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Pigs_in_the_Porridge t1_j706dnj wrote

Turns out a bunch of research groups tried to clone monkeys and couldn't make it work. I know one scientist at Wake Forest who spent close to a decade on it. There's something about primates that make the cloning technique used for Dolly untenable. I think that Oregon Health Sciences University also tried for years.

Interesting thing...this scientist primarily studied alcohol addiction and wanted cloned monkeys to eliminate a bunch of variables. The idea was that a whole bunch of life sciences would like to use cloned monkeys for more control in their experiments.

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bt-venger21 t1_j70pf3q wrote

It's been done tho, the failure of SCNT in primates and other mammalian models was found to be due to inappropriate reprogramming of the somatic cell nucleus, which then couldn't support the embryo development. Zhong Zhong and Hua Hua are a couple of Macaca Fascicularis monkeys that were born via SCNT, and the use of new strategies for the epigenetic reprogramming of RRRs that yielded two healthy baby monkeys from enucleated fetal fibroblasts.

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Isotope_Soap t1_j70lf25 wrote

Interesting. There was a BBC documentary about drinking habits of monkeys (short excerpt) that stated their alcohol consumption habits mimicked humans. Some would get drunk once and avoid alcohol, some would drink casually, while others would be considered alcoholic.

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NohPhD t1_j75fb48 wrote

I would hazard a guess and say any normally physically active group of one species, kept in a small cage, fed chow and never seeing natural light, should choose to consume alcohol this way.

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Goodgoditsgrowing t1_j70t7yb wrote

More control in the experiment that results in a lack of natural variation, which is vital for understanding how it would impact a population rather than a single individual? I can understand certain aspects it might help, but that seems awfully foolhardy to think it wouldn’t result in such a lack of diversity among study subjects that it’s as if you only had a sample size of one.

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Pigs_in_the_Porridge t1_j70xwgr wrote

Well we already have that.

I wasn't privy to their specific research plans but I imagine they had plenty of reasons to try this route. Didn't work anyway.

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SGTWhiteKY t1_j730yqm wrote

You got it backwards. They want to eliminate the natural variation to test many different formulas for their treatment. Without clones, it is impossibly to be completely sure if the effects of different formulas are caused by them being different formulas, or the each person’s body just reacted differently.

It would be incredible because you could choose a group of monkeys that have genetic traits you want to test, then clone all of them so that you have multiple of the exact same test environment to test different treatments. It would push medicine rapidly.

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