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What Will Human Cloning Mean For Humanity?
Purdyman asks:
"Paul Tatara (who also happens to be a kick-ass movie reviewer) has an interesting piece on human cloning at goodauthority. He thinks we need start asking ourselves right now just what human cloning would actually mean, both to humanity ("The dangers of pushing this particular button simply aren't as obvious as they are with the destructive energy of a nuclear bomb.") and for the clones ("Will clones themselves ache from the sense that they may not be 'complete,' that they're inexorably removed from their so-called peers?"). This is certainly the time to figure out what we're in for, because once that particular genie, so to speak, is out of the bottle, it may never go back in. So, leaving aside the technological questions, what does human cloning really mean? Will this be mankind's greatest boon or a horrible bane?"
A soul is yet another attempt by humanity to explain things they don't understand. Creating the concept of a soul allows people to link to their concepts of spirituality. If there is no soul, then there is no spirituality and most people are not comfortable with that. A soul is also an attempt by humans to be immortal. You can read in many religions about the "immortal soul". Most humans are not comfortable with the idea that when they die, they cease to exist. Therefore, they create the idea that even though your body dies, your being, or soul, continues to exist so that in one form or another you are immortal. Whether a person believes in reincarnation, heaven or hell, wandering the earth forever as a ghost, or whatever, they are trying to be immortal. I don't think that human cloning is the real test of everyone's faith. I think it's Artificial Intelligence. By AI, I mean the creation of a non-biological being that is both sentient and has emotions. Not everyone believes this is possible, but that is irrelevant to my argument. IF humanity did in fact create something that had AI, would someone try to argue that god gave it a soul? Imagine having a conversation with a computer about having a soul. Would you be shocked if the computer said it did have a soul? Is it so hard to believe that a non-human, sentient being with emotions would also want to connect itself to a spirit or be immortal? I'm not saying that this being WOULD have a soul or would even want one. I'm just saying that if we created a being that was mentally the same as you or I, how can you argue that you have a soul and it does not, or vice versa? That would be like saying that you have a soul, but your buddy down the street does not. Note the key words, "mentally the same as you or I". A soul is just our perception of ourselves seperate from a physical body, so really, instead of a mind encased in flesh, you have a mind encased in electronics. I would like to say that the creation of AI would make people question the way they percieve reality, but then again, you should never underestimate the ability of people to believe what they really want to believe, no matter how contrary to logic.
In my family alone there are a couple of sets of clones. The normal phrase that we use for it is identical twins.
Twins don't have any longings that they are somehow incomplete. Each of them are a seperate person, molded by their unique experiences.
Clones aren't telepathic, they aren't monsters or any of the other horrors that you see on B movies about them over the years.
If you had a clone of yourself made, you would simply have a twin brother, albeit a much younger twin. All of societies normal rules would apply to this sibling.
Of the love of Pete, stop sensationalize something that already happens all the time.
I fall into the latter category. We don't know for certain if there's a God... and maybe that's how it should be. But what will happen to these clones if we discover that science can't regenerate a soul?
This is a very far-fetched assumption, not based on anything at all but a blind faith in a certain religion, and possibly on a misunderstanding of the whole process of cloning (if someone still doesn't know, a clone is merely conceived in an artificially modified process to have an exact copy of some set of genes, and then develops as an embryo, born and develops after that like any other living being, clone does not appears in a flash as a fully developed adult).
It's the same old argument as "why don't you believe in my god, imagine what would happen to you if he does exist?" The answer is, obviously, "what if you are wrong, and some god exists that considers this your behavior just as immoral and deserving punishment as your god supposedly considers non-believing?". In this case the answer is of the same kind -- even if god exists, there is no way to know his "opinion" on this, and "sacred" books of some particular religion aren't in any way reliable source for anyone who doesn't believe in them. I can certainly accept if Christians will decide not to participate in anything related to cloning, but if they want to tell everyone else what they should or should not do, they MUST use arguments from commonly accepted system such as scientific knowledge.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Seems like a sensible plan to me.
;)
But... just mark me down as one of the guys that leaves Earth, and comes back in a few hundred years (thanks to cryogenics) to the Planet of the Women
("Get your hands off me, you damn, dirty woman!")
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
The implications in articles like this is that cloning will happen on the large scale in the future. I want to argue that this is likely not to happen.
What would be the reasons to clone people? The following are arguments I have heard from people taking a similar position as the author of the article:
* To build an army of super-humans. This sounds reasonable. Imagine if Hitler had access to cloning technology! Well, do imagine it. First, cloning is not really cheap, so it'd cost him a lot of money. Second, clones to not grow up any faster than old-fashioned human beings, so he'd have to wait at least 16 years until he could use his first clones. Third, these clones must be brought up somehow, which again costs a lot of money. Fourth, by cloning a small population (the most war-suited people), he is building a large army with a very small gene-pool, which makes it very susceptible to diseases and biological weapons. Fifth, why not let a few good men make a few hundred thousand women pregnant in the old-fashioned way?
* Rich people could clone themselves so that they have a reservoir of organs for transplantation. I guess this would be illegal, just like using one's own child's organs, would it not? Apart from that, why not genetically engineer the brain away? I can hardly see anything wrong with that.
* People would clone themselves instead of making children the natural way. First, is it really realistic that a lot of people would want to do that? Second, cloning is expensive, remember? It would be much easier for a woman to go to a sperm bank and probably easier for a man to find a woman to carry his child. Third, such a thing could be outlawed on the same grounds as incest, namely that it decimates the gene pool.
I'd be happy to hear about other uses for human clones.
bye
schani
The only problem I see with cloning is population growth. Nature has its own way to weed out 'unneeded' specimens. I caught a piece on TV a few days ago, where a guy was saying how he'd like to clone his mother, cause she gave him inspiration. Now.....do we really want more old ladies driving around in their big caddilacs doing 30 mph, no matter how inspiring they might be to their sublings? When your time comes....well, better accept it. I agree that some people do need to be cloned. Steve Hawking, for one (although from the point of genetics, we are all average people, and those remarkable individuals like him in our society have to pay with their physical abilities for their mental abilities. And vise versa.) Of course, this produces a big question of "Am I worth saving?". And I am not touching that one with a sixty-feet pole.
About using clones to save the original person. I highly doubt a parent is going to give birth to a new child, to save the old one, and then just consider the new child worthless. Otherwise the parent is simply a Bad Parent, and a Bad Parent is likely to be that way in other situations too. And if the parent isn't going to make the child feel this way, than the child wont feel this way itself.
