some major drawbacks of human cloning. It is a fact that if we clone someone, two identical beings will be living. They would practically be even more identical than twins. The aspect of mental cloning would grow people with the same skills, history, memory and personality traits. The fear of having thousands of people being identical is tremendously monotonous to project. The consequences could be disastrous. It wouldn’t be nice to have a world full of twins with no diversity of thoughts or reasoning.

However, generally we can consider that therapeutic cloning has much more benefits than threats. We are constantly learning to understand how our biological system operates and what the meaning of genome is in human evolution. The very result of this enlightening wisdom is that we can replicate tiny cells, organs to complete “animals” without severe ramifications. The likely outcome is improved health care, greater availability of food, higher standards of livings and therefore, an extended lifespan.

Source: Kurzweilai.net

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Anti Aging, Bioscience, Gerontology, Immortality, Longevity, Nanotechnology, Stem cells