Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking. Hey everyone, and welcome to Forward Thinking, the
Speaker 1: podcast that looks at the future and says, I am
Speaker 1: he as you or he as you are me, and
Speaker 1: we are all together. I'm Jonathan Strickland and I'm Joe McCormick.
Speaker 1: And Lauren is not with us today. She is off
Speaker 1: today we're recording without her, but don't worry, She'll be
Speaker 1: back for future episodes. And today we wanted to talk about, well,
Speaker 1: you know, we've we've started a couple of episodes talking
Speaker 1: about movies, and I had one I wanted to tell
Speaker 1: you about movies have all the best ideas about the future. Well,
Speaker 1: often you get movies that are science fiction where people
Speaker 1: are you know, they have to think about the future.
Speaker 1: That's kind of what the whole environment of the film
Speaker 1: is set in. So I wanted to talk about a
Speaker 1: great movie, Parts the Clonus Horror. Parts of the Clonus Horror,
Speaker 1: which of one of those wonderful films featured on Mystery
Speaker 1: Science Theater three thousands, and I full disclosure, that's how
Speaker 1: I first saw Parts of the Clonus Horror was the
Speaker 1: MST three k riffing of that film. But the premise
Speaker 1: of that film was one of those science fiction horror
Speaker 1: premises that you can you can easily imagine. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's as technology has developed over time, there are certain
Speaker 1: ethical questions have arisen, things like, you know, should we
Speaker 1: give robots rights? We talked about that in the previous episode.
Speaker 1: Well parts of the clonus Hard took a different approach.
Speaker 1: It said, let's assume that we perfect cloning, so we
Speaker 1: can make perfect clone copies of other creatures, to the
Speaker 1: point where we can even age them appropriately so that
Speaker 1: they are of a particular size, say to be like
Speaker 1: attractive actors from the nineteen seventies in southern California. You're
Speaker 1: being really generous with attractive but yes, so uh But anyway,
Speaker 1: the purpose of this would not be so that we
Speaker 1: could you know, copy the best and brightest so that
Speaker 1: we have twice as many of them. Not like that. No,
Speaker 1: the idea is more about wealthy and powerful people wanting
Speaker 1: to have a kind of a life insurance policy where
Speaker 1: if they if they need a new organ, they can
Speaker 1: just harvest one from their clone, because they'll be identical
Speaker 1: to the person who needs the donation. You know, it
Speaker 1: just all comes back to Oregon harvest. Yeah, just because
Speaker 1: it comes down to organ roads lead to stealing people's organs.
Speaker 1: When it gets to the future, these poor clones waking
Speaker 1: up in a bathtub somewhere and it's full of ice
Speaker 1: and on written on the mirrors, go to a doctor. Well,
Speaker 1: I think I don't recall exactly. I think the movie
Speaker 1: implies that they are just put you know, they're they're
Speaker 1: they're harvested for whatever parts are needed, and then they're destroyed.
Speaker 1: And although in the movie, within the the the cloness
Speaker 1: community in the movie they call it going to America,
Speaker 1: and also the general public in the film is unaware
Speaker 1: of this, this entire program, it's something that only the
Speaker 1: very rich and powerful have access to. So it's another
Speaker 1: it's a social divide as well as a horror story
Speaker 1: because it's the idea of this, this elite cast of
Speaker 1: people who are very wealthy or very politically influential have
Speaker 1: access to. Well, yeah, that's There are different kinds of
Speaker 1: of negative future depictions, right, there's the conspiracy depiction versus
Speaker 1: the dystopian. Both of them are in this this particular film,
Speaker 1: so not necessarily executed perfectly But what's also interesting is that,
Speaker 1: you know, in two thousand five a movie came out
Speaker 1: called The Island and UH didn't see it either, had
Speaker 1: you and McGregor in it and Scarlett Johanson. But anyway,
Speaker 1: so the film came out. I remember seeing the preview
Speaker 1: for the movie, and as soon as I saw the preview,
Speaker 1: I thought, Huh, this looks like it's an oregan harvesting
Speaker 1: clone story a lot like Clonus the you know, are
Speaker 1: parts of the closes? Yeah, exactly, I'm just gonna horror
Speaker 1: Clonus parts parts the Clone Is Horror, And I thought, wow,
Speaker 1: it seems really similar. And I was not the only one.
