Art. 6(2)(c) of
Directive 98/44/EC, passed by the EU Parliament and Council back in 1998, ruled that, among other things, "uses of human embryos for industrial or commercial
purposes" were to be considered unpatentable because of their being contrary to "ordre public" or morality. After German researcher
Prof. Dr. Oliver Bruestle was granted a
patent concerning a method for creating nerve precursor cells on the basis of embryonic stem cells,
Greenpeace Germany (in German) filed a lawsuit for annulment of the patent. The German Federal Court of Justice then referred to the European Court of Justice the question of whether embryonic stem cell therapy constitutes such a use of human embryos for industrial or commercial purposes, under Directive 98/44/EC.
[more inside]
posted by Skeptic
on May 1, 2011 -
45 comments
The second annual
National Go Topless Protest Day will be held this Sunday, August 23, in various American cities. It happens to be run by
Raelians, members of
a UFO religion founded by Rael, a former French sports-car journalist and test driver born
Claude Vorilhon. (
Coverage of last year's protest in New York City, which is, as one might suspect, NSFW.) Though the current "Go Topless!" site talks more about women's rights than Raelism, in 2004, Raelian women were marching topless not for the legalization of bare breastedness, but
against "the repressive Myth of God." Don't remember the Raelians? This is just the most recent stunt by the publicity-hungry group that
capitalizes on media-friendly controversy: in 2002, during the slow news week between Christmas and New Year's Day,
they announced the creation of the first human clone, gaining what Rael estimated at over $500 million of free media coverage. In an interview, Rael
unabashedly discusses his passion for publicity.
[more inside]
posted by ocherdraco
on Aug 21, 2009 -
63 comments
Passport RFIDs cloned wholesale by $250 eBay auction spree. "Using inexpensive off-the-shelf components, an information security expert has built a mobile platform that can clone large numbers of the unique electronic identifiers used in US passport cards and next generation drivers licenses.
The $250 proof-of-concept device - which researcher Chris Paget built in his spare time - operates out of his vehicle and contains everything needed to sniff and then clone RFID, or radio frequency identification, tags. During a recent 20-minute drive in downtown San Francisco, it successfully copied the RFID tags of two passport cards without the knowledge of their owners."
[Via]
posted by homunculus
on Feb 3, 2009 -
24 comments
BestFriendsAgain.com The Best Friends Again program, sponsored by
BioArts International, is a limited commercial dog cloning program. BioArts is the only entity in the world with both the know-how and the legal right to practice commercial dog and cat cloning. We are auctioning off 5 dog cloning service slots to the general public. We may or may not perform any additional commercial dog cloning services after this auction.
posted by psmealey
on May 22, 2008 -
53 comments
'Virgin birth' method promises ethical stem cells. The technique,
parthenogenesis, manipulates unfertilized eggs to produce short-lived embryos from which stem cells can be obtained. As the article states: "it produces embryos that could never become human beings. So destroying these embryos to obtain stem cells would avoid the ethical concerns that have led to restrictions or bans on embryonic stem cell research in many countries."
posted by jsonic
on Apr 29, 2003 -
19 comments
Dolly is dead. "The type of lung disease Dolly developed is most common in older sheep. And in January 2002, it was revealed that Dolly had developed arthritis prematurely. She was cloned using a cell taken from a healthy six-year-old sheep, and was born on 5 July 1996 at the Roslin Institute, Edinburgh, Scotland."
posted by 111
on Feb 14, 2003 -
20 comments
Cloned Cat Doesn't look and behave like the original cat.Public perception of cloning is clone=original, but we have the proof it isn't always true. Isn't that the proof complex systems doesn't always work like we want, so it'd better to slow down the marketing of genetic engineered food ?
posted by elpapacito
on Jan 21, 2003 -
48 comments
Does the state have the right to kidnap your child, if it doesn't approve of the manner in which you became pregnant? Maybe Clonaid ran a huge hoax, maybe they actually produced a clone -- but their refusal to provide the proof is proving more and more legitimate. Florida Attorney Bernard Siegel is pressing the case that if the child is indeed really a clone, then the state is much more qualified to raise it. Now, reasonable people can disagree on the creepiness of cloning, but isn't the image of jack-booted thugs tearing a child from the arms of her loving mother into the hands of government doctors a whole different level of horror?
posted by effugas
on Jan 11, 2003 -
41 comments
Betting on Mini-Cows "ROCKWELL, Iowa -- Dustin Pillard is betting his farm on compact cows...Pillard has 50 tiny cows on his northern Iowa farm" MEANWHILE..."In a May dispatch from Cuba, the Wall Street Journal reported that Fidel Castro proposed in 1987 to alleviate a chronic milk shortage by trying to get his scientists to clone the most productive cows, shrunk to the size of dogs so that each family could keep one inside it's apartment. The cows would feed on grass grown inside under fluorescent lights."