About using clones to replace a dead person, and using clones to make your child. Again, these are all just situations where the problem is Bad Parents, who expect too much from their kids.
A clone is not child abuse. A parent abusing a child is child abuse. A clone is just a twin, and if a stupid ignorant and/or cruel parent makes a child's life a nightmare, the parent is to blame.
Politicians have been adamant about banning human cloning because it throws a bone to the anti-abortion crowd, who object not to the prospect of a perfect twin but to the production and killing of embryos in the process of creating a successful twin. I think this should be seen for what it is: political jerrymandering, basically idiotic. The issue of whether an embryo should be regarded as a human being is, of course, a different discussion.
In actuality I think cloning by itself will be little more than a proverbial footnote in scientific history. It was a great step, and indicates that we are developing the techniques to manipulate stem cells, which will afford us such things as manufactured organs, a step which I would argue is much more important than any sort of human cloning. Probably the only real effect of human cloning itself will be the marginalization of infertility (perhaps a problem in and of itself, but that's yet another discussion :P).
I feel this is one more way in which the popular media exaggerates a meaningless detail while ignoring the big picture.
Aren't you dead?
If god really existed, we would have to abolish him.
New worlds are not born in the vacuum of abstract
New worlds are not born in the vacuum of abstract
ideas, but in the fight for daily bread --Rudolf Rocke
Think of growing up as a clone. Yes, they'll have all the human feelings and for the most part, be human (IMHO). However, how would one go about telling a clone that they are a clone? If people struggle with telling children that they are adopted etc, how much more of a struggle will this be? To have neither a mother or father that you were born directly of, and to know that you were nothing more than a science experiment done at the fancy of scientist would be VERY hard. I can't imagine the pain that they would experience. They would be confused on several levels and may not be able to take refuge in the religions that many of us do. In this case, what would be the difference to them between God and Science? I think, sure, we could do it, they would be human, and if we kept it a secret from the clones, it may not have many adverse effects. If they were to know what they were, it could be very very tragic. I also believe that there would be a high suicide rate in clones. Again, all this is my opinion based on my own attempts to imagine what it would be like. I have biological parents and have no real way to imagine the pain, but I think it would be hard nevertheless.
Just commenting on the topic, not the story.
Cloning would not copy the mind, the education and the environmental aspects
of raising. Children grow up differently, whether or not their genes are
different. You cannot fork() and exec() a human body.
I think one can compare it with identical twins. Their genes are the same,
so usually the look the same. But in their minds they can me rather
different, although they are raised together, within the same family.
When I would clone myself or my girlfriend/wife would do so, the child that
comes from it, is just in many ways like me. Except that is will be born
differently (i hope, i am a premature), and will grow up in the 21st
century, instead of 1975 till now. He would miss the cold-war period and its
ending, so when he is 25 years old, he could be rather different from me.
Cloning isn't fork() and exec(), it is a complete new individual, with maybe
the same look, the same genetic illnesses and maybe, just maybe, the same
temper, more or less.
my2pennies
---- Boring sig.
Most atheists (including myself) do not say, "God does not exist and I not only know this for a fact but can prove it as well".
That's silly. It is by definition supernatural and therefore outside of science, so there's no point in trying to use science.
However, I can say it like this: There is no reason to consider the possibility of a God as any more probable than any of the other infinite number of supernatural possibilities which also cannot be confirmed or ruled out.
Why do we focus on the monotheistic possibility? Just because the religious culture around where we live is monotheistic? What if the greek gods exist? Or the roman ones? Or both?
What if the scientologists are right? Are there any good reasons at all to give more consideration to one of these than to the others?
Vidi, Vici, Veni
because sex is fun, and feels good.
Vidi, Vici, Veni
you just described what I see as the worst thing about cloning.
Vidi, Vici, Veni
Ok, I'll throw this one at you:
I'm willing to be that you don't believe that people always have sex out of love. So, is there a distinction for 'bastards' that makes them less than people as you imply clones would be?
Vidi, Vici, Veni
"the only way that human cloning could become a big problem in this regard is if everybody decides to do it."
ANYONE can clone anything with our fabulous new CLONE YOUR OWN @ HOME kit!
* build an army of geeks to do your bidding!
* replicate your liver in your bathtub and throw your own homeade entrails at passers-by!
* create fabulous monsters in your basement and force them to do battle with other fabulous monsters! (clone battle arena available in 2004)
* YOU are the master of their fates!
* Clone yourself! kill yourself! what fun! nobody will ever know if its the REAL you!
* Join in the worldwide devaluation and devolution of human life!
"Tension is the great integrity" -- R. Buckminster Fuller
For a more serious look at what we might be doing WRONG in the area of genetic engineering, see Scientific American's review of Body Bazar. Among other things, it addresses your question: "Who are YOU to tell me what I can and can't do with my own genes?" -- apparently in US law, you DON'T own your own genes.
I guess I don't really believe that the kind of abuses that cloning could encourage ARE in fact occuring on any widespread basis. And there are much more important things to worry about.
-- Michael Chermside
Clones as a source of repair tissue:
There's another alternative, more practical and less sticky. Say cloning technology matures. You can take a mouse, and create a million other mice, barring lack of suitable mothers.
Rather than growing a whole human to transplant, say, a kidney, you treat the kidney already in the person to start repair and growth processes.
How? I don't know yet. What's my logic? Well, the kidney *originally* grew inside the person. What's stoppying the human body from doing it again? We, for the most part, have all the capabilities and resources to grow new organs from scratch. We did it in the womb, and I think it is lack of understanding and technology that allows us to do so now.
How does cloning help? So take these million mice. By subtly altering the genetics of each of these mice in a different way than the original, we can actually 'reverse engineer' the DNA. Turn off a gene, replace a gene, activate a gene, remove a gene, introduce a gene! Or fiddle wit some of the introns and junk DNA! Eventually we'll be able to decode the language of genetics the same way engineers today figure out how to emulate Playstations and Gameboys!
How about the issue of creating a new child from the old? Honestly, this is almost a non issue. If you take the old child and recreate it, from scratch, it will be a different person. Unless we find that genetics match to personality near perfectly, the parents are about as well off creating a new one from scratch. Sex is more fun anyway. Anyway, the clone child will have no more or less difficulty than the second child, in your example? The process of cloning is not the problem, it is the nature of the parents!
How about the clone of self issue? Same! It'd be very much a lie to believe a clone of the self is the same as the self. Might as well have a natural child. Again, the sex is better. Again, the problem is the parent, and not the clone!
