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Human clones priced at $50,000
A private consortium of scientists
plans to clone a human being within the next two years. They claim they will develop ethical guidelines to determine when to clone and not to clone. This assumes the scientists that develop a technology are able to limit society's use of that technology. It also assumes scientists are the best judges as to whether society is sufficiently mature to use a given technology sanely. Both questions seem debatable to me. What do you think?
Advanced Biolab: $25,000
Tissue samples: $10,000
Lobbying congress to make it legal:$100,000
An endless supply of fresh CmdrTacos: Priceless
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
It is physically hazardous, and the risk is bourn by the clone, not by the person who decided to have a clone. Risks include many pre-birth failures to mature, deformity, possibly abnormal aging.
A child should be free to discover their own talents and weaknesses. This is much harder when someone else has taken your genes along the same path 40 years before. It is bad enough trying to live up to an illustrious parent without having identical genes. Imagine the angst of achieving little with the same genes as your famous clone parent. Note that this is different from identical twins, as they are the same age.
Why should any such risks be taken by the clone for the benefit (ego or whatever) of another person? What valid reasons can there be to inflict such risks, when a normal conception can always be done more safely and easily?
(One possibly valid reason could be if the individual has no viable germ cells - but still then only if the clone would be expected to be reproductively normal.)
(I'm not some unreasoning technophobe, but there were no highly moderated comments giving the anti-cloning viewpoint, so I am posting to increase balance.)
Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
I believe one of the big controversies in the field of cloning at the moment is not the fact that exact genetic duplicates are being made, but rather that the science of cloning at the moment isn't exact. There have been a few reported incidents were clones died shortly after birth. As well, dolly the sheep had tolemeres (DNA counters that specifiy how many times more a cell can devide) as short as her mother, which may imply that if you were to have a clone, the two of you would expect to die about the same year (your clones life expectancy would be shortened by your current life span.) There are several other aspects of the science as yet undetermined.
Would it be ethical for a 50 year old woman to clone herself, only to find out 10 years later that her daughter had a life expectancy of 30?
The scientific community as a whole has an excellent ethics record when it comes to biotechnology (IP notwithstanding). During the 1970's, when the first genetic engineering experiments were taking place, scientists discovered means of introducing genes for antibiotic resistance into live bacteria. These experiments were carried out in "bio-reactors" with triple air locks and negative pressure seals. Even then, the scientific community realized that they were dealing with potentially epidemic-inducing technology, and they completely stopped all further recombitant DNA research for a period of 6 months.
During that freeze period, guidelines for safe DNA research were established, and special "research strains" of common bacteria were developed (E. Coli strains MM294 and GH5 being two prominent examples). These strains were disabled in half a dozen ways, including the removal of the slime layer that protects bacteria from digestive juices, as well as making the bacteria lycine-dependant (so that they are unable to synthesize proteins outside of the lab). Now, I use those very same strains in my high school Recombitant DNA class. I firmly believe that if the same sort of precaution and careful planning are taken with regards to cloning, we have nothing to fear.
Anonymous Luddite: "What do you think of the dehumanizing effects of the Internet?"
Andy Grove: "Not Much."
5) A body with no head has no sentience.
What about guy's that think with their crotch?!
"And like that
For example.. growing up in a caring, stimulating environment will likely form a strong, creative, and well rounded person.
Conversely, growing up in a dark, sewage laden pit where passing primates hurl feces at you will produce a Slashdot troll, $cr|p+ k|dd|3, or possibly even a Republican.
"Mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent present in every electron." -Freeman Dyson
Some assumptions and conclusions:
1) It seems to me that creating an object with no 'soul' is not unethical.
2) All sentience is isolated to the brain.
3) Sentience is equivalent to a 'soul'.
4) It is not impossible to manipulate genes to produce a desired cellular mass.
5) A body with no head has no sentience.
6) It is possible to create a human body with no head.
7) These bodies will likely be derogatorily called 'organ factories'.
8) Organ factories are *not* unethical.
Therefore we should start creating organ factories in order to increase our human lifespans.
Dancin Santa
As Long as they don't clone Rosanne Barr, Jon Katz (sorry jon) or Barbera Striesand(sp?), they can Clone away!!!
Kids, you better be good, or your parents will have a replacement cloned... No one would ever be the wiser...
I am become Troll, destroyer of threads
Just what is the great danger of human cloning?
--
Yeah, I'd rather see politicians and lawyers taking care of this stuff. They're much more ethical and are always looking out for everyone's best interests.
He said it would "develop guidelines with which the technology cannot be indiscriminately applied for anybody who wants to clone themselves".
sticks in my craw.
Why shouldn't anyone who wants to be able to clone themselves? What is everyone so afraid of with cloning? I'm not talking about grow-me-a-new-body cloning (ie, having a clone made for organ donation, etc), but about allowing cloning for anyone who wants to raise a clone of themselves, regardless of whether it's their only way to have children or not.
What is everyone so afraid of when it comes to cloning? If I want to have a child and can't find a man I consider suitable to be a father, why should I have to trust that sperm donors are going to be any better?
The closest thing to an argument against this that anyone has given me is whether parents can make the distinction between their clones and themselves. However, my mother certainly couldn't have had any more trouble recognising that I didn't exist to make up for her mistakes if I had been her clone. We don't place any restrictions on who can have children (regardless of whether we ought to; that's another argument entirely, and one I have a different opinion on depending on what day of the week it is). Why should we place restrictions on how someone can have them?
-Cyclopatra
"We can't all, and some of us don't." -- Eeyore
"We can't all, and some of us don't." -- Eeyore
I didn't say it wouldn't change things. I just don't see why that's a reason to be so Chicken Little about it.