Speaker 1: The producers of Parts of The Clone Is Horror end
Speaker 1: up suing DreamWorks, which was the studio behind The Island.
Speaker 1: Uh that eventually settled out of court, So I was
Speaker 1: not the only person to think that it was a
Speaker 1: very similar premise. So this kind of late leads us
Speaker 1: to a discussion about cloning. Is this the future? Just
Speaker 1: straight up, John, No, it makes no sense. No, no,
Speaker 1: because there are better ways. But let's let's talk about
Speaker 1: what cloning is and why we wouldn't have a community
Speaker 1: of replicas of ourselves. So that we could just go
Speaker 1: in and we keep them nice and stupid. Okay, well
Speaker 1: let me say what I think cloning is based on
Speaker 1: the movies. Okay, it's where you go into a big
Speaker 1: room full of machines that go bleep bleep boopp and
Speaker 1: they scan you. Right, so they like like a like
Speaker 1: a laser kind of thing, moves over your body, right,
Speaker 1: and then there's a machine next to you. It looks
Speaker 1: like a big like meat freezer. Yeah, and then the
Speaker 1: door opens and a copy of you steps out of
Speaker 1: it that's the same age you are and looks just
Speaker 1: like you, and then tries to steal your identity and
Speaker 1: you're locked into a struggle to the death with your
Speaker 1: evil twins. Uh. You know, is that basically correct? That
Speaker 1: is basically as wrong as it possibly could be. Yes,
Speaker 1: it turns out cloning is not anything like that. So
Speaker 1: what does cloning actually mean to a scientist? There are
Speaker 1: three different types of cloning to a scientist. Okay, so
Speaker 1: you've got you've got embryo cloning, which is essentially that's
Speaker 1: what happens in nature when we see people who are twins,
Speaker 1: identical twins, or triplets, or any any variation thereof that's
Speaker 1: embryonic cloning. That's just the natural cloning. So in other words,
Speaker 1: what happens with that case is that you have an
Speaker 1: embryo that forms some cells may split off from that
Speaker 1: embryo and form another viable embryo. Both of them end
Speaker 1: up growing into babies and are eventually born. Twins are
Speaker 1: essentially clones. They are genetically identical, they have the same DNA.
Speaker 1: You know. Something that's interesting, though, is that even monozygotic
Speaker 1: twins who are copied from exactly the same chromosomes don't
Speaker 1: end up exactly the same. That's true. That's true. That
Speaker 1: which kind of tells you that there are lots of
Speaker 1: different factors that go into determining what makes a person
Speaker 1: a person. It's not just your DNA. Also, you could
Speaker 1: argue it's not just your environment. It's a much more
Speaker 1: complex issue, right, So that's that's the first one. Then
Speaker 1: there's reproductive cloning. Now, reproductive cloning means you're trying to
Speaker 1: reproduce a particular organism. So, Joe, if I took like
Speaker 1: a whole organism, yeah, like you, Like, if I wanted
Speaker 1: to clone you, that would be reproductive cloning. I would
Speaker 1: end up taking one of your cells, and I would
Speaker 1: remove the nucleus from that cell. And I wouldn't by
Speaker 1: that time the pain has already passed. But you know
Speaker 1: it's it's the semantic cell. I would take a semantic
Speaker 1: cell from your body. I would take the nucleus out
Speaker 1: of the semantic cell. I would take an egg cell
Speaker 1: where the nucleus had already been removed. I would implant
Speaker 1: the eggs cell with the nucleus of the semantic cell
Speaker 1: I took from you, and then I would stimulate the
Speaker 1: eggs cell so that it would end up developing into
Speaker 1: an embryo, which would eventually be implanted into some sort
Speaker 1: of gestation surrogate, so a woman who would be willing
Speaker 1: to carry a baby to term. The baby would be born,
Speaker 1: and that would be the clone of you, Joe. So
Speaker 1: you don't step out of like a freezer full of
Speaker 1: dried eyes. No, that would not happen you. You are
Speaker 1: literally born just like other organisms are born. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: the clone would be born just like any other organism. Now,
Speaker 1: although there are definitely some issues which will will chat
Speaker 1: about as well, but I can go ahead and go
Speaker 1: into a little bit of it. Uh turns out that
Speaker 1: most clones tend to have a shorter lifespan than the
Speaker 1: animal that they were cloned from, and also they tend
Speaker 1: to be prone to genetic issues. So it's because they're
Speaker 1: not you know, it's not the same thing is as twins,
Speaker 1: you're taking a nucleus from an adult animal and then
Speaker 1: or adult organism I guess I should say, and then
Speaker 1: using that to create a new organism. There can be
Speaker 1: some issues that develop out of that where you have
Speaker 1: some pretty severe genetic problems down the line. Now I
Speaker 1: really don't know what causes that is that is that
Speaker 1: sort of the way that over time, as you become
Speaker 1: an adult, you accumulate mutations and genetic like a little
Speaker 1: screw ups that happened to your genes. That's part of it.