If any of these are problems, it's not because clone tech is available or possible, it's because the humans who want to make clones have problems. It's the same logic as stopping drunk drivers, and not the cars, because the cars are just tools and toys and technology, and it's the drunks that get into accidents.
-AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
I think that's the wrong question.
It's not "Should we do that?", it's "What will cloning give us?"
Cloning, suprisingly enough, won't give us clones.
I don't believe so, anyway. Sex is too fun. The pain of childbirth isn't. So clones won't be an issue until artificial wombs are widespread, or surrogate wombs are cheap.
On the other hand, what would cloning give us?
The ability to reverse engineer the genetic code. Take a million mice, alter each mice in one specific way, and allow them to come to term. Input, output, black box reverse engineering process. A few thousand iterations later, we have hooks and keys into evolutionary biology, developmental biology, the immune system, growth hormones, structures, and just about anything else that can happen in the human body.
Worried about the threat of clones grown for body parts? Wouldn't cloning, and the ability to understand how a kidney develops from proto-cells, give us the ability to actually grow a new kidney, in the host body, from a single 'fixed' kidney cell? Or from a 'fixed' kidney culture? Why bother with a new clone body? The host body originally created two kidneys! What's going to stop it from making a third?
Imagine that cloning will enble us to do everything we do now, but easier. Instead of doing organ transplants and artificial organs, we now grow and repair the organs in situ. Instead of LASIK and glasses and contacts, we can force the eyes to reshape, or the corneas to reshape, live. Instead of piercings, mutilations, and tatoos, we can grow tiger striped fur, or skunk tailed hair, or bright iridescent green scales. Instead of hair transplants, chemicals, and wigs, we can grow new hair.
-AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
A Look at Respecting Everyones Views and Input. What is the Reverse of infinity? (Looking Back) Yes infinity is no end in the Future. something to think about - Who created God? who created the creater of Gods creator and so on. Destiny = eveything wants a chance to live, this includes ALL example the nasty thing called Cancer looking at the big picture, everything is included in this as we call Life, which is so complex that even human and none human creations inhinder (rocks in our road) to live. cloneing: whats the need for SSNs, drivers licence ect for an INDIVIDUAL? cloneing spare parts yea this is recognized as an extention of life. Soul = Programing an individuals mind from birth to present (Upbringing) travel through Life. Same way we give a Puter a Soul through Programming.
Have a good Day NØFYT The Cyber City http://www.qsl.net/n0fyt/door.htm Amature Radio and Internet Resources with a
not very many would have 10 kids tho..
-henrik
I can't see any problem with clones
lets look at clones for what they are
they are a real person createdfrom scratch nothing more nothing less
you couln't tell if you met a clone on the street
THEY WOULD BE A REAL PERSON
just like anyone else they might be physicaly identical to the gene donner
but their environment would mold thier personality
I think people won't even give it a second thought once clones become common
just like artificial insemination
http://Lenny.com
Besides - what's so wrong with the old-fashioned way of making humans
It's so messy!
http://Lenny.com
...but I'll still point out for the masses that human cloning made the cover of Time this week. linkage
It will mean a growing popularity of the bad pun, "Send in the clones!" And of course, more groans :)
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ping -f 255.255.255.255 # if only
Except - in the case knows it's father or mother - a clone will know exactly what it will look like in 20 years, maybe even which terrible deceases it will get. And for the father/mother, it's like the clone is you; the way one will threat a clone, will almost certainly differ from the way a normal clone is threated; it will most probably be pushed in a certain direction because there's a rather large chance of knowing where the clones' talents are. That is: if talents are genitically.
0x or or snor perron?!
Depends. I feel that cloning organs and the like would be a massive boon to humanity, where we'd never have to worry about a lack of organs for transplants. Plus this will likely allow more research to be done on these organs to find better cures and treatments.
Cloning humans with a brain and self awareness, I don't think is such a great idea. Maybe for dumb automotons to do hazardous work and are put back into a box after work and don't care a bit, much like a living robot. You can almost compare to clones to AI, both of them could either just be smart about certain things and dumb in everything else (lack of self awareness) or self aware and living like "real" humans with the implications that come about (Blade Runner comes to mind).
Cloning like all technology will have it's alignment based on what we do with it. Making clones of organ, or advanced robots to work on assembly lines is one thing, making a real person is different, and is something that I don't think we as a whole can handle yet, as it WILL be misused.
Demona's Law - "User data expands to exceed available bandwidth." ("User data" being pr0n, mp3's, vob's,
I would be worried aout the status of clones and how they would fit into our current society. I can see something like the telepath story line in B5 happening very easily. After all, we already spend an exorbitent amount of time trying to place different races, nationalities, cultures & religions into various places of superiority or inferiority.
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If I actually could spell I'd have spelled it right in the first place.
Human Engineering
That's what this is all about right? Taking the steps necessary to customize a human being. I'm sorry, but whether you believe in souls or not... whether you're religeous or not, this is an issue that affects everybody very deeply.
My basic opinion on the matter is that... I just don't know how I feel about human cloning. I mean, its an issue that is incredibly pervading into all aspects of our lives, and its ramifications are totally unknown. But here's my response to your above post: play nice!!
People may, or may not be religious.... but their opinion is still a very important issue. You can't just block out a person's opinion simply because you think their belief system is stupid. Their belief system works for them... and at this point... you have no more experience or knowledge than they do.
Give everybody a fair chance because this issue affects them just as much as it does you... and no one person (thank god) is the authority here.
Given that we're talking about exact duplicates, clones no more have an "original" and "copy" than twins do or, in reality, software does. There is a chronological order in which the duplicates are made (or a birth order, in the case of twins), but the code is the same. I'm not of a "first is always best" attitude, so in this brave new world I'll just continue to treat people as people and software as software (unless we nail hard AI in my lifetime :-).
Your argument states that genetic engineering will only be a problem if it's banned. So don't ban it.
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Genius dies of the same blow that destroys liberty.
Why is it "evil"?
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Genius dies of the same blow that destroys liberty.
in addition you could create a minimalist-brain slave race. you could even replace their motor functions with a lan card and wire them into a CAD program to build a building. Specialize the drones until they're corporately branded. See that one? he has the new honda xeon arm, we'll be equipping the others shortly after we measure the gains in productivity.
Free the drones and they stand there and do nothing. Can't breed with the drones because their dna is incompatible.
http://www.livejournal.com/users/cixel
It's certainly possible, but I'm not sure what genetic implications that would have had for their offspring. I wasn't there, and I obviously can't speak for God.
