Viewing a single comment thread. View all comments

Goodgoditsgrowing t1_j70t7yb wrote

Reply to comment by Pigs_in_the_Porridge in Back in the late 90s, I remember hearing that scientists “cloned a sheep”. What actually happened with the cloning, and what advancements have been made as a result of that? by foxmag86

More control in the experiment that results in a lack of natural variation, which is vital for understanding how it would impact a population rather than a single individual? I can understand certain aspects it might help, but that seems awfully foolhardy to think it wouldn’t result in such a lack of diversity among study subjects that it’s as if you only had a sample size of one.

−4

Pigs_in_the_Porridge t1_j70xwgr wrote

Well we already have that.

I wasn't privy to their specific research plans but I imagine they had plenty of reasons to try this route. Didn't work anyway.

7

SGTWhiteKY t1_j730yqm wrote

You got it backwards. They want to eliminate the natural variation to test many different formulas for their treatment. Without clones, it is impossibly to be completely sure if the effects of different formulas are caused by them being different formulas, or the each person’s body just reacted differently.

It would be incredible because you could choose a group of monkeys that have genetic traits you want to test, then clone all of them so that you have multiple of the exact same test environment to test different treatments. It would push medicine rapidly.

4