Speaker 1: The fact that telomeres are getting shorter and shorter, and
Speaker 1: you know, they're not regenerating over time. There's there are
Speaker 1: a lot of different reasons why this is a case.
Speaker 1: It's one of the reasons why it's considered to be
Speaker 1: and a very ethical gray area in science and most
Speaker 1: scientists I think maybe I shouldn't even say most many
Speaker 1: scientists think that reproductive cloning is not a very ethical,
Speaker 1: uh pursuit. Okay, So reproductive cloning, is this just like
Speaker 1: in uh, you know, let's say, what if kind of thing. Now,
Speaker 1: this is something that we've done. Dolly the Sheep. You
Speaker 1: heard of Dolly the Sheep. Dolly the Sheep was a
Speaker 1: big fan of Dolly. Dolly. Yeah, Dolly the Sheep was
Speaker 1: a clone. So we have had evidence, I mean, the
Speaker 1: scientists have made clones of organisms, complex organisms, and in fact,
Speaker 1: cloning is again something that we see in the animal
Speaker 1: world that happens like on simple organisms do it themselves?
Speaker 1: Right with something that we're talking about induced in the
Speaker 1: laboratory that we have evidence of that, there aren't that
Speaker 1: many examples because again, uh, the there are some ethical
Speaker 1: issues where we talk about how if the animal that
Speaker 1: is produced the clone has these genetic issues or has
Speaker 1: a shorter lifespan there, Yeah, is it fair? Is it?
Speaker 1: Is it? You know, if they're born into a quality
Speaker 1: of life that is automatically lower than animals that are
Speaker 1: just naturally reproducing, then is that kind Isn't that cruel?
Speaker 1: And so there are a lot of questions there and
Speaker 1: as far as it goes with humans, hasn't been done
Speaker 1: at all because the ethical questions there are way way
Speaker 1: more complicated, and we'll get into some of them because
Speaker 1: you have to. You have to talk about it. And
Speaker 1: when you're talking about cloning, the third type of cloning,
Speaker 1: and this is the type that would really play into
Speaker 1: any kind of approach to creating organs for transplants, is
Speaker 1: called therapeutic cloning. Sounds real friendly. Therapeutic cloning is well,
Speaker 1: on the surface, it's friendly in the sense that instead
Speaker 1: of trying to create a clone of a person, like
Speaker 1: a reproduction of the person. So instead of me trying
Speaker 1: to clone you, Joe, and then waiting, you know, twenty
Speaker 1: years for the clone to grow up and not for
Speaker 1: you to be able to cut that sucker open and
Speaker 1: harvest all his juicy organs for yourself. Uh, instead of
Speaker 1: doing that, I would end up taking again a semantic
Speaker 1: cell from you and harvesting the nucleus from that semantic cell,
Speaker 1: putting it into an egg cell that had been Uh,
Speaker 1: it's own nucleus has been removed, already stimulating it just
Speaker 1: as I would if it were reproductive cloning. But then
Speaker 1: once it becomes an embryo, it starts to produce stem cells. Okay,
Speaker 1: And that's where we started getting into the gray ethical
Speaker 1: area again, because those stem cells. Stem cells are cells
Speaker 1: that haven't differentiated yet. They can differentiate into other types
Speaker 1: of cells, and cells have different levels of potency. Potency
Speaker 1: kind of describes how many different types of cells the
Speaker 1: stem cell could eventually develop into. Um So you know,
Speaker 1: some are very much limited in what they can develop
Speaker 1: into and some are have have a much larger spectrum
Speaker 1: that they can develop into. So plura potent stem cells,
Speaker 1: that's the kind that we really want to get because
Speaker 1: they have the greatest variety of cells they can develop into,
Speaker 1: which means that from this one sort of basic ingredient,
Speaker 1: you can make lots of different stuff. Renaissance cells, yeah,
Speaker 1: they can, they can do all sorts of things. Now
Speaker 1: once they differentiate, obviously that's the form they take. They
Speaker 1: don't transform or anything like hard take the form of
Speaker 1: a liver that doesn't work. So it would be so
Speaker 1: so working with the stem cells, scientists could end up
Speaker 1: manipulating them so that they develop into specific types of tissue.
