Black Lance

I just find it amusing how these are two heated issues when they could in theory cancel each other out.

Besides a few experimental subjects, cloning people will not get very far. Cloning individual organs for organ replacements on the other hand may eliminate the need for organ (or blood or marrow) doners or the need to make those freak pigs with the human organs.
When someone is cloned, there is probably going to be a few protests then everyone will forget about it and return to their useless lives (and I am an expert on leading a useless life)

I did a little (minimal) research on this when I did a model UN a while back, I thought cloning individual organs in a body was impossible, but cloning a human was completely possible.

You can clone organs.

It wouldn't be that hard to clone single organs. They just have to be in an environment that would closly simulate their natural habitat. If that is not possible, we would have to use those gen-modified pigs with human organs the scientific (and BS) magazines are constantly talking about. I would prefer to not need to use 2nd hand organs if I needed a replacement. (Though "pig" organs have the benifit of having been tested so any chance of rogue genes that cause cancer or worse would probably be lessened with less work on the doctors behalf. Its because of the chance of cancer or worse that im not too fond of the idea of organ "seeds" being planted in the body where it would grow to full size.)

Some rogue scientists have claimed that they have impregnated a woman with the worlds first cloned human (only they've kept her identity secret, of course). So it's happening right now.

That's assuming that what those quacks say is true, something I'd not be willing to bet on.

If it is true, however, they took a remarkably irresponsible course of action that will most likely leave the child stricken with one disorder or another.

Either way, it's a revolting situation, that these people would try to decieve the world about such important matters, or that they went ahead and shot their wad way too early, which will almost certainly result in problems.

Cloning in certain applications has merit, but not cloning animals of any type, from sheep to people.

or perhaps, a cross between a human and a pink sabretooth llama?

Organs can be artifically grown in the correct enviornment. It doesn't have to be done inside a human body. Think of it as an incubator incubating eggs. The chick inside the egg still develops but without the natural warmth from the mother hen. I know we don't live forever. But think of young children born with defective organs. They should have every right to grow up into a healthy adult and experience everything that we usually take for granted.

And actually it still takes a long time for a clone to develop. The work that has been done with animals is done with an embyo which has to implanted into a surrugate mother were it develops like a normal fertilized embryo over the course of the regular pregnancy period.

Something else I remebered from a very heated discussion in one of my college class is the ability to tweak the human DNA strand. Scientists can tweak the DNA strand to eliminate certain things that have been in a family's bloodline for generations. Example, modifying the DNA to lessen an unborn childs chance of getting cancer. I can't remember but there is a certain time frame that it has to be done before it is too late.

My two cents:

1) I intend to live forever;

2) While I support the use cloning for medical and research purposes, do we really need more people on Earth? (after all the planet can only support less than half what we already have!!!);

3) I remember an article in a newspaper about a cat named CC, being cloned who, whilst genetically a copy of the donor had a different coloured fur coat. Reason being is that the conditions inside the womb were different than those when the original donor was gestating.

Interesting isn't it, because it just goes to show that cloning WILL NOT produce an identical copy of someone born naturally. After all, to recreate every single factor over a 9 month period would be futile!

As the always-wise Sam Kinnison once said... "MOVE TO THE FOOD!"

the genetic code is not a set of blueprints, for example you cannot splice the gene for an elephants trunk onto a giraffe and expect a giraffe with a trunk. Genetics is a chemical reaction.

I heard about this and i think that if it is true, the people who did it were stupid. in order to keep it a secret for this long, they would have had to work within a small group without the proper safeguards that any reasonable scientists (despite what doomsayers preach) would have as the minimum. If there was a mistake made and the kids grow up "malformed", they should have every right to sue the irresponsible people who did it. Secrecy breeds mistakes and stupid stunts like this gives the field of cloning a bad rap

But if Europe sold the food at such low prices the African farmers would go out of business, wouldn't they?

This may sound rascist but i do not want a million starving africans moving here and im pretty sure that every country that is well off would prevent such a migration.
Africa could have been able to feed itself if it wasn't having all those wars, if they stopped fighting and started living their problems could be solved in only a few short years. unfortunatly those in power in africa can only hold power if the people are poor so they have a vested interest in keeping africa in a state of starvation. Even if a single country got it right and started becoming well off, the influx of immigrants would quickly swamp the governmental system and that country would fall in short order. the only way it could work is the whole continent has to get its act togeather which is unlikly.

African Farmers???
What Business??

Eh, I don't know how exactly true that is. If anything, you should be attempting to blame the United States and Canada for this concept. After all, between these two countries, they produce most of the world's excess food, hell they even make somewhere around 90% of the world's grain!