Reply #107: Hah! OK Doc.

[denverbill]

I haven't taken a biology course in 30 years, and even then, don't recall the term totipotent, though I've had 30 years to forget it. Leave it to me to get involved in an argument on genetics with a professor of Biology! Hah!

I clearly can't compete with your knowledge of the subject matter, and I mean that sincerely, not snarkily.

But IMO, whether we are talking about artificial additives, pesticides, herbicides, irradiated food, genetically-modified food, or cloned foods, we should err on the side of extreme caution. Just as the prion problem wasn't forseen decades ago, there could easily be issues that we don't yet know about. Maybe the unnaturally quick aging process increases the number of prions in the cloned animal, maybe the animal would have more genetically corrupted amino acids, and maybe consuming genetically corrupted amino acids actually CAN cause cancer in humans. Who knows for sure? You know 100 times more than I do about this stuff, but there are still an awful lot of things about cancer, disease spread, and just life generally that we don't understand yet.

I'd just as soon not find out I'm dying early because the government wouldn't let me make up my own mind about whether to consume cloned meat. But instead of protecting consumers from potentially unsafe products, once again, the FDA is protecting producers of a potentially unsafe product from consumers. I guess I will just have to hope that you are right, because the FDA isn't giving me a choice.