Speaker 1: And then now that doesn't help you out just immediately
Speaker 1: either if I just had a massive cells that developed
Speaker 1: into heart tissue but weren't in the shape of a heart,
Speaker 1: that wouldn't do you any good sounds like you need
Speaker 1: some kind of scaffolding. Yeah, you would absolutely need to
Speaker 1: have some sort of of scaffolding or or you know,
Speaker 1: some sort of structure to put this material up against
Speaker 1: so that it forms into the right shape. So it's
Speaker 1: not just made of the right stuff, but it's in
Speaker 1: the right shape to do the job it needs to do. So, Uh,
Speaker 1: there are different ways that doctors and engineers are looking
Speaker 1: into creating that. Sometimes they just will um kind of
Speaker 1: build a model lung onto some scaffolding. And there's also
Speaker 1: been some interesting developments in three D printing. We've talked
Speaker 1: about that in the past two using three D printers
Speaker 1: to actually print an organ, where it's printing it layer
Speaker 1: by layer of cells into the right kind of shape
Speaker 1: so that you end up with this finished organ. The
Speaker 1: downside is when you get a printer jam, it's the grossest,
Speaker 1: it's not pleasant. No, But so you know, I said
Speaker 1: it was an ethical gray area, and the reason for
Speaker 1: that is that when you extract these stem cells, the
Speaker 1: embryo is no longer viable a right, So, uh, if
Speaker 1: I'm creating a clone of you, Joe, not to reproduce,
Speaker 1: but to just get so I can get the kind
Speaker 1: of cells I need to develop whatever organized I want.
Speaker 1: There's no way for that embryo to become another person,
Speaker 1: and you've taken its blueprints, right, and so that's a uh,
Speaker 1: that's you know, that's one of those ethical issues. There
Speaker 1: are people who feel that once you reach the embryonic stage,
Speaker 1: then that's human life and to do anything to harm
Speaker 1: that human life, even if you were creating that embryo
Speaker 1: with the express purpose of being able to develop organs
Speaker 1: for someone who needs a transplant, uh, that is wrong.
Speaker 1: And so there, you know, and it's definitely a gray area. Well,
Speaker 1: there's probably there's some middle ground too. Right, It's not
Speaker 1: just like you know, either you think that's totally fine
Speaker 1: or you think that that's equivalent to murder. You might
Speaker 1: think that like, well, you know, there's some reason to
Speaker 1: not want to do that if we don't have to write,
Speaker 1: if there's some other approach we can do to to
Speaker 1: do this without having to to create the potential and
Speaker 1: then extinguish that potential for human life. Now, what about
Speaker 1: adult stem cells. Now, adult stem cells have a lot
Speaker 1: of possibilities. They are that you know, you can I
Speaker 1: would mean not from an embryo. Right, you can get
Speaker 1: an adult stem cell from you like I could. I
Speaker 1: could get adult stem cells from you, Joe. And but
Speaker 1: the the issue there is that adult stem cells tend
Speaker 1: to not be they don't have as much potency. In
Speaker 1: other words, they are more limited in the types of
Speaker 1: tissues they can become. Uh. There are scientists who are
Speaker 1: working with them to see if they can expand that,
Speaker 1: and there's been some promising research on that. So maybe
Speaker 1: in the future we get around that that issue and
Speaker 1: it's not an issue at all anymore, which would be
Speaker 1: fantastic because now we don't even have to have cloning
Speaker 1: as part of the picture because this doesn't involve cloning.