Take everything you know about life and reconsider.(...) What is life, really?
Is this a question you claim to have the answer to? Do you think cloning is likely to change that answer?
If you answered 'yes' to both of the above questions, you don't have the answer yet. Come back when you have a theory that can't be shaken so easily.
Do clones have the same rights as any other human? Will this create a new sub-class of humans? Most likely.
Please tell me how you can tell the difference between someone who is a clone and someone who is not. Quickly, walking down the street or talking to them in a bar.
How can you discriminate against or deny rights to a class of people when you can't determine who its members are? How will this "create a new sub-class" of humans, unless they somehow engineer all clones to have, say, purple spots on the middle of their foreheads (which, before you go getting all pseudo-philosophical or hysterical about genetic engineering, we can't do yet)?
It becomes easy to abdicate responsibility for such attrocities as nuclear weapons, the hydrogen bomb, the holocaust (you think Hitler knew the best way to gas jews?), the list goes on. "It wasn't me!" the scientists cry
Notwithstanding Godwin's Law, you've just abjured responsiblity yourself, by foisting it all off on those evil, mean scientists who are obviously out to sell all our souls to Hell with their Godforsaken investigations. This kind of thing is nothing more than Frankenstein revisited. If you want to be a Luddite, fine. But why drag the rest of us down into this morass of fear? Some of us prefer to look on every new discovery as an opportunity, instead of a reason to be afraid.
Cyclopatra
"We can't all, and some of us don't." -- Eeyore
"We can't all, and some of us don't." -- Eeyore
OK, you are approaching the brick wall of reality at speed...prepare for impact...
There are a couple of problems with the reasoning here. First of all, there are non-biological differences between the sexes. I know that doesn't fit with some people's ideologies, but it's true. There's a fascinating field called evolutionary psychology that does nothing but look at stuff like this, and it sure looks like there's more difference between a man and a woman than one has a penis, one has a vagina and breasts, and hormone ratios are different. Men and women display different social behaviors and mating instincts, not because it's "artificial" or imposed on them by society, but because in evolutionary terms it is to their advantage to do so. These behaviors exist in other species that do not have societies and they have existed in humans since before we had societies. Why are women on average more picky about who they'll have sex with? Because in physical terms sex is a huge risk for a woman. It involves nine months of carrying the fetus, the near-death experience that is childbirth, and then nurturing the child with her milk (yes, Dad can help raise the kid, but his nipples aren't functional. Sorry.). Why are men generally "easier" and more promiscuous? Because sex isn't that much of an investment and propagates their genetic material. These are behaviors that split neatly on gender lines and are not "artificial"; they always have existed and always will exist in Homo sapiens. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. Many many many behaviors that people of certain ideologies are fond of attributing to "society" or throwing around words like "artificial" and "imposed" can be explained just as simply, if not more so, in terms of evolutionary advantage.
Allow me to recommend a book by Steven Pinker: How the Mind Works. Yes, the title is rather presumptuous, but it's a good read, and it'll give you a new view of just what ideas are "outmoded" and "prenicious".
What's to get upset about? It's just a twist on in vitro fertilization, which people have been doing for a long time. I can see lots of reasons why people might want to do this (aside from the occasional case of narcissism).
I lost my wife before we had a chance to have children. It would be wonderful to have a daughter like her. She was a delightful person--the world could use another one like her (of course, that's assuming I could do as good a job of child-raising as her equally delightful parents). I am sure that there are parents who have lost children to accident or disease who feel the same way. Why roll the genetic dice again when you already had a winning throw?
The "unique identity" thing is a non-issue. After all, identical twins happen once in awhile, and they manage just fine. The fact that they are not genetically unique doesn't stop them from developing their own unique identities.
From a biological point of view, I suppose that we could get concerned about some kind of genetic monoculture. What if there is a fad for clones of some famous person, and everybody wants to have one? But clones are going to be a bit too costly for that to be an issue for quite a while. And face it, the one thing that we are *not* lacking on this globe is human genetic diversity. We can tolerate a lot of cloning while still having more genotypes in circulation than have ever before existed at one time.
I suppose there is the problem of the clone of the famous person growing up under the pressure of inflated expectations. Probably that clone of Einstein will decide to become a performance artist just to defy everybody's assumptions. But again, this isn't really any different from the problems faced every day by the sons and daughters of celebrities. It isn't easy, but they get by--occasionally, they even surpass their illustrious parents.
I think people are afraid of cloning, not because of any real threat of cloning itself, but because they perceive it as the leading edge of genetic modification, and that is indeed scary. At some point in the future, we are going to start changing our own genes. And the technology will soon be moving faster than our own generation time, which means that we will sooner or later introduce some sort of disastrous genetic "bug" that causes cancer, dementia, or worse, later in life. And it will be in a whole bunch of people before anybody realizes the problem. There will doubtless be tragedies to make thalidomide and diethylstilbesterol look like small potatoes. But it's not really cloning that is the leading edge--it is gene therapy. And that can't be stopped. Who is going to tell somebody that they aren't *allowed* to cure sickle cell? Or Huntington's Disease? But the concept of a genetic "disease" is unavoidably slippery. Once something becomes fixable, it automatically becomes a disease. Find a gene for perfect pitch? You've defined a "poor pitch perception" disease! Let's cure everybody!
I don't think it can be stopped. I don't even think it necessarily should be. Sometimes, you just have to weather the storm....
Does little Johnny or Susie not have any "real" friends?
No problem!
They can clone themselves a new best friend in the
garage over the weekend with the Home Cloning Kit!
Now on sale at K-Mart for only $49,999.99!
- tokengeekgrrl
"The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions