Cloning=Bad

Chris Burford cburford at gn.apc.org
Fri Jul 6 15:57:34 PDT 2001


A major blow to the reductionist capitalist myths around genetic science: that there are simple deterministic relations between genetic structure and phenotype of individuals, and that the field is ripe for commodification and the creation of new capitalist markets.

On the contrary, as research develops, it becomes increasingly clear that one process interacts with another and another. A system of production that can take advantage of these new possibilities without doing violence to the quality of human life or the quality of the environment, cannot be one in which decisions are controlled only by the owners of capital.

Chris Burford

London

At 05/07/01 22:20 -0400, you wrote:
>I'm not one to oppose all biotechnology and genetic engineering--I think
>there may be practical uses in at least some of these--but on cloning, I'm
>not too sure---this article is interesting though:
>
>Public release date: 5-Jul-2001
>
>http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2001-07/wifb-nss070301.php
>
>Contact: Nadia Halim
>halim at wi.mit.edu
>617-258-9183
>Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research
>
>New study shows normal-looking clones may be abnormal
>Scientists have found the first evidence to show that even seemingly
>normal-looking clones may harbor serious abnormalities affecting gene
>expression that may not manifest themselves as outward characteristics. The
>findings, reported in the July 6 issue of Science by researchers at the
>Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research and University of Hawaii,
>confirm the previous suspicion that reproductive cloning is not only
>inefficient, but may actually be unsafe.



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