Speaker 1: This involves taking stem cells directly so that you can
Speaker 1: end up creating whatever, you know, tissue you need. So
Speaker 1: cloning is out of the picture, which is why I'm
Speaker 1: not going to talk about it anymore, because this is
Speaker 1: an episode about cloning. Joe and I refused to be
Speaker 1: taken off on your non cloning tangent uh as fascinating
Speaker 1: as the adult stem cell banality. Yeah, so let's talk
Speaker 1: a little bit more about cloning. There's um some been
Speaker 1: some interesting experiments done. There was one that I was
Speaker 1: reading about where scientists were taking um mice that had Parkinson's. Essentially,
Speaker 1: they had a condition that's akin to Parkinson's and people,
Speaker 1: and they were symptomatic, you know, they showed the symptoms
Speaker 1: of the condition, and the scientists ended up using a
Speaker 1: cloning technology to create new neurons cells and then ended
Speaker 1: up surgically and planning those cells into the mice and
Speaker 1: they started showing signs of recovery. So there is some, uh,
Speaker 1: some promising evidence that cloning, even if if we're not
Speaker 1: talking about creating full organs for organ transplant, could be
Speaker 1: used to help with some very serious illnesses and conditions
Speaker 1: that we don't have a full handle on yet. Now,
Speaker 1: keep in mind there are other avenues to exploring options
Speaker 1: to treat these illnesses and conditions, like genetic study. But
Speaker 1: it's it's always great to see multiple disciplines concentrating on
Speaker 1: the same problem because you are increasing your chances of
Speaker 1: getting a solution to that problem. So, whether it comes
Speaker 1: through cloning or genetic modification or even some other avenue,
Speaker 1: it's good that we have multiple ways of coming at
Speaker 1: this issue. Uh, they're all so some other problems that
Speaker 1: we can talk about the of course, the biggest one
Speaker 1: is this ethical issue where we've got people disagreeing about,
Speaker 1: you know, the ethics of using embryos in order to
Speaker 1: get stem cells to create these organs. One side the
Speaker 1: argument is that, look, a lot of people need organ transplants,
Speaker 1: so uh, there's back in. We have this article on
Speaker 1: how stuff Works about using therapeutic cloning for organ transplants.
Speaker 1: It's a great article. Kristen Conger wrote it. Highly recommend
Speaker 1: you go and check that out. Yeah. She she's a
Speaker 1: great writer. So how stuff Works dot com. Just search
Speaker 1: therapeutic cloning and it pops right up. It's a really
Speaker 1: good read. But one of the facts that she cites
Speaker 1: is that in two thousand eight, i think it was,
Speaker 1: there were ninety nine thousand people on a waiting list
Speaker 1: to get a transplant, whereas in two thousand seven the
Speaker 1: number of actual transplants performed was somewhere around twenty six thousand.
Speaker 1: So twenty six thod people actually got transplants, nine thousand
Speaker 1: people are on the waiting list. Clearly, there's a supply
Speaker 1: and demand problem here, right. We don't have enough organs
Speaker 1: for the people who need organs, and you know, some
Speaker 1: organs obviously can be donated from one living person to
Speaker 1: another and both people can remain living. That's great, but
Speaker 1: there's only a few of those, like you know, a
Speaker 1: kidney or doing a partial liver transplant or something like that.