I think that a gene mistake could have the destructive power of a nuclear bomb. For example, scientists are creating a bacteria that lives entirely on carbon monoxide, this could potentially alter the mix of gases in our atmosphere and kill everything on earth.
the nuclear bomb was a discovery that even a retarded person could understand. scientists currently naively believe that they are capable of understanding the impacts of changes in genes. the fact is that there ARE things that are simply too complicated to ever comprehend. understanding the human genome likely would take an IQ far beyond what anyone on earth has. they will unwittingly unleash a global catastrophe if they continue. the end of the world is near. would I let cousin eddie experiment with a nuclear grenade!
-- Betting on the survival of the media industry is a serious risk. I advise investing elsewhere.
> On the very slim chance this isn't a troll, I offer the following
It's not a troll; it's sarcasm. Deep, dark, hard sarcasm.
The point is, none of the questions Paul, who should stick to movie reviews, is asking are new. They haven't been new in the Media since Dolly, and science fiction has been dealing with this stuff since those stories you mention, before, and a lot more since. And the questions it asks (because it's gotten past the army-of-soulless-clones crap) are far more insightful. If these "bioethicist" (I must have missed that major at my school, who the hell died and made them god?) critics would just take a 1 hour trip down to their local library, 90% of these articles wouldn't be written, or might at least ask some intelligent questions.
If only there were a literature of speculative fiction to consider this in a thoughtful, entertaining, and imaginative fashion. That would be great. Maybe stories set not now, when cloning's future is uncertain, but hypothetically projecting it into the future to see what, given certain assumptions, things might be like. It would be even better if there were a history of such fiction to guide us.
Unfortunately, no one has ever asked these questions. Thank god people are doing so now. If only they had a history of serious speculation to guide them.
Of course clones would have to be born. Did you think they'd just appear, full-grown, sprung from the head of their parents? The way a clone is made, basically, is: DNA from a donor cell is implanted into an ovum which has had its genetic material removed. The ovum is then encouraged to divide. Once it has, it's implanted into the uterus of a host mother, and the scientists cross their fingers and hope. But it has to be implanted into a host mother! We don't have the technology to grow fetuses outside of a uterus. And even if we did, a genetic defect that would kill someone at birth would still kill a non-born individual. "Birth" in this case means "when you start breathing and living on your own, without help from your mother/the artificial uterus." If the baby doesn't have lungs, the baby will die whether it was born or not, unless technology steps in yet again.
It is impossible to have a well-reasoned discussion without knowing at least most of the facts beforehand.
I don't know that I've ever read a more embarrassing or trite article linked on Slashdot.
However, before we give a sentient being life, we had better recognize that we may be incapable of properly bestowing life...
So, we give a sentient being life? This garbled sentence seems to mean that when we give a sentient being (who is already alive) something called life (which it already has, if life can be considered a possession) we might bestow it improperly.
Gee, how sophomorically profound.
"I'm sorry, Ma'am, but I'm going to have to revoke your son's license to life, as it was improperly bestowed."
Or:
But what will happen to these clones if we discover that science can't regenerate a soul?
And:
If we manage to destroy our spirits, there's really nothing left.
I don't know that I have a a soul now, nor that such an entity even exists, and the consequences of that uncertainty did not stop me from becoming a parent. If I discovered that souls did not exist, life would be as rich and mysterious as it is now. If I discovered that souls most certainly existed, life would be as rich and mysterious as it is now.
You aren't going to destroy my spirit (whatever that may be) just by giving me knowledge. It is a shallow appreciation of beauty or art that is destroyed by knowlege.
Neopets - the best free game on the Int
Regardless of science, any clone born into society today will certainly have an tremendous identity crisis.
This webpage is my only sanctuary in a world of idiots, jerks, biggots, prudish hippocrites, religous nuts, and outright criminals. Thanks for speaking up, drinkypoo but dude, change your name :)
I'm not positive that twins are treated the same. Don't parents often do things like dress them in identical outfits and such? And isn't their probably some less subtle pressure on them in that direction?
*shrug*
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
So if the first clones turn out OK, will you stop believing in souls. Or will you decide that God likes clones and stepped in at the appropriate time to provide it with one?
Yeah, it'd be horrible if we could get rid of those genetic diseases, or if we could make our kids smarter or stronger or more likely to live longer.
It's almost as bad as making corn that doesn't need pesticides.
Geesh. Let's get out and start protesting now before these awful things happen.
Wouldn't an army of cheerleaders to do your bidding be a far more worthy investment?
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Nicotine free Amish .sig.
What strikes me as frightening is that in my discussions with various joe-sixpacks at work, that they would consider clones as somehow less-than-human.
Some of them are even Christian.
I'm sorry, but this attitude scares the living daylights out of me that *just because of his or her conception* that he or she can be considered non-human. This is the first step in considering such people as *expendable*. Consider what happened in WWII on both sides. Look at a Bugs Bunny cartoon from that era, vis-a-vis the "Yellow Peril" or at German propaganda concerning the Jews.
It's all a point of view that I hope I never EVER hold.
We are all here as human beings to get along as best we can. To say that some of us are not worthy of that is well....non-Christian and definitely anti-human on a grand scale.
Too late for Mod Points, but I have wondered about this for a while.
Who owns a clone? The mother? The company that put the sperm and the egg together? The guy that donated the sperm? Is the clone independent from birth? It's an easy question to ignore when a sheep (Dolly) is being cloned - it's just a sheep, after all, and for the sake of argument does not have the same rights as a human being. Can humans BE owned? Not in the U.S., but there are a lot of other countries.
That said, a hopefully accurate quote from Jurassic Park might be relevant:
God Creates Dinosaurs. God Kills Dinosaurs. God Creates Man. Man Creates Dinosaurs. Man Kills God. Dinosaurs Kill Man.
We're not creating dinosaurs, but maybe we're creating our replacement. Would it be ethical to genetically engineer a people _meant_ to take the metaphoric torch? I don't know. I think as long as they didn't decide to genocide us I wouldn't mind.
I've read about 50 posts so far in this discussion with people saying things like "I'm gonna clone Mel Gibson/Nat. Portman/etc. for a love doll" and sure, it was funny (mildly so, anyway) with post #1... but by post #50 I was no longer amused and no longer certain that people were TRYING to be funny.
You do realize that any clone will basically be a twin of the original person, not an identical individual with memories, experience, etc. intact.
