Clonaid is Trying to Go Mainstream, with Discount Cloning

jehaine — Sat, 27 Dec 2008 19:53:53 +0000

This morning on the sixth anniversary of the birth of the first human clone ,”Baby Eve”, an annoucement was released. Dr. Brigette Boisselier, head of the company, which the Clonaid project is a part, was quoted on the newswire this morning as saying , “As of now, the Clonaid and Stemaid teams are ready to facilitate the cloning of one or more additional individuals at a reduced rate, provided they would agree – under contract – to go public after being cloned”. The company claims to have produced almost 100 healthy human infants already, but is looking for someone to participate in the process openly. The efficiency of the process has improved vastly, and this seems like a play at a more mainstream audience. While my heart goes out to those, desperately trying to have a family, I fear expansion of this process, could lead to problems. Regardless of the ethical and religious issues raised by cloning, an abnormally high influx of genetically identical people should raise a little concern. The possiblity of deterioration in the genetic material being used is my biggest concern, though. We have far more experience in animal cloning, and have seen higher incidence of premature death, as well as, immunity problems in cloned animals. The early deaths have been associated with the normal fraying of dna strands, as we age. A baby with old dna, already has the deteriorated genetic code of his or her donor. I fear that steps to make this a more “mainstream” infertility solution, may lead to some rather sad consquences. With approximately, half of Americans polled, stating that they would not knowingly eat cloned meat, I am a bit surprised that this obvious attempt to expand the usage of the cloning process on humans, has not been reported on. The press release title gave no indication of what it was about, perhaps it slid by many.

Clean Coal Technology and It’s Potentially Catastrophic Risks

jehaine — Sun, 21 Dec 2008 05:26:43 +0000

Although, clean coal technology has yet to prove it’s viability, storage of the fluid CO2, which would result from the process, should raise many concerns. While watching a documentary about the processing and sequestration techniques under development, some concerns arose, for me. As I viewed animations illustrate the process of pumping fluid CO2, beneath the earth’s surface, into either man-made pockets, or more likely natural geological formations, it immediately occurred to me that any nearby earthquake or other seismic disturbance, could bring about disastrous consequences. The prospect of CO2, release due to seismic activity, brought to mind a tragic natural disaster which occurred a little over 20 years ago, in Lake Nyos, Cameroon.

Lake Nyos had developed in the remnants of an old volcanic crater. One evening in August of 1986, as local villagers slept, a noxious cloud of CO2 was released from beneath the lake. The poisonous gas flowed down from the lake into surrounding low lying areas, killing nearly 2000 people, and vast amounts of livestock and wildlife. Deaths occurred up to 15 miles away from the source. Permanent inhabitation of the area is now prohibited. The amount of CO2 released during the Lake Nyos event, was quite small in relation to the vast deposits, which would result from implementation of carbon capture technology.

The situation becomes more worrisome when one considers that the current injection techniques, planned for use, were designed to handle fluids far less buoyant than CO2. Underground injection projects, involving these lower buoyancy fluids have already been implicated in the induction of seismic activity, causing many small earthquakes. The greater buoyancy of CO2, also increases the possibility of migration, into ground water or through the earth’s surface. It seems that the potential leakage of this highly concentrated CO2, from the deposits planned, could cause far more sudden and devastating environmental problems than unmitigated carbon emissions.

Our carbon footprint must be reduced, but this technology comes with too many problems. I feel the large amounts of capital currently being spent on development of clean coal technology, in an attempt to preserve the coal industry, would be better utilized promoting innovation in other alternative energy technologies.

Green Posts » Controversy

Clonaid is Trying to Go Mainstream, with Discount Cloning

Clean Coal Technology and It’s Potentially Catastrophic Risks