[_ Old Earth _] Cloning and Sin...

[Brokendoll]

Adult stem cell research if fine. There is no life being taken. As far as I know embryonic stem cell has not shown any fair results. Where as adult stem cell looks very promising. I was under the impression this was about cloning humans to be human farms. My bad..

Not to stray too far from the topic, but it might be useful to know that what research is being done on embryonic stem-cells is being done on surplus zygotes (pre-faetus cells) from IVF treatments. The surplus ranges in the hundreds of thousands each year and these are zygotes that are marked for destruction anyway. In other words, no potential babies are lost due to stem-cell research.

It is true that adult stem-cells have so far proven to be potentially more useful (mostly because there is less danger of rejection of the tissue) for designing practically applicable treatments of various kinds, but embryonic stem-cells are still a valuable research tool for understanding cell-development.

As for "human-farms" I don't think we need to worry about scenarios such as the one shown in "The Island" any time soon. We already have laws in place to prevent any such scenario, and more will be added as the technology progresses. But, stem-cell based cloned cells have already been used to repair heart tissue in mice, so there is indeed hope that this will lead to life-saving treatments of many kinds.