November 20, 2013 • 27 mins
What is the future of cloning? The podcast team discusses the scientific breakthroughs, the barriers and the ethical questions about cloning.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Forward Thinking. Hey everyone, and welcome to Forward Thinking, the
podcast that looks at the future and says, I am
he as you or he as you are me, and
we are all together. I'm Jonathan Strickland and I'm Joe McCormick.
(00:22):
And Lauren is not with us today. She is off
today we're recording without her, but don't worry, She'll be
back for future episodes. And today we wanted to talk about, well,
you know, we've we've started a couple of episodes talking
about movies, and I had one I wanted to tell
you about movies have all the best ideas about the future. Well,
often you get movies that are science fiction where people
(00:43):
are you know, they have to think about the future.
That's kind of what the whole environment of the film
is set in. So I wanted to talk about a
great movie, Parts the Clonus Horror. Parts of the Clonus Horror,
which of one of those wonderful films featured on Mystery
Science Theater three thousands, and I full disclosure, that's how
(01:04):
I first saw Parts of the Clonus Horror was the
MST three k riffing of that film. But the premise
of that film was one of those science fiction horror
premises that you can you can easily imagine. I mean,
there's as technology has developed over time, there are certain
ethical questions have arisen, things like, you know, should we
give robots rights? We talked about that in the previous episode.
(01:25):
Well parts of the clonus Hard took a different approach.
It said, let's assume that we perfect cloning, so we
can make perfect clone copies of other creatures, to the
point where we can even age them appropriately so that
they are of a particular size, say to be like
attractive actors from the nineteen seventies in southern California. You're
(01:48):
being really generous with attractive but yes, so uh But anyway,
the purpose of this would not be so that we
could you know, copy the best and brightest so that
we have twice as many of them. Not like that. No,
the idea is more about wealthy and powerful people wanting
to have a kind of a life insurance policy where
(02:11):
if they if they need a new organ, they can
just harvest one from their clone, because they'll be identical
to the person who needs the donation. You know, it
just all comes back to Oregon harvest. Yeah, just because
it comes down to organ roads lead to stealing people's organs.
When it gets to the future, these poor clones waking
(02:31):
up in a bathtub somewhere and it's full of ice
and on written on the mirrors, go to a doctor. Well,
I think I don't recall exactly. I think the movie
implies that they are just put you know, they're they're
they're harvested for whatever parts are needed, and then they're destroyed.
And although in the movie, within the the the cloness
(02:51):
community in the movie they call it going to America,
and also the general public in the film is unaware
of this, this entire program, it's something that only the
very rich and powerful have access to. So it's another
it's a social divide as well as a horror story
because it's the idea of this, this elite cast of
(03:15):
people who are very wealthy or very politically influential have
access to. Well, yeah, that's There are different kinds of
of negative future depictions, right, there's the conspiracy depiction versus
the dystopian. Both of them are in this this particular film,
so not necessarily executed perfectly But what's also interesting is that,
you know, in two thousand five a movie came out
(03:37):
called The Island and UH didn't see it either, had
you and McGregor in it and Scarlett Johanson. But anyway,
so the film came out. I remember seeing the preview
for the movie, and as soon as I saw the preview,
I thought, Huh, this looks like it's an oregan harvesting
clone story a lot like Clonus the you know, are
parts of the closes? Yeah, exactly, I'm just gonna horror
(03:58):
Clonus parts parts the Clone Is Horror, And I thought, wow,
it seems really similar. And I was not the only one.
The producers of Parts of The Clone Is Horror end
up suing DreamWorks, which was the studio behind The Island.
Uh that eventually settled out of court, So I was
not the only person to think that it was a
very similar premise. So this kind of late leads us
(04:19):
to a discussion about cloning. Is this the future? Just
straight up, John, No, it makes no sense. No, no,
because there are better ways. But let's let's talk about
what cloning is and why we wouldn't have a community
of replicas of ourselves. So that we could just go
in and we keep them nice and stupid. Okay, well
(04:42):
let me say what I think cloning is based on
the movies. Okay, it's where you go into a big
room full of machines that go bleep bleep boopp and
they scan you. Right, so they like like a like
a laser kind of thing, moves over your body, right,
and then there's a machine next to you. It looks
like a big like meat freezer. Yeah, and then the
door opens and a copy of you steps out of
(05:03):
it that's the same age you are and looks just
like you, and then tries to steal your identity and
you're locked into a struggle to the death with your
evil twins. Uh. You know, is that basically correct? That
is basically as wrong as it possibly could be. Yes,
it turns out cloning is not anything like that. So
(05:24):
what does cloning actually mean to a scientist? There are
three different types of cloning to a scientist. Okay, so
you've got you've got embryo cloning, which is essentially that's
what happens in nature when we see people who are twins,
identical twins, or triplets, or any any variation thereof that's
embryonic cloning. That's just the natural cloning. So in other words,
(05:46):
what happens with that case is that you have an
embryo that forms some cells may split off from that
embryo and form another viable embryo. Both of them end
up growing into babies and are eventually born. Twins are
essentially clones. They are genetically identical, they have the same DNA.
