Columns:: Worth Repeating

since 12/15/98

Columns::November 5, 2001

Worth repeating

Steven Stice, an Eminent Scholar in animal and dairy sciences at UGA, delivered the Center for Humanities and Arts “Science for Humanists” lecture last month. He discussed “The Implications of Cloning for the Future of Human Beings.” Some excerpts:
“There is great potential in cloning animals. One of the things that I think is of great importance is cloning cattle for producing pharmaceuticals in their milk. These cattle [pictured on screen] are producing human serum albumen today. They’re producing it in gram quantities in their milk through genetic engineering and cloning technology, and this will go on the market I believe in the next five years. There is currently a great need for human serum albumen. It’s a product that’s used as a blood replacer--it extends the blood’s volume. There’s about 450 metric tons of it used worldwide today, and it’s a $1.5 billion market. Today it’s obtained from donated human blood. It’s fractionated and isolated from that donated human blood, but there are concerns about the quality of that as well as transmitting human diseases to the recipient. . .
“To summarize briefly what we think the future uses of cloning are: cloning and genetic technologies will be able to knock out genes--say the gene that’s responsible for mad-cow disease--and improve animal agriculture. . . . There’s quite a bit of interest in cloning to save endangered species. All non-domestic wild cats are endangered or threatened, and wouldn’t it be wonderful to be able to use a technology like cloning to save those Florida panthers? We know quite a bit about the embryology in cats by studying the domestic cat, and it’s thought that some day we’ll be able to use eggs from a domestic cat to clone a Florida panther. And that technology is moving quite rapidly. . . .”

--Beth Roberts

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