Adonis Diaries

Cloning therapy: not a science fiction (January 29, 2009)

This is no longer the realm of science fictions: you can repair any sick organ with cloning parts and if you are rich you can extend your life to 150 years.  We don’t need male sperms to clone a complete entity, human or animal.  We don’t need a female nucleus in eggs to clone a complete entity, human or animal.  Soon, we won’t need female eggs; labs would be able to manufacture the “pouch” or envelop of the female egg.  It is going to take some time before human invest on research to circumvent female uterus for incubating fetuses during nine months.  There are human clones on earth. 

Italian gynecologist Severino Antinori announced publicly in 2003 that he has cloned three babies; he was forced to recant and moved his business to Ukraine.  There are many professional institutions cloning human, for a price, after they have been cloning favorite pets of the rich and famous.  No State or institution is about to go public on human cloning; they don’t have to, they just do it.

Let us examine the protocol for clone fertilization which is very close to cloning spare parts.  First phase, a female egg is removed; its nucleus, which contains the genetic instructions, is extracted. A male non-sexual cell (generally taken from the skin) is treated to extract its nucleus (containing the DNA) and implanted in the de-nucleated egg.  Let me remind you that the cell can belong to the same female person of the ovary and it would work equally well!  The new egg contains all the DNA information of the donor.

Phase two: A special cocktail of electric shocks and chemicals aid the cell to regress to a primordial cell that replicates.   Phase three is the process called “blastocyst” that can generate either an embryo for fertilization or the production of specialized spare parts of the various organs such as kidney, liver, heart muscle, or even hair.

Phase four cultivates the different organs by immersing the cell “souche” in a “soup” of proteins and enzymes to normally develop and then be transplanted to the sick donor in order to repair the failing organ.

Three main obstacles for assuring complete success have already been conquered. The first hurdle was taming the chaotic replication of cells; the second problem was the immunological aspect where virulent tumors developed in reproduced cells; and the third problem was the longevity of the organ due to the atrophy of the telomeres.

China, Britain, and the USA are publicly leading the research on cloning therapeutic spare part organs but they are the tip of the iceberg; many specialized institutions in Asia, Turkey, Israel, and India are working full time.