Why don’t we hear much about cloning technology these days?
If you think it’s because the technology isn’t good enough, you’d be completely wrong. The real situation is exactly the opposite: it’s already matured to the point where there’s really nothing left to “cash in” on.
Cloning a deceased cat now costs around 80,000. Cloning a dog costs several hundred thousand. In the pet industry, many people view it as a vast blue-ocean market.
Since the technology is mature and the market exists, why is it that almost nobody brings it up anymore? Because at this stage, the technology is basically at a plateau. If you research further, you can only end up cloning human beings.
In 2018, Dr. He Jiankui of Southern University of Science and Technology publicly announced that the first human twins—Lulu and Nana—had been successfully born through gene editing. After the gene editing, they had natural resistance to diseases such as AIDS. But this attempt was quickly resisted by 120 biologists worldwide. Later, the criminal law was even amended to add a new offense called “the crime of illegal human gene-editing cloning.”
If gene editing can help humans prevent diseases, why is it banned?
To put it bluntly, this technology can enhance certain genes and delete certain genes. That means once the wealthy customize their children’s genes, their descendants will be “superhumans” with extraordinary memory, anti-virus intelligence, and longer lifespans. For ordinary people, getting ahead afterward would be basically impossible.
What’s more, once gene-edited humans enter the general population and have children, they may contaminate the human gene pool. This is uncontrollable and could even lead to the creation of a new human species.
If you think it’s because the technology isn’t good enough, you’d be completely wrong. The real situation is exactly the opposite: it’s already matured to the point where there’s really nothing left to “cash in” on.
Cloning a deceased cat now costs around 80,000. Cloning a dog costs several hundred thousand. In the pet industry, many people view it as a vast blue-ocean market.
Since the technology is mature and the market exists, why is it that almost nobody brings it up anymore? Because at this stage, the technology is basically at a plateau. If you research further, you can only end up cloning human beings.
In 2018, Dr. He Jiankui of Southern University of Science and Technology publicly announced that the first human twins—Lulu and Nana—had been successfully born through gene editing. After the gene editing, they had natural resistance to diseases such as AIDS. But this attempt was quickly resisted by 120 biologists worldwide. Later, the criminal law was even amended to add a new offense called “the crime of illegal human gene-editing cloning.”
If gene editing can help humans prevent diseases, why is it banned?
To put it bluntly, this technology can enhance certain genes and delete certain genes. That means once the wealthy customize their children’s genes, their descendants will be “superhumans” with extraordinary memory, anti-virus intelligence, and longer lifespans. For ordinary people, getting ahead afterward would be basically impossible.
What’s more, once gene-edited humans enter the general population and have children, they may contaminate the human gene pool. This is uncontrollable and could even lead to the creation of a new human species.