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Cloned rhesus monkey lives to adulthood for first time
- willtemperley 3y agoUsing cloned monkeys for medical research is dystopian.
- karamanolev 3y agoWhy is it more or less dystopian than using non-cloned monkeys for research? Genuine question.
- readthenotes1 3y agoIn this experiment, it sounds like they are killing naturally created monkeys for their placenta
- inglor_cz 3y agoI had the impression that they cultivate placentas from "normal" (non-cloned) IVF-like embryos, which are nevertheless not-yet-monkeys.
- NoZebra120vClip 3y agoWhat are monkey embryos, if not monkeys, and at what point do they transmute into monkeys?
- inglor_cz 3y agoIsn't an analogical question a major flashpoint of culture wars in the US?
- karamanolev 3y agoIn this experiment particularly, yes, but I would bet the original comment was referring to "The new technique could unlock possibilities for using cloned primates in drug testing and behavioural research." I was asking why using cloned primates for testing is better or worse than using naturally created monkeys. The research could be potentially better (more consistent results), but are the monkeys suffering less or more? Not clear to me.
- timschmidt 3y agoMore consistent results are great, so long as they're representative of the whole, which becomes decreasingly likely as the group of test subjects approaches a monoculture.
- sam_goody 3y agoThere is the image of the dystopian ruler who has armies full of cloned, modified, thoughtless soldiers. Let's see how realistic that is: - Despot rulers who would create such an army if they could: Check - Despot rulers with VAST resources and abilities: Check - Gene editing to make the soldier you want: Check - Ability to clone primates and generate massive look-alike copies of earlier creation: Check - All sorts of steroids and drugs to make them that much more effective and obedient: Check ... Hmm, looks like there is no chance of this ever happening. Just science fiction. Maybe I should stop watching so many movies.
- Terr_ 3y agoI'd counter with: 1. Despot rulers with the willingness and ability to pre-pay for 18+ years of care, feeding, education, etc. for an uncertain long-term outcome: Very unlikely. 2. Technology for somehow skipping all of that to pop out functional adults straight out of pods: Nowhere any time soon. _________ The first item reminds me of a fiction quote, although the story (in this case) doesn't involve cloning: > “The Barrayarans are all so army-mad,” she explained. “I always like to put [the recovered bodies] back in their uniforms. They mean so much to them. I’m sure they’re more comfortable with them on.” > Ferrell frowned uneasily. “I still think he ought to be dumped with the rest of the garbage.” > “Not at all,” said the medtech. “Think of all the work he represents on somebody’s part. Nine months of pregnancy, childbirth, two years of diapering, and that’s just the beginning. Tens of thousands of meals, thousands of bedtime stories, years of school. Dozens of teachers. And all that military training, too. A lot of people went into making him.” -- Aftermaths by Lois McMaster Bujold
- inglor_cz 3y ago"Despot rulers with the willingness and ability to pre-pay for 18+ years of care, feeding, education, etc. for an uncertain long-term outcome: Very unlikely." Authoritarian countries actually understand the problem and spend a lot of money on indoctrination of youth. See: Hitlerjugend. Baldur von Schirach, the leader of HJ, was one of the most important people in the Nazi hierarchy and later served 20 years in Spandau prison. No one expects 100 per cent results, but if you instill certain bigotry and obedience in a large subset of said kids, it is usually enough for the regime to thrive. In the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic, where I grew up, it was somewhat complicated to avoid all the Communist youth organizations, and your non-membership would handicap you during university admissions etc. (Possibly to the degree of never being able to study at all.) I think that, on balance, it would still be advantageous for authoritarian countries to produce kids in vitro and just assign them forcibly to parents. It has proven extraordinarily complicated to push people to procreate, but once the child is born in some lab and you are simply given no choice but to take care of it under threat of punishment, it is a different story. This kind of coercion is closer to the usual standard. China especially has a huge demographic problem and this would be an attractive solution for Xi et al.
- corethree 3y agoIf I was dying of cancer which there's a good chance this would happen to any of us and cloned monkeys helps with cancer research I would welcome it because I don't want to die. Honestly I would welcome human cloning too if it meant a cure for cancer. The choice only seems controversial because none of you are dying yet. Once you're dying then the answer becomes more clear.
- giraffe_lady 3y agoNever Let Me Go
- corethree 3y agoSaw it. Very sad. Almost cried. Still would do it. And so would most ppl.
- giraffe_lady 3y ago"Everyone would do this atrocity that I fantasize about doing" I am here to tell you that no. This is not a normal thing to want to do and most people don't want to do it.
- corethree 3y agoFor survival, for my own life, I would. It's not a fantasy or something I enjoy. It's just a realistic self awareness I have about my own priorities. Most people would kill to save their own lives.
