posted 11-10-98 02:10 PM ET        

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Just looking to stir up some dirt here, what with all the abortion stuff already going on.
What do you think of eugenics (ie genetic screening of foetuses to see if they have a genetic disease).
And what about the possibility of gene therapy on a foetus? Is that messing with God's will or not?
I don't know if it was in the papers in the States but here in England there were a few articles over the weekend about creating a clone for every child that is born. This would happen by sticking the nucleus from a skin cell into a egg cell that had the nucleus removed (as for Dolly). This "fertilised" eggcell would then be allowed to develop unitl the blastocyst stage (about 7 days, I think), and be frozen down for future use.
If the child later needed an organ transplant, blood cells, nerve cells, brain cells, they could be formed from the stemcells thhat are present in the blastocyst.
For the non-biologists, stem cells are cells that are undifferentiated, and can therefore with the right stimuli become anykind of cell.

Also how do you see genetics being able to influence SMAC. I think that some factions would probably have ethical problems with it (seen as almost everyone who doesn't know the exact details has objections about it), whereas others would be able to use it to further their goals.