Rants & Raves
Redefining Nuclear Family
The ethical and commercial issues in human cloning depend in part on resolving its biggest biological problem - namely, safety ("(You)2," Wired 9.02, page 120). Writer Brian Alexander misleads readers by pointing to the admirable safety record of in vitro fertilization. With IVF, complications often arise early in pregnancy, before viability of the offspring or the appearance of any risk factors that could affect the mother. However, in mammalian cloning, miscarriage occurs late in pregnancy, which is much more dangerous for the mother. Further, Alexander fails to address the effect of cloning processes on cell growth: The few cloned animals that survive pregnancy frequently have overgrowth disorders. These parallel certain human syndromes, which raises the concern that cloned humans may have a significant risk for childhood cancers and birth defects. The measures of success in cloning and IVF are, for the same reason, poorly comparable, as successfully achieving pregnancy in cloning may not result in a healthy mother and child.
The major hurdle is therefore not nuclear manipulation techniques - which are, as indicated in the article, well established - but understanding how to reset the information in the cell nucleus. The dynamic component of nuclear information that needs to be reset is not the DNA sequence itself - DNA is designed to be as inert a storage device as possible, requiring that its information be extracted by a more fluid system. This fluid system is what Alexander refers to as "mammalian imprinting," or more generally as epigenetic regulatory processes. The success of animal cloning has so far depended on largely empirical approaches to epigenetic reprogramming. Until a more thorough understanding of this epigenetic regulation is achieved, human cloning can't be offered in a responsible manner by any practitioner, whatever the ethical consensus.
John M. Greally
jgreally@aecom.yu.edu
Someone should gently break it to Marion Vuchetich that cloning won't bring back her son, Matthew - at least not in the way she thinks it will. We know this because there are already clones walking among us: identical twins, who are nature's clones. What we learn from twins, triplets, et cetera, is that even if we were to clone a new human from the remains of a dead one, this wouldn't ensure that the new person would actually be the old person. Even those with no religious beliefs will have to come up with some rational explanation for the fact that each human being has a separate self-awareness. Those with religious beliefs already know that our bodies come from dust and to dust they return. It all gets recycled - cloning is just a novel way of recycling - and we're just looking for humanness in all the wrong places.
Marc A. Schindler
marcschindler@home.com
Do the math: (You)2 is still "you" - singular.
2(you) is "two you."
James Mahoney
james@really-virtual.com
Technology aside, the limiting factor in human cloning is the number of willing surrogate mothers available. Those who like to stay awake nights worrying can give added scope to their anxieties by brooding over the possibilities offered by interspecies embryo transfer. Experiments that use one species as a surrogate mother to another are already being carried out with some endangered animals. Imagine using cattle to provide surrogate wombs for human embryo clones.
Robert Burdick
rburdick@rochester.rr.com
The arguments for cloning given by the subjects of "(You)2" were embarrassingly egotistical and downright primitive. If Nathan Myhrvold feels the cloning opposition is "just another form of racism," what would he think of couples who spend all of their money on years of IVF treatments only to end up the impoverished parents of octuplets? And what about those who would rather go to Russia and adopt a white baby with fetal alcohol syndrome than a healthy black one born close to home? Either humans are the height of evolution or we're just like every other animal. If we're the best there's ever been, surely we can look beyond piddling genetic ties and show genuine altruism for the masses of babies needing adoption. But if we're no better than dogs in the street, we shouldn't be allowed to clone. Aspiring Dr. Moreaus, selfish parents, and shady, unnamed biotechnicians are the fools who are going to keep this great technology underground and illegal for the next half-century.
Seth Nesen
hypercritic@hotmail.com
Intercontinental Divide
America's ideologically driven fear of "state interference" has allowed its corporations to be far more intrusive and abusive than any European government would dare to be ("How Europe Can Stop Worrying and Learn to Love the Future," Wired 9.02, page 102). As you are finding out the hard way, basic services like electricity are not effectively supplied by market forces alone. Blind faith in science and technology may have made US citizens richer than we are in Europe, but rather than curing your diseases it has made you world leaders in obesity, mental illness, and drug dependency.
Your way of life is killing you: More of you are in prison, in debt, and in therapy than anywhere in the world. More of you just plain kill one another. Each of you produces three times more pollution than Europeans do. To think that having more money makes all of this OK is moronic. There is more to human freedom than shopping, more to compassion than lower taxes, and more to security than bigger guns. Why don't Americans get this? It's Europeans who look over the water and mutter, "What a bunch of losers."