Supposing you DID manage to get a scraping from Natalie Portman's DNA, you're still gonna have to sit around for another 18 years (except you pedophiles) before you'll be able to put your 'personal' Natalie into use... and unless you school her, teach her to walk, talk, etc., she'll be able to do little besides giggle in infantile glee or shriek in monkey-fear when she sees the uses you've got for her.
In short... cloning does NOT work the way it does in bad twilight zone episodes.
-The Reverend (I am not a Nazi nor a Troll)
-The Reverend (I am not a Nazi nor a Troll)
=(.\')=
Nothing like cloning to prove how greedy, conniving, self-rightious, and generally depraved humans are. The simplest solution would be to just not restrict cloning, let it be a non-issue, and treat them all just like anyone else.
But of course, that would be too easy. Instead, we have to deal with corporations and governments that will try and find ways to abuse clones and their freedoms however possible. Every religious zealot out there will assume that his opinions on the nature of reality should matter to others for some reason, and in a fit of self-aggrandization, will expect the rest of the world to bow down and accept restrictions based on what he wants.
In the long run, it might lead to ludicrous amounts of legislation, protest, violence, even war. All because mankind is too selfish to just let cloning be without abuse, exploitation, or restriction.
"I think I'm a clone now...."
- JoeShmoe
-- I wonder which will go down in history as the bigger failure: the War on Drugs or the War on Filesharing
We already have cloning. It's called 'marketing.'
My name is Carlos Montoya. You share files of my music. Prepare to die.
Half, of course, being some fraction he just pulled out of his ass.
You didn't "realize" anything. You were trying to tie a particular fantasy in with reality, and you just decided that thinking about it a certain allowed you to maintain your fantasy.
Tons of 'em. The 75MPG carburetor, the pill that turns water into gasoline, etc. etc. etc.
Well, that would depend on where your eyebrows were, now wouldn't it.
Anyone ever read 'To Live Forever' by Jack Vance? After we've got the cloning part figured out all you need to do is figure out how to transfer memories to your clone and you could effectively live forever. Well, maybe, but in the book they had other problems.
learn something about space-time before making an idiot of yourself in a public forum.
.sig
Read what he said again - he does not believe. Agnostics are people who believe in some force guiding things, they're just unsure who. He stated he does not believe in find it necessary to have an opinion one way or the other, ipso facto he does not believe and is an atheist.
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Last time I looked at a table of classification humans were animals. Maybe you're a plant?
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He said _he_ believes that only God can create a soul. He also said that _he_ believes technically nothing can happen excepting that God permits.
He never said that clones had no soul, only that _he_ believes God alone creates souls.
All the questions he asked were retorical, not attacking. Take a freaking chill pill.
Does the need for open-mindedness only apply to religious types, are non-religious types by virtue of their non-belief somehow exempt?
"We apologize for the inconvenience."
OD (no flames/trolls please, it was a joke)
Free Techno/Jazz/DNB/MI Music by guys obsessed with monkeys!
Uhm... technology ( better yet, Science ) is only half of the answer to improve life. It gives us power but id does not tell us how to use it.
The other half of it is *ethics*: ideals, beliefs, reasoning which tell us what to aim for, and what to avoid.
In the 20th century, mankind advanced greatly in science & technology, but the current ethic system failed to controll the growing power ( not totally, luckily, but it failed IMO).
In this century, we should upgrade our ethic system. The Internet can help in that ( if it is not totally screwed by commercialism, that is ): the more ideas circulate, the more our ethic system improves.
I'm not saying that we should stop or even slow technology improvements: only that we should stop believing that they will solve all our problems.
About immortality : no thanks. A world of immortals will be rotten. Fresh human beings is what is needed for mankind improvement (but I could use a couple of century, thank you).
Ciao
----
FB
It would be so much simpler just to have people who enter the hospital for routine surgeries slip into "comas" and then all these comatose people would "die", only in reality we would just get a big room and fill it with coma-oids dangling from wires in the ceiling. Why fiddle around with clones and all that sloppy genetics when you can just get by on plain old conspiracies.
All kings is mostly rapscallions. -Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
If a person is cloned from another human beeing, will they be exact genetic copies (with same fingerprints and stuff like that), or just as identical as identical twins, who as far as I know don't have the same fingerprints?
--
"I'm surfin the dead zone
--
"I'm surfin the dead zone
In the twilight, unknown"
"2) clones are denied certain rights through legislative action due to religious and other group's pressuring (try and argue with a straight face that Congress won't pass stupid, knee-jerk legislation affecting important issues)"
Who, exactly, is going to want to take rights away from clones? These clones aren't Frakenstein monsters - they're conceived normally, so they'll have a soul, and the religious groups will probably be the most steadfast defenders of their civil rights. Last I checked they were the ones concerned about the "sanctity of all human life"
-mati
Or see clone Jesus.
"Manipulation of Majesty" is the phrase that sticks out the most in my mind after reading the article. What the author doesn't not seem to realize is that we are already ALL OVER "Manipulation of Majesty". Look at us. Then look at the lions and the tigers and the bears. Can there be any question that we have yanked our own asses out of the more typical course of evolution? Evolution is the word used hor "Mother Nature's" genetic engineering program. If we a not completely out of the program we have at least taken to sitting at the back of the class. What are the evolutionary/genetic consequences of medicines that allow people, who would otherwise die during childhood, to live normal lives? Who knows? We have no other animals to compare notes with. In my opinon, if humanity is going ignore the teachings of "Mother Nature's" standard evolution/genetic engineering program, we had better start teaching our own version. If you are going to grab the bull by the horns, you had better grab it by BOTH horns. That means cloning people and genetically engeering people. (And food for that matter.) I belive we risk extinction, or at least very unpleasent large scale deaths, if we do *NOT* agressively pursue the genetic sciences as well as generaly consider and act upon the issues surrounding long-term survival of our species.
they'll just clone themselves over and over and over. of course, there might be a ten-fifteen year wait between the troll we kill and the time he returns to harrass us on the forums, but i like to think that slashdot will have improved it's anti-troll just a wee bit by then.
--
Peace,
Lord Omlette
ICQ# 77863057
[o]_O
i would argue that the article is more or less about the dangers of cloning. Humanity's ultimate doom being one possible aspect of actually doing this.
But, i do thank you for your well thought out, concise, and intelligent troll. Of course, if it wasn't a troll then you, my friend, are a perfect example of why we, as a human society, should never be allowed to clone ourselves.
