I don't know if this was ever brought up, but for those of you who believe life begins at conception (are there any?), how do reconcile the fact that a viable embryo can be produced via nuclear transplantation and other cloning techniques? I ask this because, in theory (and practice in animals) it is possible to remove the nucleus of a differentiated cell (let's say a skin cell for this example) and transplant it into an egg that has had it's nucleus removed. At this point the cytoplasm of the egg, which contains the correct concentrations of specific proteins would "reprogram" the transplanted DNA from the skin cell nucleus. Granted this would only result in a viable zygote a low percentage of the time due to a lot of unknowns such as epigenetic modifications of the transplanted DNA.
Now let's say this new zygote was cultured in the correct medium with the necessary growth factors and eventually transplanted into a uterus (or in the future, an environment that was sufficient to facilitate the normal development of the zygote/embryo). Would terminating the development of this still be morally wrong to those who believe that life begins at conception since technically the only thing that was done was the transfer of a diploid set of chromosomes to an environment that is conducive to reprogramming this genome to develop into a zygote/embryo. Also, I know zygote isn't truly the correct term to use in this case since it is by definition the diploid cell formed by the joining of two gametes via sexual reproduction.
Just a question I wanted to ask because of the relative ease that nuclear transplantation and other cloning techniques can be done, and probably will be used in the future to generate tissue for individuals for medical treatment (though most likely I'd think transdifferentiation will be pursued more over just cloning to get pluripotent stem cells).
Now let's say this new zygote was cultured in the correct medium with the necessary growth factors and eventually transplanted into a uterus (or in the future, an environment that was sufficient to facilitate the normal development of the zygote/embryo). Would terminating the development of this still be morally wrong to those who believe that life begins at conception since technically the only thing that was done was the transfer of a diploid set of chromosomes to an environment that is conducive to reprogramming this genome to develop into a zygote/embryo. Also, I know zygote isn't truly the correct term to use in this case since it is by definition the diploid cell formed by the joining of two gametes via sexual reproduction.
Just a question I wanted to ask because of the relative ease that nuclear transplantation and other cloning techniques can be done, and probably will be used in the future to generate tissue for individuals for medical treatment (though most likely I'd think transdifferentiation will be pursued more over just cloning to get pluripotent stem cells).