A Bone to Pick About Cloning
As a reader of about 55 years or so who doesn’t work out much, but takes a glucosamine tablet or two, I thoroughly enjoyed the April 4 editorial, “In Cloning, Don’t Think Big.”
Rather than using the remarkably fresh and elastic cells found within the bone of a 70-million-year-old dinosaur fossil for experiments in cloning ancient life-forms, we should consider their application to enhancing and preserving the quality of existing lives.
Your quick reference to those of us who lack proper exercise and need to take nutritional supplements hints at the possible medical discoveries to be found within these ancient bones.
Promising treatments for human diseases have been found in ancient caves and primordial swamps.
Perhaps it’s time to carefully crack open a few more ancient bones and see what new knowledge awaits us within them.
Hal Seligson
Langley, Wash.
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I find the discovery of soft tissues in the fossilized remains of a Tyrannosaurus rex a very exciting prospect, indeed.
The chances for mapping the DNA of such a creature are greatly enhanced.
Science will make a giant leap in understanding the genetics of these mystical creatures and perhaps be able to apply the knowledge gained to help upgrade the human condition.
Yet you weigh in on the side of ignorance when it comes to the possibilities of the cloning of these creatures at some time in the future.
Yes, there are certainly pitfalls in any operation that presumes to redo what nature has seen fit to undo.
I will not say that there have not been mistakes made in the past, as you point out with your example of the Africanized bees.
But to dismiss out of hand the possibilities of cloning one of these extinct beasts is pandering to the fears of the uninformed.
Surely it will take stringent safeguards should an attempt be made, and I would be among those who advocate the stricter, the better.
Yet to deny the opportunity would be to deny human nature.
We are most curious creatures ourselves.
To say “absolutely no” to all cloning attempts using this ancient genetic material would, in all probability, be useless anyway. Someone will try it. For the same reason that some of us will continue to die on the cold plains of an unforgiving planet like Mars or in the vastness of outer space as we continue our explorations there, even though it has been proved time and again that it is safer to send robots to do that job.
We do it because we have to.
Douglas C. Struzik
Ontario
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Researchers have discovered soft tissue from a 70-million-year-old Tyrannosaurus rex fossil, and the most intelligent analysis The Times can come up with is that dinosaurs should not be cloned and left to run free, just like in “Jurassic Park”? Whoa! Easy there!
Intact chromosomes can’t be isolated from 70-million-year-old tissue. We’ve been through this with the wooly mammoth, which existed much, much more recently.
No scientist with intact brain cells is recommending we even try to clone dinosaurs, much less open a theme park.
Would The Times write a cautionary editorial if someone made a movie about scientists cloning Christ from the Shroud of Turin and unwittingly bringing on the Apocalypse?
Hey, wait a minute. I’ve never actually written a screenplay before, but....
Frank Skraly
Watertown, Mass.
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It was comforting to know that The Times is willing to draw a few lines when it comes to scientific research, advocating that the recently discovered dinosaur tissue not be used to clone these ancient creatures.
However, when it comes to human cloning, such as the cloning of human embryos for research under the auspices of Proposition 71, the stem cell initiative, The Times is totally in favor of implementing the very same technique.
Priorities are skewed when human perfection is at issue.
Debra Greenfield
Fellow, Institute onBiotechnology and the Human Future, Malibu
