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Illegal Beings: Human Clones
Cloning, Stem Cell, SCNT?
libfemme ( 06/04/2004, 18:00:39 )What's the difference between therapuetic cloning (and reproductive cloning is also therapuetic), stem cell therapies, somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT)?Nothing.But the word cloning, which has a scientific use (making a copy of a gene, or genes)has been used by Hollywood in a very unscientific way to mean a robot that looks human but is controlled like a puppet by its maker.A stem cell is the name of the type of cell that can be "cloned" or copied. Not all cells normally multiply. Your skin cells live for a time and then just die. They don't make new skin cells to replace them. Stem cells underneath the skin layers are continually growing, multiplying and hence making new skin cells.If cloning is the verb, stem cells are the nouns.Somatic cell nuclear transfer refers a method of taking the genes from one cell which does not normally reproduce and inserting them into the type of cell that does normally reproduce. In other words taking the genes from a skin cell and putting them in a stem cell.The other way to get a skin cell to reproduce is to reverse it back to a stem cell. That's what they are talking about when they refer to "adult stem cell" therapies.Since Hollywood has redefined clone to be a "robot", supporters have abandoned the word and instead use stem cells or SCNT in order to get people to listen to the procedure instead of kneejerk react to the Starwars Episodes.The damage George Lucas has done to the word cloning, the rest of Hollywood is now trying to undo by using the words Stem Cells. About time. What I find amazing is that so many people can get their "science" out of horror and adventure fiction. But then education, at least in the US, has been appallingly lacking in science education.
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