Cloning is a Hoax

This is an extract from the article on the Miles Matthis website:

"Cloning is a Hoax" Gabriel Oak
https://mileswmathis.com/clone.pdf

pp. 4-8  ...So let’s hit the “science” of cloning, which we can deconstruct fairly easily. A clone is any living organism that is genetically identical to another organism. This requires that both the nuclear DNA and mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) are identical. By this definition, identical twins are technically clones. This fact immediately dispels much of the mystery and mystique of human cloning. Nature herself produces clones, even human clones, without any expensive technology. The more narrowly defined type of cloning, however, is the attempt to create a living organism with only one DNA source, that is, one genetic parent. This is called parthenogenesis.  Again, Nature is capable of parthenogenesis in certain species, but the question is whether this is possible in mammals, including humans. Which brings us to Dolly the sheep.

Already we're off to a suspicious start, since, well...how can you tell?  That's just a picture of a sheep, isn’t it?  Could you tell that sheep apart from any other sheep of the same breed?  No, which means the ability to fake a clone is quite easy.  They never even give us a side-by-side of Dolly with her genetic parent to show she is an exact copy.  But as we are soon told, being a clone does not mean the animal looks identical to its genetic parent.  For example, the first cat allegedly to be cloned, named CC, is a female calico cat that looks very different from her mother. By the way, CC died on 3/3/2020 at age 18. Note the numerology.

That’s CC on the left, with her genetic parent, Rainbow, on the right.  Very different coloration, as you can see.  So how do we know these are really clones? I’m not the first one to ask this.  Skepticism was first voiced, of all places, in The New York Times:

In the five months since the clone named Dolly was announced, some scientists have begun to grumble.  How do we know the whole thing wasn't a hoax?  ...Among the most vocal is Dr. Norton Zinder, a professor of molecular genetics at Rockefeller University.  The paper on the cloning that led to Dolly, published in the Feb. 27 issue of Nature, was “a bad paper,” he thundered.

But even this skepticism is carefully curated.  Notice we have a Zinder (Jewish) from Rockefeller University as our voice of opposition. Remember, the Roslin Institute was funded by the Rockefellers.  The article goes on to answer its own question – no, of course it’s not a hoax – without presenting any actual evidence for that conclusion.  It veers off into a discussion of the “real” question – whether Dolly was actually cloned using adult cells instead of embryonic cells – leaving the hoax question in the dust.

You may also like to know that Dolly was named after Dolly Parton.  Why? Because the sheep was allegedly cloned from a cell taken from an udder.  Udder = breast.  So even the name tells us that this is all just a big joke.

Let’s take a closer look at the science, then, and see for ourselves if it checks out. Here is a good overview of the methodology, known as somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT):

This procedure starts with the removal of the chromosomes from an egg to create an enucleated egg.  The chromosomes are replaced with a nucleus taken from a somatic (body) cell of the individual or embryo to be cloned…  The egg is then stimulated, and in some cases it starts to divide.  If that happens, a series of sequential cell divisions leads to the formation of a blastocyst, or preimplantation embryo.  The blastocyst is then transferred to the uterus of an animal.  The successful implantation of the blastocyst in a uterus can result in its further

development, culminating sometimes in the birth of an animal.  This animal will be a clone of the individual that was the donor of the nucleus.  Its nuclear DNA has been inherited from only one genetic parent.

Miles: The egg is “stimulated”?  That wording is peculiar.  Stimulated how?  With a bit of sperm, maybe?  As long as your somatic chromosome is “accidentally” adulterated with some sperm cells you are golden, is my guess.

