Viti

edited because my first explanation just sucked

Okay, living donations, until recently were only done between family members due to ethical concerns (.."do no harm..") and fears of organ buying. They then opened it up to non-related donors; friends, coworkers, etc.. Now a very few hospitals are starting to do purely altruistic, stranger to stranger donations. Related living donors still account for over 90% of non cadaver transplants.

I donated to a friend/coworker and had to prove our previous relationship.

Principia

OK, I was refering to altruistic donations, in which case it does seem that anonymity is policy. You are right, of course, in that donations between acquaintances might incur feelings of indebtedness, depression, and other psychological issues.

I also missed your point asking how I would feel if I were conceived solely for someone else's benefit. But of course it all depends on how the family views the issue. If the parents continually reinforce the notion that I was "livestock," then perhaps there are issues. But, really, do parents often tell their children, for instance, that they were born to fulfill some of the parents' personal needs? I guess there is always some utilitarian aspect to conceiving a child. But I am not quite sure how why it should interfere with the mental development of the child.

Viti

Oh and my regret was 100% pain induced...I hurt like hell until the recovery nurse morphined me

Answerer

Demo, lets hope what you say will be the case in the future.

lpetrich

Except that this guy's non-nuclear DNA simply does not exist -- the only non-nuclear DNA in human cells is in mitochondria, tiny structures that act as biochemical fuel cells. The mitochondrial genome is only about 16,600 base pairs long, and it codes for a few proteins and RNA snippets. So mitochondria are nothing to worry about.

There are, however, other problems with cloning. Body cells are effectively somewhat aged, because their chromosomes' ends get trimmed a bit at each division. So a clone may suffer premature aging unless the chromosomes' ends are re-lengthened with an enzyme called "telomerase", which happens to certain special body cells.

The Lone Ranger

Quote:

Oh yeah, and since the cloning process removes the donor's nuclear DNA with the nucleus, it doesn't remove the non-nuclear DNA or RNA or the RNA and DNA in the mitochondrians, which has an effect on the true DNA identity of the clone, it isn't really a perfect match, or a true twin. If the non-nuclear DNA, etc, isn't a close enough match, the whole "clone for spare parts" thing won't work anyway. The only way to beat this problem is to use the eggs of the person desiring to be cloned, and replace the nucleus of the egg with the somal DNA. So, men, you are left out--you can't produce eggs, so you can't be reliably cloned.

Nonsense. Well, actually, it's mostly nonsense. There is apparently some transfer of DNA between the nucleus and the mitochondria during a person's lifetime. Conceivably [no pun intended] this could cause problems if the nuclear DNA is from a person who's unrelated to the person who donates the egg.

It's not my area of expertise, but there are problems with cloning both sexes. As mentioned earlier, the fact that female mammals have two "X" chromosomes while males have only one is a problem for female cloning, because you can get incomplete inactivation of one of the chromosomes, and so complications can arise.

Ideally, you want the donor's nuclear DNA to come from a relatively unspecialized cell. Cells that have differentiated and become very specialized -- like nerve cells, muscle cells, etc. -- have large portions of their nuclear DNA "shut down," and are not good candidates for cloning. [Every cell in your body (except mature red blood cells) has a complete set of nuclear DNA; what makes the cells specialize is that only some of that DNA is expressed in any given cell.]

Female mammals have a fair amount of actively growing, relatively unspecialized cells in the mammary glands, which males, of course, lack. That's one reason why donor cells are often drawn from there, and why females may be easier to clone from a procedural standpoint.

***

As mentioned earlier, most body cells are "programmed" to replicate only so many times. At the end of a strand of nuclear DNA is a "telomere," part of which is snipped off each time the cell divides. When the telomere is gone, the cell no longer divides, typically. One potential problem with cloning from an adult is that you have a young clone with "old" cells.

This could create problems.

Cheers,

Michael

Seeker196

Whatever happened to the idea of some sort of 'telomerase therapy'?

I heard someone was working on it a few years ago as a way to improve the QOL of geriatrics.

Krieger

News update:

Read the entire article.

Krieger

From another article:

Here is the full article.

seesaw

I agree cloning the organs would have a lot more benefit that cloning a human being I still don't see the point of cloning a human.