Forum
Human Cloning Foundation Hails British Scientists
Paralyzed
Walk Again
Childless Couples
Essays
The Benefits of
Human Cloning
All the Reasons to
Clone Human Beings
The Top Ten Myths
about Human Cloning
Human Cloning is the Cure for Infertility
Infertility is
a Disease
Books
People
Reports
Archives
Feedback
Donate
Links
Website Links
About Us
Contact Us
Site history
Site Map
Past Books of the Month
John Kunich's Books
Copyright
Illegal Beings: Human Clones
What is it you think your proving?
libfemme ( 04/16/2004, 09:01:02 )Before looking for a "success rate" you have to ask the question, Of what value is such a number? Who cares what the success rate is? Answering that will then tell you how you want to add up the numbers.If you believe that human eggs have "souls" then you would care about the number of embryos that do not result in a live birth. If, however, you do not know any objective means to verify a "soul", then you conceed that it is a religious term and not a medical one. In which case the number is pointless and has no place in a scientific paper. Let me clarify once more before going on.If you believe than a human egg is a human being are you declaring an egg to be a "person." There is no doubt that a human egg is human. All human cells are human. Your blood cells are human. Your bone cells are human. Even chemicals your body produces such as estrogen or insulin can be referred to as "human", that is not the same as declaring human insulin as a "human being". The legal term for human being is a "person", in law only "persons" have civil rights. Biology declares a human egg as human tissue not a huma person. If, on the other hand, you wish to argue that a human egg is in fact a human person then you are following a obsolete and discredited theory of embryology from the 17th century called "Preformation". One school of naturalists from around 1660 claimed that embryo's did not develop into individuas, but that the individual was "preformed" and folded up in the head of the sperm or egg, i.e. the humunculus.(see http://www.biology.ualberta.ca/courses.hp/bio315/generation.htm or any book on the history of biological science.)The modern, accepted theory of inheritance in biology today, however, is called the Chromosome Theory, and it states that all embryos "develop" from a undifferentiated single cell. That haploid cells, i.e. eggs and sperm, and the resulting one cell zygote, are in no way materially different from any undifferentiated somatic cells. In other words an embryo is a stem cell. A baby starts from a stem cell, and so does your liver.If you want to count the efficiency of cloning versus natural conception in producing live births what is it you are trying to prove? What's the point you are trying to make?If your point is that embryos fail develop during cloning then the question has got to be so what? Most embryos fail to develop in any reproductive process. In fact that is one of the fundamental elements in describing natural selection: all organisms overproduce. More offspring are produced than the environment can support. That's the reason a single fruit fly will lay 500 eggs. Not because the environment can support a generation increase of 500 fold per individual female, but because the majority of eggs a fruitfly lays can be expected not to develop into an adult. They are eaten by predators, destroyed in the environments, fail to thrive due to chromsomal abnormalities.The efficiency of fruit fly reproduction looked at from the point of view of number of eggs vs resulting live births is abismal. So what? It is a useful adaptation to its environment.Human beings are, if you follow the accepted theory of biology, animals as well. Human reproduction is also a result of natural selection. Human reproduction is also "wasteful". A female produces millions of eggs as a fetus. Does any one honestly expect that one human female can give birth to a million offspring? Of course not. 99% of those eggs die. By the time a human female reaches puberty she has perhaps 500 eggs. Does any one honestly expect that she can give birth to 500 offspring?It is in the nature of human reproduction that eggs are made in overabundance, that the overwhelming majority will not live to reproduce themselves, that most eggs die. This is not a moral judgement in nature.It is a moral judgement in religion. Certain religions believe that the facts as I have laid them out to you do not exist. That every embryo is a person, ensouled by a God in utero, and therefore the expiration of any embryo is murder. The death of embryos in vivo are irrelevant because they are invisible to the egg of such people and also to their imagination. The embryo in vitro, however, is visible by microscope and assumed to be created by God as viable.The question is, do any more eggs fail to result in a live birth in vitro than fail to result in a live birth in vivo? Because if the number is the same, one can assume that it is not the petri dish, the microscope, or the scientist that is causing the "death" of embryo but chromosomal