Simon Evans
simon@evans.sh
I enjoyed Misha Glenny's article on the European zeitgeist, but beg to differ when he says, "For outsiders to become French citizens, they must renounce ties with their original culture and accept the French Constitution and, above all, the French language." I became a French citizen two years ago, and no one asked anything of me beyond fulfilling the residency requirement. I didn't have to give up my American citizenship or renounce anything. The French Constitution is a mystery to me, and my French is merely serviceable. There is no swearing-in ceremony - simply a governmental stamp and a bottle of champagne at home (optional). My French wife became an American citizen 10 years ago, and I can assure you that process is far more demanding. Do I detect a slight anti-Continental bias in the London-based author?
Richard Dailey
dailey@afterart.com
An otherwise fine article fails to reveal the transformations that have been taking place in the very heart of Eastern Europe. In Tallinn, Estonia, as I write, more than 7,000 inhabitants are using their cell phones to get on the Web and pay for street parking. With 2000 Internet penetration at 38 percent and an official initiative to beat Finland's online access by 2003 and become number one in Europe, E-stonia is set to kick the crap out of the slow-moving Western European countries before they notice it even exists. The other two Baltic states follow closely, Lithuania scrambling to introduce a government-wide e-procurement system this year, and Latvia building a set of G2B and G2C WAP-based services.
Having broken out of the Soviet Union 10 years ago, the Balts don't seem to be burdened with the European way of doing things. A cold shoulder from the EU naturally prompted them to follow the American path, resulting in less regulated and more rapidly developing e-nvironments (the largely liberal Lithuanian parliament has just rejected an ecommerce law on the grounds that it was too restrictive - compare this to the endless EU struggles to protect the consumer from himself). With the Internet rendering traditional borders obsolete, Eastern European countries may soon stop worrying about being admitted to the grand but sluggish Fortress Europe and instead may concentrate on sharpening their digital teeth for future guerrilla blitzkriegs abroad.
Aldas Kirvaitis
aldas@metasite.net
Misha Glenny's statement, "The familiar list of complaints goes on: excessive state interference ...," could easily be seen in an article about the Microsoft antitrust suit. It is infuriating to read such a pompous article about the state of the European economy. Perhaps the US is light-years ahead of a neolithic European economy, but there is no need for journalism that leads to exactly the sort of patronizing attitude that the article complains about.
Henry Gladwyn
egladwyn@btinternet.com
Dragonheart
I've been fascinated by articles like Erik Davis' "Forging the Dragonslayer" (Wired 9.02, page 136). As a tech writer-translator, I'm bemused by the ambiguities that metallurgists indulge in, unlike other, more explicit engineers I've worked with. Metallurgy is mostly science, but it seems partly (perhaps the part that really matters) instinct and intuition.
Melding the rigors of science with the romance of Germanic myth is lots of fun, but potentially a little misleading. Perhaps it was unintentional, but Davis' otherwise excellent piece draws a line from the ancient Germanic smiths who forged Beowulf's blade and Siegfried's sword to Martens' introduction of the modern steel-making process. He seems to ignore the fact that the Celts were probably making folded steel swords as early as 800 BC in Hallstatt, Austria. It was undoubtedly a Celtic smith who fashioned the magical Excalibur. One of the fantastical aspects for the early Saxons and other Germanic types was their fascination with the wonderful swords they did not - at least at first - know how to make themselves.
Sue Ellen Wright
sewright@neo.rr.com
Photorealism
"At trade shows I can just hide my badge," says Alan Cox, Linus Torvalds' main man ("Lieutenant Kernel," Wired 9.02, page 79), "and only the right people bother me." Not anymore: Nice photo!
Jeff Berman
jberman@a-g.com
Brightest Dark Ages
Thanks for "Drowning Out the Stars" (Infoporn, Wired 9.02, page 88). The loss of the night sky is one of modern society's great tragedies. Thankfully, this loss does not have to be permanent. Regaining the beauty of the night's darkness is simply a matter of choice and action. The effort to win it back is being led by a rapidly growing organization called the International Dark-Sky Association (www.darksky.org). For a nominal annual fee, members can participate in the effort to provide adequate lighting for human needs while protecting the environment. The wonder of the stars and the Milky Way are meant for each and every one of us to experience directly.
Kevin Marvel
marvel@aas.org
The Long March
Wiring China is easy ("Betting on Bandwidth," Wired 9.02, page 144). The Chinese are very good at construction projects. But what's going to be sent over the bandwidth? Where is the capital going to come from to build the companies that will use the bandwidth? Where is the management talent and the know-how going to come from to create, manage, and operate the companies? The answer will be far harder than digging trenches through hutongs.
Jack Fensterstock
chinacap@erols.com
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