Now I'd like a mini-polar bear, please, and a mini-elephant, while you're at it...
posted by troutfishing
on Dec 28, 2002 -
18 comments
The Thylacine Museum is a true labour of love. Everything you could possibly want to know about the thylacine (AKA "Tasmanian tiger" or "Tasmanian wolf"). Able to open its mouth
incredibly wide, sit upright on its hind legs
like a kangaroo, and a foremost example of convergent evolution (extremely similar to placental mammals like wolves, yet marsupial), the thylacine was a fascinating animal. Hunted to extinction in less than a hundred years (
or not), a
cloning project is underway to try and resurrect it. This site has everything:
videos, Java-riffic
skull diagrams, pictures of
mummified thylacines who died over 4,000 years ago, and pictures of
Benjamin, the last captive thylacine who died in 1936.
posted by biscotti
on Aug 1, 2002 -
24 comments
What the law show say about cloning. Francis Fukuyama and Robert Wright, who
have written about technology and "societal evolution", discuss the pros and cons of genetic engineering. This is not a discussion about the finer points of technology, but rather the philosophical implications of moving forward.
posted by mkultra
on Jul 12, 2002 -
1 comment
Attack of the Clones (really). The Italian fertility expert (...) said on Wednesday three women were pregnant with clones. In
this interview published in the French daily Le Monde, he also says they will be born between December 2002 and January 2003. What good can we make out of this ?
posted by XiBe
on May 24, 2002 -
9 comments
Attack of the Hollywood Clones Flametracker investigates how some actors are being cloned so that they can work on twice as many projects. See also Julia Roberts and Monica Potter, Keira Knightly and Natalie Portman, Robert Redford and Brad Pitt ...
posted by feelinglistless
on Apr 25, 2002 -
18 comments
Bush and Pro-Lifers call for complete ban on any clone or stem cell research. The movement for a ban got a significant boost Tuesday when Sen. Bill Frist, R-Tenn., said he would support the cloning ban legislation, which the Senate is expected to debate in the weeks ahead. Though not a surprise, the announcement from Frist, a heart-transplant surgeon, is important because his views on medical topics are respected by many in Congress.
"Many are overpromising on the science" benefits that are possible from cloning, Frist told reporters. He also said creating a human embryo "for reason of experimentation leads to destruction of that embryo and to me that is morally unacceptable."
posted by skallas
on Apr 9, 2002 -
26 comments
Men as an endangered species. A woman taking part in a controversial human cloning programme is eight weeks pregnant. Are we heading to an all-female society?
posted by semmi
on Apr 5, 2002 -
28 comments
Kitty Cloning: Texas A & M scientists have cloned a housecat, the "world’s first cloned companion animal". Do we need more cats that badly?
posted by Jos Bleau
on Feb 14, 2002 -
28 comments
Cloning is not monkey business. According to this article there is something fundamentally amiss in the cloning of primates. Do I sense some hot air going out of the balloons of the guys who predicted they'd be cloning humans in the near future?
posted by MAYORBOB
on Dec 12, 2001 -
11 comments
Will members of the religious right pass on smallpox vaccines in the event of an attack? Apparently many of the smallpox vaccines now in use come from work done in 1966 on aborted fetuses – which presents a small dilemma for some anti-abortion conservatives.
"I think this scenario puts pro-lifers in a tough spot, and I'm not sure we need to accept this as the only alternative," Earll said. "We need to call on the government to put more research effort into this before we invest our tax dollars into a vaccine that comes from a tainted source."
Of course these are the same people who oppose potentially life saving research on
stem cells and
cloning. Some think that eventually the religious right will have to make some
hard choices about their stance on fetus research. As scientific research marches on, will potential medical pay offs out weigh moral opposition in the future?
posted by wfrgms
on Nov 29, 2001 -
14 comments
Unstable genes make normal clones unlikely. Dolly the sheep celebrated her fifth birthday yesterday. Most cloned animals aren't so lucky: they rarely reach adulthood, or even birth. Another reason why cloning humans might not be a good idea, "one can't expect to have normal clones - even if they appear healthy, they may have abnormal gene expression."
posted by lagado
on Jul 9, 2001 -
6 comments