FluX
After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -David Hume
Well oddly enough this "religion" comment, even though it's just spitting back out what most religious people say about cloning (no offense intended, most non-religious people say the same stuff over and over again too, it's just slightly different stuff), but it really made me realize something. Cloning is inevitable at this point in time, which means the presence of clones is inevitable. Probably within 20 years or so cloning will be mainstream enough that, while there won't be that many, there will be enough of them to count as a very minor demographic. Guess what the next level of civil rights will be? Now that rights for women, blacks, and foreigners in general have all been fought for (not to say that there is nothing left to do, but at least significant progress has been made), and rights for homosexuals are being fought for right now, the next level will be equal rights for clones.... just imagine the discrimination a clone will suffer.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to get PC here. I believe in equal rights and don't support any discrimination, but this'll be disgusting and range from the most anal retentive conservative old man to the most long haired yet equally close minded flaming liberal.... trying not to discriminate against people yet not getting overly PC (PC is politically correct in this context btw, not personal computer).... oh well.
This is similar to the X-Men like the original post said additionally in the sense that they'll be discriminated against plenty. Oh, and as for your "should we regard them as humans" alright read some of the other posts floating around here (the "5 insightful" ones), but to sum it up quickly for you: identical twins are just like clones, except they happen to be "cloned" at the moment of conception. I happen to know a pair of identical twins in real life, and they certainly both qualify as having a soul, at least as much as anybody else I know does...
You have no chance to survive make your time.
_____________
I'll bet / with my Net / I can get / those things yet.
_____________
I'll bet / with my Net / I can get / those things yet.
--Dr. Seuss
Well I don't agree with everything you've said, but at least you've got a well thought out and informed opinion. Given it's inevitable, I guess the question uppermost in my mind is "Who should to decide how cloning gets done?" and alongside it the practical question "Who IS going to decide how cloning gets done?". Maybe if we can answer the first one, we can influence the answer to the second one.
_____________
I'll bet / with my Net / I can get / those things yet.
_____________
I'll bet / with my Net / I can get / those things yet.
--Dr. Seuss
As for whether clones will feel "empty" because they are clones, I'm sure it would depend on the person. Many non-cloned people feel empty - it would be a person by person situation. My feeling is few would care - do children born by invitro fertilization care how they were created?
Human cloning (particulary in the area of cloning a person to create another) is a lot of hot air - I don't see it as a major application of the science. Cloning extinct or rare animals and cloning for the sake of organs seem more important. Will we vain people cloning themselves to raise a "mini-me"? Sure, probably, but vain people have dones stupid things throughout history.
"There is no time, sir, at which ties do not matter," Jeeves, (Jeeves and the Impending Doom)
Atheist's have no proof that a God does not exist. Atheism is therefore a religion, which bases its beliefs on the faith that no God exists.
Atheist tend to contradict themselve's. You are safer to take a solipsist agnostic stance, if you do not want to "subscribe to odd notions".
I have not known of anyone who as either falsified or proved the existance of god.
It is possible to not know stuff.
*thump*
...says so in my bible!
*thump*
*thump*
*thump*
I already have a clone.
He is my twin (I was born first).
He appears to be coping.
he assumes that because thats what the fucking article is about moron. Jesus christ, learn to read.
No Such Agency has it right. An attitude of permissiveness on the cloning of human parts for harvesting and transplantation, or summoning populations of clones out of thin air may keep one life unnaturally going but it degrades and erodes the uniqueness and respect for human life as a fundamnental value in human civilization. If I can keep clones in tanks for my future use, then why wouldn't I take parts I want from you if I am able to coerce you to giving them up? If it is possible for some human creatures to exist only for my benefit, the way my horse does, and to live only at my mercy, the way my horse passes every day because I have not decided to have him put down or because I continue to feed him, then who says this power I have is limited only to power over clones? Why would it be? Cloning threatens to make slaves of the unique as well as the clones - and devils of the rest who are not slaves.
If Eric Robert Rudolph had bombed a cloning lab instead of an abortion clinic would you shelter him? I am afraid to say I would.
Johnny Quest has two Daddies.
Oh wait, that's not true! However, since you're most likely just a troll, I won't bother with an extensive rebuttal. Idiot.
Freedom: "I won't!"
I doubt it. The thing about chauvenism is that it requires that the oppressed have some easily identifiable characteristic to set them apart, so that the rednecks who go around hating them can pick them out of a crowd. A clone will look, talk, walk and act *exactly* like any other human being, will have grown up the same way, have its own unique thoughts and memories... basically, a clone will be simply a twin like any other twin, only not born at the same time. This isn't a sci-fi fantasy where people spring forth fully grown from test tubes with belly buttons on their necks, or are duplicated xerox-style by a Big Evil Machine under the watchful eye of a cackling mad scientist. You nor anyone else will be able to know a clone from Adam, and so they won't have any more trouble than anyone else. Put it this way: the minority group suffering the least oppression -even in countries much more oppressive than the US- is gays. Why? You can't tell by looking. You can only tell by observing their slightly different lifestyle. Clones won't even have the lifestyle to set them apart...
*** ***
There is reason to be concerned about cloning, and I'd like to point it out as is seems relativly untouched.
= /n ature/journal/v399/n6734/full/399316b0_fs.html
1st: Lets go from the premise that clones will be about (or less as one reader pointed out due to mitochondrial DNA) as identical as twins. I know a few sets of twins, and I know a lot about twins studies (seperated at birth vs raised together yada-yada-yada). There are some basic findings: who we are is in almost all situations a result of nature and nurture (ie genes and enviornment). It would be impossible for us to recreate all the enviornmental conditions one individual has faced for another. Therefore, although we will clone a human soon enough, we cannot replicate a PERSON. This is the problem the general public has with cloning, they view cloning as replicating a PERSON. Cloning is replicating the body which is a shell, not the mind or spirit. Therin is the problem: people, society at large, the person who did the cloning, etc. expect a replica. Has anyone grown up in a family where they were expected to be exactly like their parent? Well multiply that by a hundred and you might be able to imagine the difficulty a clone would have in developing their own identity.
2nd: Genetic reproduction for people that have bad genes. Ok, I'm against eugenics, so I don't want to be killed on this point, but if people have gentic disorders that do not allow them to reproduce, why would they want to have children/clones that are afflicted with the same problem? I don't think this is a government issue, but rather an individual one: with all the reporductive technologies and fancy pants science in front of us, the human desire to reproduce ones own flesh and blood is going to ridiculous extremes. As I said, there are two things that make a person, Nature and Nurture. If you have bad genes passing them on to the next generation is detrimental to your offspring- rather pass on a good enviornment: adopt!!