You know. Something that's interesting, though, is that even monozygotic
twins who are copied from exactly the same chromosomes don't
(06:10):
end up exactly the same. That's true. That's true. That
which kind of tells you that there are lots of
different factors that go into determining what makes a person
a person. It's not just your DNA. Also, you could
argue it's not just your environment. It's a much more
complex issue, right, So that's that's the first one. Then
there's reproductive cloning. Now, reproductive cloning means you're trying to
(06:33):
reproduce a particular organism. So, Joe, if I took like
a whole organism, yeah, like you, Like, if I wanted
to clone you, that would be reproductive cloning. I would
end up taking one of your cells, and I would
remove the nucleus from that cell. And I wouldn't by
that time the pain has already passed. But you know
(06:53):
it's it's the semantic cell. I would take a semantic
cell from your body. I would take the nucleus out
of the semantic cell. I would take an egg cell
where the nucleus had already been removed. I would implant
the eggs cell with the nucleus of the semantic cell
I took from you, and then I would stimulate the
eggs cell so that it would end up developing into
an embryo, which would eventually be implanted into some sort
(07:15):
of gestation surrogate, so a woman who would be willing
to carry a baby to term. The baby would be born,
and that would be the clone of you, Joe. So
you don't step out of like a freezer full of
dried eyes. No, that would not happen you. You are
literally born just like other organisms are born. Well, yeah,
the clone would be born just like any other organism. Now,
(07:37):
although there are definitely some issues which will will chat
about as well, but I can go ahead and go
into a little bit of it. Uh turns out that
most clones tend to have a shorter lifespan than the
animal that they were cloned from, and also they tend
to be prone to genetic issues. So it's because they're
(07:58):
not you know, it's not the same thing is as twins,
you're taking a nucleus from an adult animal and then
or adult organism I guess I should say, and then
using that to create a new organism. There can be
some issues that develop out of that where you have
some pretty severe genetic problems down the line. Now I
really don't know what causes that is that is that
(08:19):
sort of the way that over time, as you become
an adult, you accumulate mutations and genetic like a little
screw ups that happened to your genes. That's part of it.
The fact that telomeres are getting shorter and shorter, and
you know, they're not regenerating over time. There's there are
a lot of different reasons why this is a case.
It's one of the reasons why it's considered to be
(08:42):
and a very ethical gray area in science and most
scientists I think maybe I shouldn't even say most many
scientists think that reproductive cloning is not a very ethical,
uh pursuit. Okay, So reproductive cloning, is this just like
in uh, you know, let's say, what if kind of thing. Now,
(09:03):
this is something that we've done. Dolly the Sheep. You
heard of Dolly the Sheep. Dolly the Sheep was a
big fan of Dolly. Dolly. Yeah, Dolly the Sheep was
a clone. So we have had evidence, I mean, the
scientists have made clones of organisms, complex organisms, and in fact,
cloning is again something that we see in the animal
world that happens like on simple organisms do it themselves?
(09:26):
Right with something that we're talking about induced in the
laboratory that we have evidence of that, there aren't that
many examples because again, uh, the there are some ethical
issues where we talk about how if the animal that
is produced the clone has these genetic issues or has
a shorter lifespan there, Yeah, is it fair? Is it?
(09:49):
Is it? You know, if they're born into a quality
of life that is automatically lower than animals that are
just naturally reproducing, then is that kind Isn't that cruel?
And so there are a lot of questions there and
as far as it goes with humans, hasn't been done
at all because the ethical questions there are way way
more complicated, and we'll get into some of them because
(10:10):
you have to. You have to talk about it. And
when you're talking about cloning, the third type of cloning,
and this is the type that would really play into
any kind of approach to creating organs for transplants, is
called therapeutic cloning. Sounds real friendly. Therapeutic cloning is well,
on the surface, it's friendly in the sense that instead
(10:32):
of trying to create a clone of a person, like
a reproduction of the person. So instead of me trying
to clone you, Joe, and then waiting, you know, twenty
years for the clone to grow up and not for
you to be able to cut that sucker open and
harvest all his juicy organs for yourself. Uh, instead of
doing that, I would end up taking again a semantic
cell from you and harvesting the nucleus from that semantic cell,
(10:56):
putting it into an egg cell that had been Uh,
it's own nucleus has been removed, already stimulating it just
as I would if it were reproductive cloning. But then
once it becomes an embryo, it starts to produce stem cells. Okay,
And that's where we started getting into the gray ethical
area again, because those stem cells. Stem cells are cells
(11:17):
that haven't differentiated yet. They can differentiate into other types
of cells, and cells have different levels of potency. Potency
kind of describes how many different types of cells the
stem cell could eventually develop into. Um So you know,
some are very much limited in what they can develop
into and some are have have a much larger spectrum
(11:41):
that they can develop into. So plura potent stem cells,
that's the kind that we really want to get because
they have the greatest variety of cells they can develop into,
which means that from this one sort of basic ingredient,
you can make lots of different stuff. Renaissance cells, yeah,
they can, they can do all sorts of things. Now
(12:01):
once they differentiate, obviously that's the form they take. They
don't transform or anything like hard take the form of
a liver that doesn't work. So it would be so
so working with the stem cells, scientists could end up
manipulating them so that they develop into specific types of tissue.
And then now that doesn't help you out just immediately
(12:23):
either if I just had a massive cells that developed
into heart tissue but weren't in the shape of a heart,
that wouldn't do you any good sounds like you need
some kind of scaffolding. Yeah, you would absolutely need to
have some sort of of scaffolding or or you know,
some sort of structure to put this material up against
so that it forms into the right shape. So it's
(12:44):
not just made of the right stuff, but it's in
the right shape to do the job it needs to do. So, Uh,
there are different ways that doctors and engineers are looking
into creating that. Sometimes they just will um kind of
build a model lung onto some scaffolding. And there's also
been some interesting developments in three D printing. We've talked
(13:05):
about that in the past two using three D printers
to actually print an organ, where it's printing it layer
by layer of cells into the right kind of shape
so that you end up with this finished organ. The
downside is when you get a printer jam, it's the grossest,
it's not pleasant. No, But so you know, I said
(13:26):
it was an ethical gray area, and the reason for
that is that when you extract these stem cells, the
embryo is no longer viable a right, So, uh, if
I'm creating a clone of you, Joe, not to reproduce,
but to just get so I can get the kind
of cells I need to develop whatever organized I want.
There's no way for that embryo to become another person,
(13:48):
and you've taken its blueprints, right, and so that's a uh,
that's you know, that's one of those ethical issues. There
are people who feel that once you reach the embryonic stage,
then that's human life and to do anything to harm
that human life, even if you were creating that embryo
with the express purpose of being able to develop organs
for someone who needs a transplant, uh, that is wrong.
(14:11):
And so there, you know, and it's definitely a gray area. Well,
there's probably there's some middle ground too. Right, It's not
just like you know, either you think that's totally fine
or you think that that's equivalent to murder. You might
think that like, well, you know, there's some reason to
not want to do that if we don't have to write,
if there's some other approach we can do to to
do this without having to to create the potential and
(14:34):
then extinguish that potential for human life. Now, what about
adult stem cells. Now, adult stem cells have a lot
of possibilities. They are that you know, you can I
would mean not from an embryo. Right, you can get
an adult stem cell from you like I could. I
could get adult stem cells from you, Joe. And but
the the issue there is that adult stem cells tend
(14:56):
to not be they don't have as much potency. In
other words, they are more limited in the types of
tissues they can become. Uh. There are scientists who are
working with them to see if they can expand that,
and there's been some promising research on that. So maybe
in the future we get around that that issue and
it's not an issue at all anymore, which would be
fantastic because now we don't even have to have cloning
(15:18):
as part of the picture because this doesn't involve cloning.
This involves taking stem cells directly so that you can
end up creating whatever, you know, tissue you need. So
cloning is out of the picture, which is why I'm
not going to talk about it anymore, because this is
an episode about cloning. Joe and I refused to be
taken off on your non cloning tangent uh as fascinating
(15:38):
as the adult stem cell banality. Yeah, so let's talk
a little bit more about cloning. There's um some been
some interesting experiments done. There was one that I was
reading about where scientists were taking um mice that had Parkinson's. Essentially,
they had a condition that's akin to Parkinson's and people,
(15:59):
and they were symptomatic, you know, they showed the symptoms
of the condition, and the scientists ended up using a
cloning technology to create new neurons cells and then ended
up surgically and planning those cells into the mice and
they started showing signs of recovery. So there is some, uh,
(16:20):
some promising evidence that cloning, even if if we're not
talking about creating full organs for organ transplant, could be
used to help with some very serious illnesses and conditions
that we don't have a full handle on yet. Now,
keep in mind there are other avenues to exploring options
to treat these illnesses and conditions, like genetic study. But
it's it's always great to see multiple disciplines concentrating on
(16:44):
the same problem because you are increasing your chances of
getting a solution to that problem. So, whether it comes
through cloning or genetic modification or even some other avenue,
it's good that we have multiple ways of coming at
this issue. Uh, they're all so some other problems that
we can talk about the of course, the biggest one
(17:04):
is this ethical issue where we've got people disagreeing about,
you know, the ethics of using embryos in order to
get stem cells to create these organs. One side the
argument is that, look, a lot of people need organ transplants,
so uh, there's back in. We have this article on
how stuff Works about using therapeutic cloning for organ transplants.
(17:26):
It's a great article. Kristen Conger wrote it. Highly recommend
you go and check that out. Yeah. She she's a
great writer. So how stuff Works dot com. Just search
therapeutic cloning and it pops right up. It's a really
good read. But one of the facts that she cites
is that in two thousand eight, i think it was,
there were ninety nine thousand people on a waiting list
(17:46):
to get a transplant, whereas in two thousand seven the
number of actual transplants performed was somewhere around twenty six thousand.
So twenty six thod people actually got transplants, nine thousand
people are on the waiting list. Clearly, there's a supply
and demand problem here, right. We don't have enough organs
for the people who need organs, and you know, some
organs obviously can be donated from one living person to
(18:10):
another and both people can remain living. That's great, but
there's only a few of those, like you know, a
kidney or doing a partial liver transplant or something like that.
But you know there are other other organs where that
clearly is not an option. So being able to create
organs from your same kind of tissue UH would be
(18:31):
really really beneficial. Obviously, Like if I'm able to create
an organ Joe from your d n A so that
it is as compatible with you as I can possibly
make it, then the UH, the chances of your body
rejecting that are decreased significantly. They're never zero, but they
are decreased much more than they would be if I
(18:52):
just found someone who is a suitable donor. But then
you know, you run the risk of your body rejecting
the organ. So that's one reason why cloning is is
at such a a hot area of study, because it
could go really far to alleviating this problem we have
where the number of people who need transplants far out
(19:15):
number the folks that the actual supply of organs, and
out of the organs that are available, there's never a
guarantee that that organ is going to be accepted by
the body. So being able to address both of those
issues at once is huge. Alright, So this is why
(19:36):
I say that the uh, the whole parts of the
clone is horror thing that for real. No, it's totally
not real. I mean, why would you why would they
make that up? Well, I mean, first of all, first
of all, the technology wasn't as developed back then. Second
of all, science fiction often, I don't know if you
get this, Joe, but science fiction often is going to
address actual like social and cultural problems, and they use
(19:59):
science fiction as a vehicle to address them without necessarily
worrying about if the science itself is solid. Well, one
thing that is worth pointing out is that there's a
lot of fear about cloning out there. Sure, people who um,
and I don't necessarily blame them for this, Like, if
you don't know a whole lot about it, it sounds
pretty scary. Well, even if you know a lot about it,
you still sit there. And I mean, if someone were
(20:20):
to come up to you and say, this isn't natural,
it's hard to argue that. Although you could point at
nature and say, look, in nature, we have examples of
cloning you've got very simple organisms that that's how they reproduce.
You know, it's this it's this cloning kind of mechanism.
But pouring that over to more complex organisms gets a
little complicated. Even if you were to go so far
(20:42):
as to say, look, you wouldn't go up to a
woman who has twins and say to her you're a
bad mother because what you did was unnatural, because it's ludicrous.
That's totally not the case. Totally decision, because that's how
that works, right Joe. It's a good thing. Lauren's not
here to correct this, right. Um. Anyway, it's it's you know,
(21:02):
that's right, you pressed the twins button. I guess that's
how that works. I don't know. I don't have kids. Um. Yeah,
the the obviously we're having a lot of fun here,
but the the important part of this that, yeah, there
are people who feel that the the unnatural element to cloning,
uh is a big problem. It may go against not
(21:22):
you know, not only whatever ethic old views they have,
but if they have certain religious views, it may go
against their religious views. And you know, you can't just um,
I mean you could, but you shouldn't just discount people's
beliefs when you're when you're pursuing uh, you know, solutions,
what you have to do is be able to have
a conversation about it and really come to an agreement
(21:44):
among as many parties as you possibly can on what
is and isn't ethical. Well, of course, I mean science
is sort of made of facts, but it lives in
a world of values, exactly right, So we have to
be able to balance the that out so that we
can make meaningful use of what knowledge we gain. And
so in this case, it's one of those things where
(22:04):
I think if we are able to get solutions that
use adult stem cells to work as well, yeah, that
then we don't have to worry about the cloning issue
at all, although of course there's still people who want
to do things like um open up cloning as a
way to let people have the same pet over and
over and over again, although as we've already discussed, it
(22:25):
would not be the same organism, you know, it would
never be exactly the same even if you got to
look people who like themselves a little bit too much,
like they want to have clones of themselves as their children.
I'm a narcissist, But at the same time, I also
realize what a jerk I am, and I do not
want another version of me around. One is enough. I
don't want to compete with myself. First of all, that
(22:47):
would be exhausting, because I'm awesome. Um, but yeah, it's
that would be something. But but back to the parts
the clones, harror, I mean, ultimately, the reason why that
movie wouldn't work is because there's no purpose to read
reproductive cloning in order to get organs when you can
do therapeutic cloning. It would be Therapeutic cloning would be faster,
it would be uh, you know, it would you wouldn't
(23:09):
have to wait for your clone to grow up to
an age where the organs would actually be useful. You
wouldn't have to feed your clone. You wouldn't have to
keep your clones sequestered from everybody else so that your
clone wouldn't realize that, you know, it was just an
organ farm. And that's it. I mean, you know, you
don't have the ethical issue of I guess that idea
of kills to people who just gratuitously enjoy murders. Yeah,
(23:32):
I suppose so, uh, you know, and again, like you're
talking about a film that when it was made therapeutic
cloning wasn't really something that people were thinking about. They
they were you know, if you were talking about clones,
you were talking about the whole body, not like we
can just clones. We can clone you, so we get
some celves, so we can grow a heart. That heart
would grow, it would just grow inside the body of
of a of a human that had all the other
(23:55):
organs as well, So you know that would never happen. Well,
I'm excited about the things we're gonna learn about cloning
in the near future. Yeah, that that should be really
learning things like more about you know, the reasons why
cloned life forms have shorter lifespans or the reasons why
(24:16):
they tend to have more genetic problems. Might teach us
more about those genetic problems so that we can address
them in and you know otherwise what otherwise would be
healthy individuals. So there's a lot of things to learn medically. Uh,
there's also more to learn about again using adult stem
cells or even other uh completely alternative means of going
(24:39):
about creating artificial organs that somehow have a more likely
acceptance rate than just your average donor, or just to
really address that massive disparity between the demand and the
supply of organs. So there's there's definitely some really important
stuff that we can learn and uh, you know it's
(25:01):
it's While it is a very controversial subject, I think
it's one that's important to to study and not just
run away from. Right. So, um, I completely understand the
ethical concerns. I don't necessarily agree with all of them. Um,
but then my ethics are probably different from you know,
your ethics, Joe. So I just have to come to
(25:21):
something I don't. I don't. I'm just making an assumption
that they're not exactly aligned with mine. I think it's
only okay to clone one human, and that human's Tim Curry.
I can get behind that. There can never be too
much Tim Curry. You know. I think I'm gonna go
and do a Tim Curry movie marathon. I'm gonna start with, um,
(25:44):
the Shadow, and then i'll probably I'll probably move over
to Clue. You know, you got a rocky horror goes
in there, but it'll you can't put that first or second, right,
that's this maybe a third maybe, and um, I don't know.
Home Alone will be in there somewhere. I think it's
actually home alone too. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you're right. Yeah.
So anyway, while while I'm planning out my Tim Curry
(26:04):
this has much to do with cloning, well we're cloning Curry. Um.
While I'm planning that out, I want to recommend to
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(26:24):
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(26:46):
and the future of technology, visit forward thinking dot com,
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Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Forward Thinking. Hey everyone, and welcome to Forward Thinking, the
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he as you or he as you are me, and
we are all together. I'm Jonathan Strickland and I'm Joe McCormick.
(00:22):
And Lauren is not with us today. She is off
today we're recording without her, but don't worry, She'll be
back for future episodes. And today we wanted to talk about, well,
you know, we've we've started a couple of episodes talking
about movies, and I had one I wanted to tell
you about movies have all the best ideas about the future. Well,
often you get movies that are science fiction where people
(00:43):
are you know, they have to think about the future.
That's kind of what the whole environment of the film
is set in. So I wanted to talk about a
great movie, Parts the Clonus Horror. Parts of the Clonus Horror,
which of one of those wonderful films featured on Mystery
Science Theater three thousands, and I full disclosure, that's how
(01:04):
I first saw Parts of the Clonus Horror was the
MST three k riffing of that film. But the premise
of that film was one of those science fiction horror
premises that you can you can easily imagine. I mean,
there's as technology has developed over time, there are certain
ethical questions have arisen, things like, you know, should we
give robots rights? We talked about that in the previous episode.
(01:25):
Well parts of the clonus Hard took a different approach.
It said, let's assume that we perfect cloning, so we
can make perfect clone copies of other creatures, to the
point where we can even age them appropriately so that
they are of a particular size, say to be like
attractive actors from the nineteen seventies in southern California. You're
(01:48):
being really generous with attractive but yes, so uh But anyway,
the purpose of this would not be so that we
could you know, copy the best and brightest so that
we have twice as many of them. Not like that. No,
the idea is more about wealthy and powerful people wanting
to have a kind of a life insurance policy where
(02:11):
if they if they need a new organ, they can
just harvest one from their clone, because they'll be identical
to the person who needs the donation. You know, it
just all comes back to Oregon harvest. Yeah, just because
it comes down to organ roads lead to stealing people's organs.
When it gets to the future, these poor clones waking
(02:31):
up in a bathtub somewhere and it's full of ice
and on written on the mirrors, go to a doctor. Well,
I think I don't recall exactly. I think the movie
implies that they are just put you know, they're they're
they're harvested for whatever parts are needed, and then they're destroyed.
And although in the movie, within the the the cloness
(02:51):
community in the movie they call it going to America,
and also the general public in the film is unaware
of this, this entire program, it's something that only the
very rich and powerful have access to. So it's another
it's a social divide as well as a horror story
because it's the idea of this, this elite cast of
(03:15):
people who are very wealthy or very politically influential have
access to. Well, yeah, that's There are different kinds of
of negative future depictions, right, there's the conspiracy depiction versus
the dystopian. Both of them are in this this particular film,
so not necessarily executed perfectly But what's also interesting is that,
you know, in two thousand five a movie came out
(03:37):
called The Island and UH didn't see it either, had
you and McGregor in it and Scarlett Johanson. But anyway,
so the film came out. I remember seeing the preview
for the movie, and as soon as I saw the preview,
I thought, Huh, this looks like it's an oregan harvesting
clone story a lot like Clonus the you know, are
parts of the closes? Yeah, exactly, I'm just gonna horror
(03:58):
Clonus parts parts the Clone Is Horror, And I thought, wow,
it seems really similar. And I was not the only one.
The producers of Parts of The Clone Is Horror end
up suing DreamWorks, which was the studio behind The Island.
Uh that eventually settled out of court, So I was
not the only person to think that it was a
very similar premise. So this kind of late leads us
(04:19):
to a discussion about cloning. Is this the future? Just
straight up, John, No, it makes no sense. No, no,
because there are better ways. But let's let's talk about
what cloning is and why we wouldn't have a community
of replicas of ourselves. So that we could just go
in and we keep them nice and stupid. Okay, well
(04:42):
let me say what I think cloning is based on
the movies. Okay, it's where you go into a big
room full of machines that go bleep bleep boopp and
they scan you. Right, so they like like a like
a laser kind of thing, moves over your body, right,
and then there's a machine next to you. It looks
like a big like meat freezer. Yeah, and then the
door opens and a copy of you steps out of
(05:03):
it that's the same age you are and looks just
like you, and then tries to steal your identity and
you're locked into a struggle to the death with your
evil twins. Uh. You know, is that basically correct? That
is basically as wrong as it possibly could be. Yes,
it turns out cloning is not anything like that. So
(05:24):
what does cloning actually mean to a scientist? There are
three different types of cloning to a scientist. Okay, so
you've got you've got embryo cloning, which is essentially that's
what happens in nature when we see people who are twins,
identical twins, or triplets, or any any variation thereof that's
embryonic cloning. That's just the natural cloning. So in other words,
(05:46):
what happens with that case is that you have an
embryo that forms some cells may split off from that
embryo and form another viable embryo. Both of them end
up growing into babies and are eventually born. Twins are
essentially clones. They are genetically identical, they have the same DNA.
You know. Something that's interesting, though, is that even monozygotic
twins who are copied from exactly the same chromosomes don't
(06:10):
end up exactly the same. That's true. That's true. That
which kind of tells you that there are lots of
different factors that go into determining what makes a person
a person. It's not just your DNA. Also, you could
argue it's not just your environment. It's a much more
complex issue, right, So that's that's the first one. Then
there's reproductive cloning. Now, reproductive cloning means you're trying to
(06:33):
reproduce a particular organism. So, Joe, if I took like
a whole organism, yeah, like you, Like, if I wanted
to clone you, that would be reproductive cloning. I would
end up taking one of your cells, and I would
remove the nucleus from that cell. And I wouldn't by
that time the pain has already passed. But you know
(06:53):
it's it's the semantic cell. I would take a semantic
cell from your body. I would take the nucleus out
of the semantic cell. I would take an egg cell
where the nucleus had already been removed. I would implant
the eggs cell with the nucleus of the semantic cell
I took from you, and then I would stimulate the
eggs cell so that it would end up developing into
an embryo, which would eventually be implanted into some sort
(07:15):
of gestation surrogate, so a woman who would be willing
to carry a baby to term. The baby would be born,
and that would be the clone of you, Joe. So
you don't step out of like a freezer full of
dried eyes. No, that would not happen you. You are
literally born just like other organisms are born. Well, yeah,
the clone would be born just like any other organism. Now,
(07:37):
although there are definitely some issues which will will chat
about as well, but I can go ahead and go
into a little bit of it. Uh turns out that
most clones tend to have a shorter lifespan than the
animal that they were cloned from, and also they tend
to be prone to genetic issues. So it's because they're
(07:58):
not you know, it's not the same thing is as twins,
you're taking a nucleus from an adult animal and then
or adult organism I guess I should say, and then
using that to create a new organism. There can be
some issues that develop out of that where you have
some pretty severe genetic problems down the line. Now I
really don't know what causes that is that is that
(08:19):
sort of the way that over time, as you become
an adult, you accumulate mutations and genetic like a little
screw ups that happened to your genes. That's part of it.
The fact that telomeres are getting shorter and shorter, and
you know, they're not regenerating over time. There's there are
a lot of different reasons why this is a case.
It's one of the reasons why it's considered to be
(08:42):
and a very ethical gray area in science and most
scientists I think maybe I shouldn't even say most many
scientists think that reproductive cloning is not a very ethical,
uh pursuit. Okay, So reproductive cloning, is this just like
in uh, you know, let's say, what if kind of thing. Now,
(09:03):
this is something that we've done. Dolly the Sheep. You
heard of Dolly the Sheep. Dolly the Sheep was a
big fan of Dolly. Dolly. Yeah, Dolly the Sheep was
a clone. So we have had evidence, I mean, the
scientists have made clones of organisms, complex organisms, and in fact,
cloning is again something that we see in the animal
world that happens like on simple organisms do it themselves?
(09:26):
Right with something that we're talking about induced in the
laboratory that we have evidence of that, there aren't that
many examples because again, uh, the there are some ethical
issues where we talk about how if the animal that
is produced the clone has these genetic issues or has
a shorter lifespan there, Yeah, is it fair? Is it?
(09:49):
Is it? You know, if they're born into a quality
of life that is automatically lower than animals that are
just naturally reproducing, then is that kind Isn't that cruel?
And so there are a lot of questions there and
as far as it goes with humans, hasn't been done
at all because the ethical questions there are way way
more complicated, and we'll get into some of them because
(10:10):
you have to. You have to talk about it. And
when you're talking about cloning, the third type of cloning,
and this is the type that would really play into
any kind of approach to creating organs for transplants, is
called therapeutic cloning. Sounds real friendly. Therapeutic cloning is well,
on the surface, it's friendly in the sense that instead
(10:32):
of trying to create a clone of a person, like
a reproduction of the person. So instead of me trying
to clone you, Joe, and then waiting, you know, twenty
years for the clone to grow up and not for
you to be able to cut that sucker open and
harvest all his juicy organs for yourself. Uh, instead of
doing that, I would end up taking again a semantic
cell from you and harvesting the nucleus from that semantic cell,
(10:56):
putting it into an egg cell that had been Uh,
it's own nucleus has been removed, already stimulating it just
as I would if it were reproductive cloning. But then
once it becomes an embryo, it starts to produce stem cells. Okay,
And that's where we started getting into the gray ethical
area again, because those stem cells. Stem cells are cells
(11:17):
that haven't differentiated yet. They can differentiate into other types
of cells, and cells have different levels of potency. Potency
kind of describes how many different types of cells the
stem cell could eventually develop into. Um So you know,
some are very much limited in what they can develop
into and some are have have a much larger spectrum
(11:41):
that they can develop into. So plura potent stem cells,
that's the kind that we really want to get because
they have the greatest variety of cells they can develop into,
which means that from this one sort of basic ingredient,
you can make lots of different stuff. Renaissance cells, yeah,
they can, they can do all sorts of things. Now
(12:01):
once they differentiate, obviously that's the form they take. They
don't transform or anything like hard take the form of
a liver that doesn't work. So it would be so
so working with the stem cells, scientists could end up
manipulating them so that they develop into specific types of tissue.
And then now that doesn't help you out just immediately
(12:23):
either if I just had a massive cells that developed
into heart tissue but weren't in the shape of a heart,
that wouldn't do you any good sounds like you need
some kind of scaffolding. Yeah, you would absolutely need to
have some sort of of scaffolding or or you know,
some sort of structure to put this material up against
so that it forms into the right shape. So it's
(12:44):
not just made of the right stuff, but it's in
the right shape to do the job it needs to do. So, Uh,
there are different ways that doctors and engineers are looking
into creating that. Sometimes they just will um kind of
build a model lung onto some scaffolding. And there's also
been some interesting developments in three D printing. We've talked
(13:05):
about that in the past two using three D printers
to actually print an organ, where it's printing it layer
by layer of cells into the right kind of shape
so that you end up with this finished organ. The
downside is when you get a printer jam, it's the grossest,
it's not pleasant. No, But so you know, I said
(13:26):
it was an ethical gray area, and the reason for
that is that when you extract these stem cells, the
embryo is no longer viable a right, So, uh, if
I'm creating a clone of you, Joe, not to reproduce,
but to just get so I can get the kind
of cells I need to develop whatever organized I want.
There's no way for that embryo to become another person,
(13:48):
and you've taken its blueprints, right, and so that's a uh,
that's you know, that's one of those ethical issues. There
are people who feel that once you reach the embryonic stage,
then that's human life and to do anything to harm
that human life, even if you were creating that embryo
with the express purpose of being able to develop organs
for someone who needs a transplant, uh, that is wrong.
(14:11):
And so there, you know, and it's definitely a gray area. Well,
there's probably there's some middle ground too. Right, It's not
just like you know, either you think that's totally fine
or you think that that's equivalent to murder. You might
think that like, well, you know, there's some reason to
not want to do that if we don't have to write,
if there's some other approach we can do to to
do this without having to to create the potential and
(14:34):
then extinguish that potential for human life. Now, what about
adult stem cells. Now, adult stem cells have a lot
of possibilities. They are that you know, you can I
would mean not from an embryo. Right, you can get
an adult stem cell from you like I could. I
could get adult stem cells from you, Joe. And but
the the issue there is that adult stem cells tend
(14:56):
to not be they don't have as much potency. In
other words, they are more limited in the types of
tissues they can become. Uh. There are scientists who are
working with them to see if they can expand that,
and there's been some promising research on that. So maybe
in the future we get around that that issue and
it's not an issue at all anymore, which would be
fantastic because now we don't even have to have cloning
(15:18):
as part of the picture because this doesn't involve cloning.
This involves taking stem cells directly so that you can
end up creating whatever, you know, tissue you need. So
cloning is out of the picture, which is why I'm
not going to talk about it anymore, because this is
an episode about cloning. Joe and I refused to be
taken off on your non cloning tangent uh as fascinating
(15:38):
as the adult stem cell banality. Yeah, so let's talk
a little bit more about cloning. There's um some been
some interesting experiments done. There was one that I was
reading about where scientists were taking um mice that had Parkinson's. Essentially,
they had a condition that's akin to Parkinson's and people,
(15:59):
and they were symptomatic, you know, they showed the symptoms
of the condition, and the scientists ended up using a
cloning technology to create new neurons cells and then ended
up surgically and planning those cells into the mice and
they started showing signs of recovery. So there is some, uh,
(16:20):
some promising evidence that cloning, even if if we're not
talking about creating full organs for organ transplant, could be
used to help with some very serious illnesses and conditions
that we don't have a full handle on yet. Now,
keep in mind there are other avenues to exploring options
to treat these illnesses and conditions, like genetic study. But
it's it's always great to see multiple disciplines concentrating on
(16:44):
the same problem because you are increasing your chances of
getting a solution to that problem. So, whether it comes
through cloning or genetic modification or even some other avenue,
it's good that we have multiple ways of coming at
this issue. Uh, they're all so some other problems that
we can talk about the of course, the biggest one
(17:04):
is this ethical issue where we've got people disagreeing about,
you know, the ethics of using embryos in order to
get stem cells to create these organs. One side the
argument is that, look, a lot of people need organ transplants,
so uh, there's back in. We have this article on
how stuff Works about using therapeutic cloning for organ transplants.
(17:26):
It's a great article. Kristen Conger wrote it. Highly recommend
you go and check that out. Yeah. She she's a
great writer. So how stuff Works dot com. Just search
therapeutic cloning and it pops right up. It's a really
good read. But one of the facts that she cites
is that in two thousand eight, i think it was,
there were ninety nine thousand people on a waiting list
(17:46):
to get a transplant, whereas in two thousand seven the
number of actual transplants performed was somewhere around twenty six thousand.
So twenty six thod people actually got transplants, nine thousand
people are on the waiting list. Clearly, there's a supply
and demand problem here, right. We don't have enough organs
for the people who need organs, and you know, some
organs obviously can be donated from one living person to
(18:10):
another and both people can remain living. That's great, but
there's only a few of those, like you know, a
kidney or doing a partial liver transplant or something like that.
But you know there are other other organs where that
clearly is not an option. So being able to create
organs from your same kind of tissue UH would be
(18:31):
really really beneficial. Obviously, Like if I'm able to create
an organ Joe from your d n A so that
it is as compatible with you as I can possibly
make it, then the UH, the chances of your body
rejecting that are decreased significantly. They're never zero, but they
are decreased much more than they would be if I
(18:52):
just found someone who is a suitable donor. But then
you know, you run the risk of your body rejecting
the organ. So that's one reason why cloning is is
at such a a hot area of study, because it
could go really far to alleviating this problem we have
where the number of people who need transplants far out
(19:15):
number the folks that the actual supply of organs, and
out of the organs that are available, there's never a
guarantee that that organ is going to be accepted by
the body. So being able to address both of those
issues at once is huge. Alright, So this is why
(19:36):
I say that the uh, the whole parts of the
clone is horror thing that for real. No, it's totally
not real. I mean, why would you why would they
make that up? Well, I mean, first of all, first
of all, the technology wasn't as developed back then. Second
of all, science fiction often, I don't know if you
get this, Joe, but science fiction often is going to
address actual like social and cultural problems, and they use
(19:59):
science fiction as a vehicle to address them without necessarily
worrying about if the science itself is solid. Well, one
thing that is worth pointing out is that there's a
lot of fear about cloning out there. Sure, people who um,
and I don't necessarily blame them for this, Like, if
you don't know a whole lot about it, it sounds
pretty scary. Well, even if you know a lot about it,
you still sit there. And I mean, if someone were
(20:20):
to come up to you and say, this isn't natural,
it's hard to argue that. Although you could point at
nature and say, look, in nature, we have examples of
cloning you've got very simple organisms that that's how they reproduce.