Speaker 1: But you know there are other other organs where that
Speaker 1: clearly is not an option. So being able to create
Speaker 1: organs from your same kind of tissue UH would be
Speaker 1: really really beneficial. Obviously, Like if I'm able to create
Speaker 1: an organ Joe from your d n A so that
Speaker 1: it is as compatible with you as I can possibly
Speaker 1: make it, then the UH, the chances of your body
Speaker 1: rejecting that are decreased significantly. They're never zero, but they
Speaker 1: are decreased much more than they would be if I
Speaker 1: just found someone who is a suitable donor. But then
Speaker 1: you know, you run the risk of your body rejecting
Speaker 1: the organ. So that's one reason why cloning is is
Speaker 1: at such a a hot area of study, because it
Speaker 1: could go really far to alleviating this problem we have
Speaker 1: where the number of people who need transplants far out
Speaker 1: number the folks that the actual supply of organs, and
Speaker 1: out of the organs that are available, there's never a
Speaker 1: guarantee that that organ is going to be accepted by
Speaker 1: the body. So being able to address both of those
Speaker 1: issues at once is huge. Alright, So this is why
Speaker 1: I say that the uh, the whole parts of the
Speaker 1: clone is horror thing that for real. No, it's totally
Speaker 1: not real. I mean, why would you why would they
Speaker 1: make that up? Well, I mean, first of all, first
Speaker 1: of all, the technology wasn't as developed back then. Second
Speaker 1: of all, science fiction often, I don't know if you
Speaker 1: get this, Joe, but science fiction often is going to
Speaker 1: address actual like social and cultural problems, and they use
Speaker 1: science fiction as a vehicle to address them without necessarily
Speaker 1: worrying about if the science itself is solid. Well, one
Speaker 1: thing that is worth pointing out is that there's a
Speaker 1: lot of fear about cloning out there. Sure, people who um,
Speaker 1: and I don't necessarily blame them for this, Like, if
Speaker 1: you don't know a whole lot about it, it sounds
Speaker 1: pretty scary. Well, even if you know a lot about it,
Speaker 1: you still sit there. And I mean, if someone were
Speaker 1: to come up to you and say, this isn't natural,
Speaker 1: it's hard to argue that. Although you could point at
Speaker 1: nature and say, look, in nature, we have examples of
Speaker 1: cloning you've got very simple organisms that that's how they reproduce.
Speaker 1: You know, it's this it's this cloning kind of mechanism.
Speaker 1: But pouring that over to more complex organisms gets a
Speaker 1: little complicated. Even if you were to go so far
Speaker 1: as to say, look, you wouldn't go up to a
Speaker 1: woman who has twins and say to her you're a
Speaker 1: bad mother because what you did was unnatural, because it's ludicrous.
Speaker 1: That's totally not the case. Totally decision, because that's how
Speaker 1: that works, right Joe. It's a good thing. Lauren's not
Speaker 1: here to correct this, right. Um. Anyway, it's it's you know,
Speaker 1: that's right, you pressed the twins button. I guess that's
Speaker 1: how that works. I don't know. I don't have kids. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the the obviously we're having a lot of fun here,
Speaker 1: but the the important part of this that, yeah, there
Speaker 1: are people who feel that the the unnatural element to cloning,
Speaker 1: uh is a big problem. It may go against not
Speaker 1: you know, not only whatever ethic old views they have,
Speaker 1: but if they have certain religious views, it may go
Speaker 1: against their religious views. And you know, you can't just um,
Speaker 1: I mean you could, but you shouldn't just discount people's
Speaker 1: beliefs when you're when you're pursuing uh, you know, solutions,
Speaker 1: what you have to do is be able to have
Speaker 1: a conversation about it and really come to an agreement
Speaker 1: among as many parties as you possibly can on what
Speaker 1: is and isn't ethical. Well, of course, I mean science
Speaker 1: is sort of made of facts, but it lives in
Speaker 1: a world of values, exactly right, So we have to
Speaker 1: be able to balance the that out so that we
Speaker 1: can make meaningful use of what knowledge we gain. And
Speaker 1: so in this case, it's one of those things where
Speaker 1: I think if we are able to get solutions that
Speaker 1: use adult stem cells to work as well, yeah, that
Speaker 1: then we don't have to worry about the cloning issue
Speaker 1: at all, although of course there's still people who want
Speaker 1: to do things like um open up cloning as a
Speaker 1: way to let people have the same pet over and
Speaker 1: over and over again, although as we've already discussed, it
Speaker 1: would not be the same organism, you know, it would
Speaker 1: never be exactly the same even if you got to
Speaker 1: look people who like themselves a little bit too much,
Speaker 1: like they want to have clones of themselves as their children.
