• Question: when human start to clone each other will we live longer than before

    Asked by omar822 to Anna, Craig, Richard, Shane, Sue on 20 Jun 2011.
    • Photo: Richard Case

      Richard Case answered on 17 Jun 2011:

      If you are talking about about cloning very small parts of humans, like stem cells… then we could find ways of extending our life span, by eliminating genetic diseases and replacing damaged organs.

      If you try cloning a human being as a whole, then this would be very difficult to perfect. I believe they have had some problems when cloning other animals and found that the clones didn’t live very long.

      I can’t be too sure about this though as its not my area of expertise… fingers crossed a scientist from another zone can give you a more definitive answer.

    • Photo: Anna Williams

      Anna Williams answered on 19 Jun 2011:

      Hi Omar822,
      This is an interesting question, and at the moment, the stuff of science fiction, as far as I am aware. I am not an expert in this sort of genetic engineering, and, as Richard says, hopefully a scientist from another zone can help out.

      As Richard says, the cloning of small parts of a human might indeed help people live much longer, as diseases can be eliminated and organs can be replaced. This would allow people who weren’t ‘fully’ cloned to live extended lifespans, and this is quite likely in the near future.
      However, if you’re talking about whole human clones, and IF it worked successfully, then the original person’s genetic code could ‘live’ again and again, every time it was replicated, but the original person’s personality would not, as each new clone would have its own personality (which would probably be quite different to the original person’s, probably as a result of being a clone!), and so the original person could not be seen as living longer.

    • Photo: Sue Carney

      Sue Carney answered on 20 Jun 2011:

      Hi omar822,

      Richard & Anna have given 2 great answers so far and I don’t have too much to add. Expanding on one of the things Anna said though, I’d also add that someone’s personality results from their genes AND their environment, so Anna is spot on in saying that a successfully cloned person would have a different personality since it wouldn’t be possible to exactly recreate the same life conditions of the original person who had been cloned.

      The issue of cloning people also raises lots of important ethical questions that you might want to think about further. How would we treat a cloned individual? Would their rights be the same as someone who wasn’t a clone? (I like to think that they would be, but there’s no knowing what might happen in the future.) One of my favourite writers, Michael Marshall Smith, wrote a brilliant science fiction book on this subject. It’s called ‘Spares.’ More detail here if you want to investigate further: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Spares-Michael-Marshall-Smith/dp/0006512674

      🙂

    • Photo: Shane Pennington-Cooper

      Shane Pennington-Cooper answered on 20 Jun 2011:

      Hello Omar822.

      As it stands now if a human being was cloned, the clone would live a very short lifespan compared to the original clone. The reason is because of telomeres, these are short pieces of DNA which are present at the end of your chromosomes. When a cell is new it has a very long telomere (think of them as little antennaes), as the cell ages these telomeres shorten, when the telomere gets too short the cell will then die. This was the problem with Dolly the cloned sheep. Because the sheep that was to be cloned was older, the donor cell the scientists took would have already had a shortened telomere. When this ‘middle aged’ cell was fertilised and became Dolly, Dolly’s cells were already the age of the ‘mother’ therefore the cells have less time before they die, this gave Dolly a very small life.

      Hope this makes sense.

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