3rd: Old DNA. At a very early stage of fetal development, some cells are 'put away' or saved, to later become gametes (eggs or sperm cells). These cells are saved at this early point in devlopment so they dont undergo to many cell divisions, as the more cell divisions, the greater the chance of mutation (which are almost always null (no effect)or detremental- we're not talking X-MEN here). So, when we develop eggs and sperm, the DNA of these cells is 'new' or fresh. After each cell division, we lose a little bit of the ends of our chromosones, spacer regions that prevent loss of important genes. When we clone, we pass on old DNA. See: http://www.cnn.com/NATURE/9905/26/dolly.clone.02/
or
http://www.nature.com/cgi-taf/DynaPage.taf?file
(requires login)
So if we clone a 30 year old, the newborn baby will have chromosone ends that look like a 30 year olds- this is a problem, and similair to photocopies: a copy of a copy of a copy- sucks. To much signal loss, random error etc. So why introduce all theses problems in our gene pool? They will not benifit the survival of our species but rather individuals who are obsessed with immortality, who believe that cloning is a good way to reproduce.
4th: Regulation. Who ownes my DNA? This is going to be a huge problem- what about good looking movie stars? Are people going to be able to steal a strand of hear and clone some supermodel so they have attractive, healthy offspring? This is scary, and we need to see some tough regulation in this area
"If we knew what we were doing, it wouldn't be called research, now would it?' -Albert Einstein-
My 2 cents:
The amount of horror you feel at the idea of cloning is directly related to the importance you place on nature's influence (as opposed to environmental).
If your genetic makeup were all that made you as you are today, then the ethical problems of cloning would make it taboo. However, you cannot dismiss the fact that no two people experience life in exactly the same way. Even identical twins (God's own foray into cloning!) are not identical people.
Personally, I am much more disturbed by the multiple births caused by the use of fertility drugs.
Jimi Hendrix
Jim Morrison
Mike Hedges
Richard Feynman
love is just extroverted narcissism
> Personally, I'd love to raise a clone of myself
> as a child. I'd already know what talents the
> child would have, what health issues, what
> physical characteristics, sexual
> predisposition, etc. No surprises.
Actually, there are differences in sexual orientation, and physical characteristics even in identical twins. I read somewhere that if one identical twin is homosexual, then the other one is about 50% as likely to be homosexual as well - not 100%! So there *is* environment that plays a role. In addition, not all identical twins are born equal. Sometimes one particular baby has more of the "resources" (don't know of a better way to put it) of the mother's womb than the other twin. So the first twin is a LITTLE bit taller, a LITTLE bit smarter, etc.
Next time you see an identical twin, I implore you to ask them if they feel "equal" Most of the time, they will say no, siting one is just a LITTLE bit better. It is quite interesting.
and have Katz talk about something random?
Doesn't he do that anyway?
--- Can i borrow your Clue-Stick(tm)? I need to go beat a few people with it...
You must be a trekkie... They would be the only people to say Gene Roddenberry was a visionary.
I believe a visionary is someone who predicts a future, then because of his prediction it becomes true. I would place Arthur C Clarke as a visionary, as he was making predictions long ago about the way things would be now. Because of his predictions people started working towards those things. Thus some of his predictions are now true.
--- Can i borrow your Clue-Stick(tm)? I need to go beat a few people with it...
Take a freaking chill pill.
I prefer to take the red pill thanks...
--- Can i borrow your Clue-Stick(tm)? I need to go beat a few people with it...
Cruel physical perils? What, pray tell, outside of a contamination on your pyrex test tube, are the cruel physical perils?
You are truly quoting a crackpot. I can quote Wesly Willis, but that don't make his lyrics brilliant. This doesn't even make any sense!
Let's see, what can we say about a despotic burden of expectation? How about the expectations society puts on all of us; That we'll follow every rule without deviation? Wank wank.
My identity is mine alone whether I'm a clone or not. I'm me; I'm pink, therefore I'm spam. I know who I am. Even knowing that you're made from someone else's genetic material (which is true anyway; You're MADE from the genetic material of your mother and father. You were built in a specially-designed nanoassembly factory called a womb) is a kind of identity. Everyone has parents. Some people only know one of them, so who cares if you only have one?
Mystery? We know pretty much why just about everything in the fornication -> impregnation -> gestation -> deliveration cycle works. Once you have a working brain things get more complicated, because your parents (and everyone else) now get a chance to damage your psyche, and not just your body.
Twins are not the same person; While they carry a genetic predisposition to do the same things (anywhere genetics takes effect, like taste buds and your vision being affected by identical eye color) and will probably be treated the same by many people (how much of your personality is defined by your responses to how you're treated?) they are still seperate entities. Clones are not necessarily even as similar to the host as a twin, unless it's an "exact" clone, with no genetic modifications.
Another statement that makes no sense. A clone is a child of the donor. Makes sense to me.
You (by proxy) are assuming that there IS a soul. But what there is, IMO, is humanity. Either you act like a human being, or you don't. Whether or not there is a soul cannot be proven, and so it is irrelevant in this discussion. I may not have a soul, but I am (arguably, I guess) human. If you shoot me, do I not bleed all over the place and probably die?
Hiding behind tired slogans and religious beliefs will not see us through this issue. The church is against cloning because it's still trying to control the world with its belief that any child not born inside of a marriage by parents who love each other (and belong to the church) is the spawn of satan, unless you drizzle some water over their head and tell them you love them in latin. Everyone else is against it because they don't understand it, which has been helped along by movies like Multiplicity. Copies, indeed.
Sir, you have not examined the science involved. Go read.
--
ALL YOUR KARMA ARE BELONG TO US
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
First of all, your clone/child would never experience life on it's own due to your sheltering. Second, the moment you change a person's environment, especially in the early stages of their life, you change their personality. You'd not get a copy of you unless it had the same conditions of you in life, which you would likely change for the "better". So, say you did something rather stupid that was inevitable due to your personality, but it changed you for the better, taught you some valuable lesson. Well, when you saw your little copy coming close to this, you stopped it to keep it from getting hurt. It never learns from it's mistake and keeps stumbling on in blind ignorance.
In my opinon Cloning of Non-Livestock = <i>A Bad Thing(TM)</i>
Aidrocsid Liah Lla! Sire Liah!
*flicks the evil tags away*
Aidrocsid Liah Lla! Sire Liah!