Speaker 1: I'm a narcissist, But at the same time, I also
Speaker 1: realize what a jerk I am, and I do not
Speaker 1: want another version of me around. One is enough. I
Speaker 1: don't want to compete with myself. First of all, that
Speaker 1: would be exhausting, because I'm awesome. Um, but yeah, it's
Speaker 1: that would be something. But but back to the parts
Speaker 1: the clones, harror, I mean, ultimately, the reason why that
Speaker 1: movie wouldn't work is because there's no purpose to read
Speaker 1: reproductive cloning in order to get organs when you can
Speaker 1: do therapeutic cloning. It would be Therapeutic cloning would be faster,
Speaker 1: it would be uh, you know, it would you wouldn't
Speaker 1: have to wait for your clone to grow up to
Speaker 1: an age where the organs would actually be useful. You
Speaker 1: wouldn't have to feed your clone. You wouldn't have to
Speaker 1: keep your clones sequestered from everybody else so that your
Speaker 1: clone wouldn't realize that, you know, it was just an
Speaker 1: organ farm. And that's it. I mean, you know, you
Speaker 1: don't have the ethical issue of I guess that idea
Speaker 1: of kills to people who just gratuitously enjoy murders. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I suppose so, uh, you know, and again, like you're
Speaker 1: talking about a film that when it was made therapeutic
Speaker 1: cloning wasn't really something that people were thinking about. They
Speaker 1: they were you know, if you were talking about clones,
Speaker 1: you were talking about the whole body, not like we
Speaker 1: can just clones. We can clone you, so we get
Speaker 1: some celves, so we can grow a heart. That heart
Speaker 1: would grow, it would just grow inside the body of
Speaker 1: of a of a human that had all the other
Speaker 1: organs as well, So you know that would never happen. Well,
Speaker 1: I'm excited about the things we're gonna learn about cloning
Speaker 1: in the near future. Yeah, that that should be really
Speaker 1: learning things like more about you know, the reasons why
Speaker 1: cloned life forms have shorter lifespans or the reasons why
Speaker 1: they tend to have more genetic problems. Might teach us
Speaker 1: more about those genetic problems so that we can address
Speaker 1: them in and you know otherwise what otherwise would be
Speaker 1: healthy individuals. So there's a lot of things to learn medically. Uh,
Speaker 1: there's also more to learn about again using adult stem
Speaker 1: cells or even other uh completely alternative means of going
Speaker 1: about creating artificial organs that somehow have a more likely
Speaker 1: acceptance rate than just your average donor, or just to
Speaker 1: really address that massive disparity between the demand and the
Speaker 1: supply of organs. So there's there's definitely some really important
Speaker 1: stuff that we can learn and uh, you know it's
Speaker 1: it's While it is a very controversial subject, I think
Speaker 1: it's one that's important to to study and not just
Speaker 1: run away from. Right. So, um, I completely understand the
Speaker 1: ethical concerns. I don't necessarily agree with all of them. Um,
Speaker 1: but then my ethics are probably different from you know,
Speaker 1: your ethics, Joe. So I just have to come to
Speaker 1: something I don't. I don't. I'm just making an assumption
Speaker 1: that they're not exactly aligned with mine. I think it's
Speaker 1: only okay to clone one human, and that human's Tim Curry.
Speaker 1: I can get behind that. There can never be too
Speaker 1: much Tim Curry. You know. I think I'm gonna go
Speaker 1: and do a Tim Curry movie marathon. I'm gonna start with, um,
Speaker 1: the Shadow, and then i'll probably I'll probably move over
Speaker 1: to Clue. You know, you got a rocky horror goes
Speaker 1: in there, but it'll you can't put that first or second, right,
Speaker 1: that's this maybe a third maybe, and um, I don't know.
Speaker 1: Home Alone will be in there somewhere. I think it's
Speaker 1: actually home alone too. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you're right. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So anyway, while while I'm planning out my Tim Curry
Speaker 1: this has much to do with cloning, well we're cloning Curry. Um.
Speaker 1: While I'm planning that out, I want to recommend to
Speaker 1: all our listeners make sure you go and check out
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Speaker 1: you can find all the blog post, podcasts, you can
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