- giraffe_lady 3y agoYou're trying to make it sound like self defense but we're talking about keeping slaves to harvest their organs.
- corethree 3y ago
- LAC-Tech 3y agoNice headline, until you realise how many dead cloned baby rhesus monkeys there must have been.
- Qem 3y ago> When researchers cloned long-tailed macaques in 2018, they created 109 cloned embryos and implanted nearly three-quarters of them into 21 surrogate monkeys, resulting in six pregnancies. Just two of the monkeys survived birth. Indeed the survival stats for cloning are abysmal.
- greggsy 3y agoI have not idea what the survival rates for a healthy monkey might be, or even an embryo for that matter, so I’m unsure what to make of these figures.
- mdorazio 3y agoThis likely has far more to do with IVF than with cloning. In humans, IVF is only 20-30% successful on the first attempt and these days it’s strongly recommended to only try one embryo at a time. Based on the numbers quoted it looks like they did 5 at a time per monkey which decreases survival rates even more. Add in average miscarriage rates in humans of 10-20% (increases with age) and this experiment doesn’t look all that bad to me.
- o11c 3y ago¾ of 109 embryos across 21 mothers is 3.8 embryos per mother. For human miscarriage rates, remember it depends heavily on how far along the pregnancy is: 70% of conceptions lead to miscarriage 50% of implantations lead to miscarriage 30% of aggressively confirmed pregnancies lead to miscarriage 15% of typical confirmed pregnancies lead to miscarriage
- anarticle 3y agoThis protocol seems unlikely to pass IACUC (Institutional Animal Care and Use Committees) at US universities. That is the usual check to animal experimentation in the US. Biggest primate work in US is behavioral stuff, we stopped doing grisly primate things after In general, IACUC exists to review protocols that use animals. The burden of proof is on the scientist to prove that work cannot be done by cell lines, and sometimes it results in less animals or redesign to use cell lines. If you do end up using animals, you have to prove make sure your protocol is taking proper care of them. This includes pain meds, heating pads, post surgery care, etc. They are not a rubber stamp committee, I have seen labs shut down over discovered animal abuse and put on pretty extreme probationary measures at major institutions. It was in fashion in the 2010s to move animal experimentation especially for non rat/mouse stuff to China through partnerships. AMA if you've any IACUC/animal experimentation questions, I worked in that field for ~10y. Strangely IACUC as a concept was formed closely after the Penn primate experiment video leak... IACUC: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institutional_Animal_Care_and_Use_Committee https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institutional_Animal_Care_and_... Penn primate experiments: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unnecessary_Fuss https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unnecessary_Fuss
- wegfawefgawefg 3y agoSoon we can all have the symmetrically faced, 169 IQ, optimal respiratory system, cancer/diabetes/neurological disease free super children that we want.
- GrumpySloth 3y ago1. How is cloning going to lead to it? 2. I don’t see anything wrong with that. I would have preferred to be born without inheriting neurological disfunctions common in my family.
- doublerabbit 3y ago1: If we can reproduce living bodies from a clone, that enables us to modify the growing process, cells by alteration of DNA before that growth has occurred. If we understand that gene "xyxyyyxx" controls the colour of the eyes, and "xyxyyyxx-y" turns them blue. You could inject that code just before the eyes have been been developed. 2. How is it natural for a child not to have parents? The psychologically repercussions of are unfair and upsetting. Not including many ethical problems and environmental issues. Who's going to look after them? Care for them, live with them? Or is it - "here's your blankie, welcome to life, good luck"? If folk found out you were a clone you would be an outcast. We have freakouts over folks who wish to have biological changes, identifying genders and the like. Why would a clone be more accepted?
- medstrom 3y agoOk sure, you're saying that clone tech implies the ability to modify the developmental process, or at least enables finer research towards that end. But it rubs me somewhat wrong when you write as if all clones would have had that done to them. Ok, I suppose it's likely, but it's not the same thing. Maybe we should find a more specific term like "custom clone" or just "custom people".
- GrumpySloth 3y ago2: I thought wegfawefgawefg was talking about prenatal genetic alterations to normal children. I don’t think anyone would treat anyone differently based on that, similar to how noone treats IVF children differently - the things happening at that stage seem to only lead to judgemental treatment of parents, not children. And the parenting issue in this case doesn’t exist obviously, since it’s solved like for any other child.
- senkora 3y agoFor the purposes of scientific trials, I wonder if it would be easier to find ways to induce twinning in utero. I suspect that a trial of 50 pairs of identical twin rhesus monkeys would generalize better than a trial of 100 identical rhesus monkeys.