Immune system/cloning

Brian E Watkins (bwatkins@ix.netcom.com)
Mon, 24 Feb 1997 11:52:27 -0800


>And a clone of yourself, while it might
>be nice to have a child with 100% of your genes instead of 50%, would
>probably die young after being infected with germs from you that have
>had 100s of generations to adapt to your--and therefore his--immune
>system.

The immune system of a clone will be entirely new. The specific
immunities of a new child are developed in utero, not in the genome.
There are too many possible antigens in the world for a 100mbp genome
like ours to program the immune system to deal with them.

(to say nothing of the inflexibility of such an approach!)

-Brian