So this whole thing to make men redundant is all good I think, but won’t there be loads of genetic defects in the babies? I mean isn't the genetic disease probability factor for the child the reason marrying into family (close family atleast) is considered and proven to be such a big risk in the first place??
Cloning women (yayyy) and everything is great. Yes, let’s make them men redundant. I’m all for it.
But really is there someone in the house who can elaborate on the risk for the child?
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If you're talking about genetic defects which are sex-linked i.e. determined by the last (23rd) pair of chromosomes in the set which also determines the sex of the baby (XX in females; XY in males - Y chromosome is shorter than the X), then I'd say the baby would be pretty safe. Females producing sperm from their stem cells will only produce female embryos/fetuses/babies because both the sperm and the egg will have X chromosomes.. usually sex is determined by the male's sperm cell's 23rd chromosome, whether it's an X or a Y.
Genetic diseases like hemophilia [inability of the blood to form a clot at a wound because of a missing factor, so person can bleed to death from a small cut] and red-green color blindness are usually caused by defective genes on the X chromosme which comes from the mother. Surprisingly, though, females suffer less from these diseases, so the (female) baby born from the fertilization of an egg from a female and sperm from a female wouldn't have such genetic diseases.
On the other hand, we could have some mutant form of Down's Syndrome [mental and physical retardation] with 48 chromosomes [regular humans have 46, Down's syndrome sufferers have 47] which could arise from female sperm and eggs that have been abnormally divided. This mutant form could either suffer from worse mental and physical retardation than Down's Syndrome sufferers already do OR it could have some sort of hybrid vigor i.e. it could have advantages over normal humans. Hell, it could be a different species altogether!
Wow.. all this didn't even occur to me when I read the article in the paper today. Thanks for tickling my brain cells! :)
Colour blindness is mainly in males because they only have one copy of the X chromosome. Women have two, so if one is defective, the other is probably OK. At least that is how I understood it.
That's right, SD. Since the Y chromosome, which is what men have, is shorter than the X chromosome, it doesn't have some genes that the X chromosome does. So a defective gene on the X chromosome doesn't have a good gene on the Y chromosome to counteract its effect as the Y chromosome is shorter, so the defective gene shows its effects.
a whole new specie...
my heads buzzing now!
wicked!!!!
I don't think anybody knows the longterm effects of cloning to be able to say how safe it is or isn't. Personally I don't think it's such a great idea -- who understands DNA so well that they can say for certain what the dangers are for cloned organisms, expecially cloned humans?
ekh!
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