Freethought & Rationalism Archive

pz · 01-09-2003, 05:41 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Doubting Didymus

If you want to know whether there is more to the development of an organism than "just" DNA, talk to PZ. He just can't stop talking about it.

Since you brought it up...

There's an interesting article on Salon titled "Fun with Pig Clones". It's an interview with a grad student at Texas A&M who has done the obvious experiment: they've cloned a couple of litters of pigs that are all genetically identical, and then evaluated their personalities to see how much variation was present. There aren't a lot of details in this interview (we'll have to wait for the real article to come out in Applied Animal Behaviour Science), but it sounds like they are finding significant differences.

I'll just quote a few bits, since I think this is one of the Salon Premium articles and you won't get to read it all without a subscription:

Quote:

There were very different personalities in all the pigs, which is typical of pigs. One liked to play with people, and one didn't. One clone really liked to play with my 11-year-old son, just romp all over the pasture with him, and chase him like a little dog would. And the other pigs didn't want anything to do with him.

We did other trials, too -- food preference. That showed a lot of variation. Some would eat one particular type of food that some others wouldn't want anything to do with, and it was all fairly similar to what you'd see in a typical population of pigs.

Quote:

So, this suggests that the hope that people have that if their dog dies, and then they have it cloned, it's going to be their same dog, is just a fantasy.

There's no basis for that all. If I clone Elvis, will he come back and sing? Probably not. He probably won't even have Elvis' hips.

It's not an article with a lot of meat to it, but it's entertaining -- it starts off with references tto the cloning episode of the Simpons, and ends with a little laughter at those wacky Raelians.

The Lone Ranger · 01-09-2003, 07:20 PM

Granted, not everyone's a biologist, but given the fact that the human genome doesn't contain nearly enough information to specify the precise layout of the human nervous system, I'm surprised that anyone could seriously believe that a clone would be an exact duplicate of the original.

Heck anyone who knows two identical twins well knows that they aren't truly identical, either physically or mentally.

As Dawkins likes to say, DNA is a recipe, not a blueprint.

Cheers,

Michael

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01-09-2003, 07:20 PM	#2
The Lone Ranger Veteran Member Join Date: Oct 2001 Location: Eastern U.S. Posts: 1,230	Granted, not everyone's a biologist, but given the fact that the human genome doesn't contain nearly enough information to specify the precise layout of the human nervous system, I'm surprised that anyone could seriously believe that a clone would be an exact duplicate of the original. Heck anyone who knows two identical twins well knows that they aren't truly identical, either physically or mentally. As Dawkins likes to say, DNA is a recipe, not a blueprint. Cheers, Michael

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