You know, it's this it's this cloning kind of mechanism.
But pouring that over to more complex organisms gets a
little complicated. Even if you were to go so far
(20:42):
as to say, look, you wouldn't go up to a
woman who has twins and say to her you're a
bad mother because what you did was unnatural, because it's ludicrous.
That's totally not the case. Totally decision, because that's how
that works, right Joe. It's a good thing. Lauren's not
here to correct this, right. Um. Anyway, it's it's you know,
(21:02):
that's right, you pressed the twins button. I guess that's
how that works. I don't know. I don't have kids. Um. Yeah,
the the obviously we're having a lot of fun here,
but the the important part of this that, yeah, there
are people who feel that the the unnatural element to cloning,
uh is a big problem. It may go against not
(21:22):
you know, not only whatever ethic old views they have,
but if they have certain religious views, it may go
against their religious views. And you know, you can't just um,
I mean you could, but you shouldn't just discount people's
beliefs when you're when you're pursuing uh, you know, solutions,
what you have to do is be able to have
a conversation about it and really come to an agreement
(21:44):
among as many parties as you possibly can on what
is and isn't ethical. Well, of course, I mean science
is sort of made of facts, but it lives in
a world of values, exactly right, So we have to
be able to balance the that out so that we
can make meaningful use of what knowledge we gain. And
so in this case, it's one of those things where
(22:04):
I think if we are able to get solutions that
use adult stem cells to work as well, yeah, that
then we don't have to worry about the cloning issue
at all, although of course there's still people who want
to do things like um open up cloning as a
way to let people have the same pet over and
over and over again, although as we've already discussed, it
(22:25):
would not be the same organism, you know, it would
never be exactly the same even if you got to
look people who like themselves a little bit too much,
like they want to have clones of themselves as their children.
I'm a narcissist, But at the same time, I also
realize what a jerk I am, and I do not
want another version of me around. One is enough. I
don't want to compete with myself. First of all, that
(22:47):
would be exhausting, because I'm awesome. Um, but yeah, it's
that would be something. But but back to the parts
the clones, harror, I mean, ultimately, the reason why that
movie wouldn't work is because there's no purpose to read
reproductive cloning in order to get organs when you can
do therapeutic cloning. It would be Therapeutic cloning would be faster,
it would be uh, you know, it would you wouldn't
(23:09):
have to wait for your clone to grow up to
an age where the organs would actually be useful. You
wouldn't have to feed your clone. You wouldn't have to
keep your clones sequestered from everybody else so that your
clone wouldn't realize that, you know, it was just an
organ farm. And that's it. I mean, you know, you
don't have the ethical issue of I guess that idea
of kills to people who just gratuitously enjoy murders. Yeah,
(23:32):
I suppose so, uh, you know, and again, like you're
talking about a film that when it was made therapeutic
cloning wasn't really something that people were thinking about. They
they were you know, if you were talking about clones,
you were talking about the whole body, not like we
can just clones. We can clone you, so we get
some celves, so we can grow a heart. That heart
would grow, it would just grow inside the body of
of a of a human that had all the other
(23:55):
organs as well, So you know that would never happen. Well,
I'm excited about the things we're gonna learn about cloning
in the near future. Yeah, that that should be really
learning things like more about you know, the reasons why
cloned life forms have shorter lifespans or the reasons why
(24:16):
they tend to have more genetic problems. Might teach us
more about those genetic problems so that we can address
them in and you know otherwise what otherwise would be
healthy individuals. So there's a lot of things to learn medically. Uh,
there's also more to learn about again using adult stem
cells or even other uh completely alternative means of going
(24:39):
about creating artificial organs that somehow have a more likely
acceptance rate than just your average donor, or just to
really address that massive disparity between the demand and the
supply of organs. So there's there's definitely some really important
stuff that we can learn and uh, you know it's
(25:01):
it's While it is a very controversial subject, I think
it's one that's important to to study and not just
run away from. Right. So, um, I completely understand the
ethical concerns. I don't necessarily agree with all of them. Um,
but then my ethics are probably different from you know,
your ethics, Joe. So I just have to come to
(25:21):
something I don't. I don't. I'm just making an assumption
that they're not exactly aligned with mine. I think it's
only okay to clone one human, and that human's Tim Curry.
I can get behind that. There can never be too
much Tim Curry. You know. I think I'm gonna go
and do a Tim Curry movie marathon. I'm gonna start with, um,
(25:44):
the Shadow, and then i'll probably I'll probably move over
to Clue. You know, you got a rocky horror goes
in there, but it'll you can't put that first or second, right,
that's this maybe a third maybe, and um, I don't know.
Home Alone will be in there somewhere. I think it's
actually home alone too. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you're right. Yeah.
So anyway, while while I'm planning out my Tim Curry
(26:04):
this has much to do with cloning, well we're cloning Curry. Um.
While I'm planning that out, I want to recommend to
all our listeners make sure you go and check out
our website. That's f W Thinking dot com. That's where
you can find all the blog post, podcasts, you can
find videos, you can find lots of information about the
future right there. We've worked really hard on it. We're
(26:24):
really proud of it, so go check it out, and
remember you can join in the conversation by finding us
on our various social feeds. We are on Facebook and
Twitter with the handle f W Thinking. So check us out,
say hi, we'll say hello back, and we will talk
to you again really soon. For more on this topic
(26:46):
and the future of technology, visit forward thinking dot com,
brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places,
Fw:Thinking News
Hosts And Creators
Jonathan Strickland
Joe McCormick
Lauren Vogelbaum
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