Unless the only reason you're cloning an animal is to harvest something useful. The clone may not be adding anything to the gene pool at all, nor taking away from it, if the only reason it exists is to be a resource for humanity and not breeding stock.
If anything, genetic experiments like this could *strengthen* an animal's gene pool by improving its resistance to disease, deformity or ill health.
They were talking here about cloning a large number of animals for food reasons. Unless they keep these animals in some sort of special quaranteen (not likely), you're going to end up with a large number of geneticaly identical animals, and thus have a hotbed for disease.
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(no subject)
Date: 2005-04-12 03:17 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-04-12 03:29 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-04-12 03:36 pm (UTC)Why is disease a larger problem for cloned cows than for the cows that are being clones?
(no subject)
Date: 2005-04-12 03:45 pm (UTC)I was saying that cloning animals leads to less genetic diversity (obviously), which lowers disease resistance for the population.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-04-13 01:39 am (UTC)If anything, genetic experiments like this could *strengthen* an animal's gene pool by improving its resistance to disease, deformity or ill health.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-04-13 11:12 am (UTC)