Easy enough.  The only problem is, what about the mitochondrial DNA?  That same source reminds us that true cloning requires both nuclear and mitochondrial DNA to be identical.  But this procedure only allows for the transferal of nuclear DNA; where does the clone’s mtDNA originate?  It turns out mtDNA can only be inherited maternally.  You can’t get mtDNA from your father.  This would seem to preclude the ability to clone male mammals, since the clone would have no mtDNA and therefore would not be a viable lifeform.  And yet, amazingly,

they claim to have created male clones from male somatic cells!  That link takes you to a 1999 Wired article which states that male mammals had been cloned previously, but they were “derived from female reproductive cells.”  If you hearken back to your high school biology class, you may remember that sex is determined by paternal DNA.  Maternal DNA only contains X chromosomes, and the Y chromosome is what’s needed to create male offspring.  Even Wikipedia

spells this out plainly on its cloning page:  “In species that use the XY sex-determination system, the [cloned] offspring will always be female.”  So that Wired article is just yanking your chain, trusting you will be too mystified by the idea of cloning to use common sense.

That still doesn’t disprove the claim about Dolly.  She was a female, after all.  So let’s click over to the Wikipedia page on somatic cell nuclear transfer:

There is also the potential for treating diseases associated with mutations in mitochondrial DNA.  Recent studies show SCNT of the nucleus of a body cell afflicted with one of these diseases into a healthy oocyte [egg cell] prevents the inheritance of the mitochondrial disease.  This treatment does not involve cloning but would produce a child with three genetic parents.  A father providing a sperm cell, one mother providing the egg nucleus, and another mother providing the enucleated egg cell.

Read those last two sentences again and see if you can figure out the problem.  Have you got it?  In the process of cloning, the nucleus of the egg cell is removed. This “enucleated” cell is therefore supposedly stripped of its DNA.  It’s replaced with the nucleus of another animal’s body cell, and the resulting embryo therefore contains genetic material from only one source.  In other words, the egg cell itself should have no DNA, because if it did, the resulting organism wouldn’t be a clone since it would be getting DNA from two sources/parents.  Now go back and

read those two sentences again.  The mother providing the enucleated egg cell is listed as one of the three genetic parents of this type of clone.  They are admitting that the enucleated egg cell does, in fact, contribute DNA!

If you still don’t believe me, or you simply aren’t following the logic, take it from actual scientists.  There are many who are still telling the truth, namely, that parthenogenesis (of which cloning is a type) is not possible in mammals.  See peer-reviewed research here and here, for a start:

We conclude that the maternal and paternal contributions to the embryonic genome in mammals are not equivalent and that a diploid genome derived from only one of the two parental sexes is incapable of supporting complete embryogenesis.

And…

Therefore, the cytoplasm of activated eggs is fully competent to support development to term but not if the genome is entirely of maternal origin.  We propose that specific imprinting of the genome occurs during gametogenesis so that the presence of both a male and a female pronucleus is essential in an egg for full-term development.

In other words, you always and irrevocably need a mommy and a daddy to make a mammal.  But wait, you say, those papers are both from 1984, and Dolly was created in 1996.  So those earlier scientists thought mammalian cloning was impossible, but they were later proved wrong.  Fair enough, so let’s try something more recent:

The ability of organisms to undergo parthenogenesis most likely indicates a complete absence of genomic imprinting as it shows the paternal genome is dispensable.  In mammals, however, a direct consequence of imprinted gene expression controlling fetal growth is that parthenogenesis is not possible.  Both parents are necessary to produce viable offspring making mammals completely reliant on sexual reproduction to reproduce.  Parthenogenesis has thus not yet been observed in mammals despite claims to the contrary…

And…

"These experiments show the necessity for both the maternal and paternal genome in mammalian reproduction, and indicate the two parental genomes express different sets of genes needed for complete embryonic development."

That’s from a 2014 paper by Denise Barlow, a British geneticist. In case you think Barlow was some sort of quack, she was an elected member of the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO), an honorary professor of genetics at the University of Vienna, and a recipient of the Erwin Schrödinger Prize of the Austrian Academy of Sciences.  So what, you say, doesn’t that just make her another spook?  Possibly, but if so, why has her work received absolutely zero media attention, while Campbell and his cloned sheep are famous?  My guess is that Barlow’s research was useful to the powers that be in some way, so they let her quietly publish her work popping the balloon of the whole Dolly project, figuring the average person would never connect the dots...