imperfections which occur naturally in over 50% of all naturally conceived embryos.If you want to compare ratios of embryos to live birth between natural conceptions and cloning, then first discover what is the natural ratio. For humans, the best estimate is to look at what physicans call "fertility" in humans. A doctor will tell a couple that the medical definition of infertility in humans is "after 1 year of active trying no viable pregnancy results." Since the average woman ovulates 12 times a year, that translates into "it is with the normal ranges of human fertility for 11 out of 12 eggs not to result in a live birth."Very often women trying to conceive will take a home pregnancy test which measures human growth hormones levels which begin as soon after fertilization of an egg and sperm. However, all such tests warn women NOT to take the test until a week AFTER their period is expected. Why? Because if she takes it earlier she may get a "false positive". What in the world is a false positive? Is she pregnant or not? A false positive occurs when conception takes place, a embryo starts to divide and in so doing makes human growth hormone which can result in a woman retaining water, which makes her breast sore, and which can give her nausa, "morning sickness". It also shows up positive on a home pregnancy test. However the medical definition of a pregnancy is AFTER implantation. If the embryo does not implant in the uterus there is no pregnancy.What happens is very, very often a couple will attempt to conceive and have unprotected sex. An egg and a sperm in fact meet and fertilize. The embryo starts to develop. HGH is produced. But then, for some reason the embryo does not attach to the uterine wall, the embryo withers and dies. In the overwhelming majority of cases the cause is chromosomal abnormalities. Chromosomal abnormalities are also the major cause of miscarriages as well.It is very possible, even likely for a couple to concieve 11 times in a row and yet not result in a viable pregnancy until the 12th time. That is within the normal definition of normal fertility for humans. That means nature can make 11/12 failure rate in embryos.So if you take that defective egg and/or that defective sperm out of the human body and put them in a petri dish does that do anything to them to improve upon that failure rate? No it does not.The failure rate of cloning is the failure rate of "REPRODUCTION" in general. If you are going to distinguish cloning as reproductive method it is unethical to attribute to the procedure all of the defects that are in reproduction in general. Again what is this "success rate" number you are askin for? What is the meaning of this number?If you want to take the number of eggs, versus the number of resulting viable embryos and SUBSTRACT the failure rate of natural fertilization, then you may have a number that relates solely to cloning. There again, a better comparison might be to compare cloning rates to other assisted reproduction rates such as artifical insemination.Are the rates for cloning different for the rates for artificial insemination, a procedure also done in vitro? In IVF success rates vary hugely from clinic to clinic but can be only 20-30% per treatment cycle - even when implanting many embryos.Is that too high a rate? Too high for what? For a couple desperate to have a baby, no cost is too high. Parents sacrfice for their children. They forego immediate consumption to save for college. A parent will go into a burning building and risk their life for their child. Normal, fertile couples will try 2, 3 maybe 4 months to get pregnant. Have you ever heard of a woman trying one month to get pregnant and then giving up, saying the cost is too high? We'll remain childless?No one in society would consider that sensible. Couples can try for years to have a baby naturally. How many embryos are destroyed in that process? Or what if the couple does not decide to have children, what happens to all those eggs that a woman decides not to fertilize? How many eggs does the average nun "destoy" in her lifetime by refusing to become a mother?The number of eggs versus live births is a ridiculous and irrelevant number. The only people who have an interest in such a number are animal breeders, for whom the quantity of animals represents monetary profit. If, however, your interest in not in "selling" children but in acquiring a biological family as humans have instinctually desired for thousands of years, then it doesn't matter how long it takes, or how many eggs are absorbed back into a woman's body before that one perfect baby is born.
This Message is being posted for educational purposes, as well as for comment and criticism, by the visitors to the HumanCloning.org Foundation website (www.HumanCloning.org ).
Disclaimer: Information provided on this web site is for educatonal purposes only. It is not a substitute for, nor can it replace advice from your own physician.
HumanCloning.org™ Established December 11, 2002.
Who's Afraid of Human Cloning?
Disease Prevention and Treatment