Unless, of course simply set things into motion and either sat back and watched or died.
Aidrocsid Liah Lla! Sire Liah!
Yes, parents do do this, but thankfully, not perfectly. You're forgetting that non-cloned offspring get mental and physical traits from both sides, providing more uncertainty. With a clone you've only got traits coming from one person.
Aidrocsid Liah Lla! Sire Liah!
Yet another of my cloning fears, and I was about to post about it too. Damn you. It was one of the newer episodes of The Outer Limits, wasn't it? Except they didn't labotomize this guy... Just kinda kept him in a room with no human contact. Wonderful, neh?
Aidrocsid Liah Lla! Sire Liah!
Do these people actually read articles, or just post randomly? hmm..
Aidrocsid Liah Lla! Sire Liah!
atheist to the core here... and I say 'bane'... the fringe are proceeded with 'whole human' cloning, the more respectable scientists won't touch it. (implications, implications, implications: discuss amongst yourselves) Death? I'm all for it... I am well old enough to have a sense of the end, and do not fear it
DNA evidence is already on its last legs. Even if you make it illegal to clone human beings, are you going to ban gene-sequencing hardware? Or DNA synthesis hardware? This stuff is available already.
:-( we have a period of time ahead in which a lot of traditionally unquestioned evidence could easily be forged -- photos, videos, DNA... Given a big enough fish, anyway.
So "all" you have to do in order to frame someone is get a sample of bodily fluid, or skin, or hair, whip up a batch of fake semen with the target's DNA, and then go on a serial rape spree.
I put "all" in scary quotes because it is a bit difficult to do at the moment, but probably not in 10 years. Unfortunately
Na, we'll develop treatments to repair defective genes. Those that used to be unfit will become fit.
Why play the game with limitations when you can hack the source code?
I think a better comparison would be a son/daughter that is literally the spittin' image of his/her father/mother.
Personally, I'd love to raise a clone of myself as a child. I'd already know what talents the child would have, what health issues, what physical characteristics, sexual predisposition, etc. No surprises.
I'm not sure this would always be the case. Though the genetic makeup of both people would be the same, it seems to me that the varying circumstances in which they live life would have a drastic affect on their appearance, interests, and even talents. For example, I am rather overweight. However, if I cloned myself, and brought my clone up to always eat right and excersize, perhaps they would end up only looking somewhat similar to me, rather than an exact copy. The same is true for abilities. I was taught piano at a young age, and am now a composer. My clone would not necessarally turn out the same.
Just my $0.02
Except it's not. It's the interpretations of various myths, prophecies, and messiahs by dozens of perfectly ordinary men over a period of centuries, translated a dozen times over by still more men with their own agendas and theories as to how it should read. It's like a millennia-long game of Telephone. Hell, some of the events in it took place at a time when an advanced written language (you wouldn't believe just how primitive those early writing systems were) wasn't even a gleam in anyone's eye. Granted, the accumulated discrepancies are probably not too outrageous, but it's almost certainly enough to make argument over the fine points a foolish prospect.
Regarding the dictionary entries, I realized and stated from the beginning that it was obviously not a complete list. I have neither the time nor the inclination to thumb through a thick book compiling what are likely to be many conflicting descriptions (eg, ever try to find the shape of the earth in the bible?) of something I don't think exists anyway. I was willing to bet that one of the people who contributed to these definitions had done exactly that, however. If you have more and better definitions, I'm all ears.
--
Dyolf Knip
Err, no. The clone is a genetic duplicate of someone who did indeed get physical traits from two people.
It's like a biological transitive principle: C is made from A and B; D is identical to C, therefore D is also made from A and B.
--
Dyolf Knip
Maybe, but it's still a hell of a lot of fun.
--
Dyolf Knip
This is my understanding of cloning (correct me if I'm wrong).
Clones are in every way identical to a normal human--they are normal humans. They gestate in a womb, grow from child to adult, and carry no memories or ideas from the gene donor.
If you do believe in a God, it's hard to believe he/she would say: "Well, I didn't see those people being born, so I couldn't give them souls. Should have used my system with the eggs and sperm. And, by the way--twins don't have souls! HA!!"
And if Hitler were cloned, we wouldn't have anything to worry about. Everything evil about him was learned. His clone now days would more likely be saying "Would you like fries with that?" than "Die Jews die."
The really important questions are: "Who gets to be cloned?", "How many times?", "For what reasons?", and "Can I clone anyone? (Without permission?)" If my friend clones my son, do I--or my son--have any rights? Is the clone family--if it's given birth by another women who wants it? What if my friend isn't my friend, but blackmails me with the threat of killing my son's clone?
How do you enforce laws against countries raising armies of government-educated clones?
If someone clones me without my knowing, am I financially responsible for that clone? I can see kids on talk shows asking "Who's my donor?" instead of "Who's my father?"
What's wrong with self advancement?. People are inperfect, they can be injured, killed, diseased. Why not geneticly modify people, making mankind a more flexible and superior race. For example, gene's from certian lizards will allow the regrowth of limbs if lost, or quicker clotting of the blood, better eye sight etc. . Down with religious rule. I wan't cat's eyes, for cool looks and night vision.
Eat right. Stay fit. Die anyway.
Human beings have a relatively long life, longer at least, and on the average, than the one of sheep and cows ... still.
Any DNA becomes irreparably and inexorably damaged with time: through ionizing radiations, e.g., through chemical reactions, and so on; this can't be escaped, the damages accumulate. Good luck to the clones.
One nice side effect of this will be that land-humans will be forced to treat the ocean with a little more respect. When they want to dump a few million tons of toxic waste into the sea they'll be getting sued by the fish people.
Bird people, unfortunately, probably won't be so practical.
Actually the bible says a lot about cloning, please revisit the fabulous genesis chapter 2.
-- look, cheese ahoy!
clones, schmones, who cares?
;-)
All the stories on the subject I've seen suggest the clone still has to be grown in the womb. That means it comes out as a baby.
That means if I wanted to clone myself right now, the clone comes out 0 years old, and I'm 28 years old. The world is very different now than 28 years ago. I would be a different parent than my parents were, the clone would have different friends, etc. etc. The clone would be in a different environment, and hence turn out different. (Except he'd still love Night Ranger, of course.)
So except for some Hitler-esque plot of cloning 1000 "super soldiers" for an army all at once, I see no problem with this technology. Plus, I think few, if any countries, have the infrastructure for such a plot.
I'm kindof sick of hearing about all the people who worry about people "playing God" or whether clones will "have souls" so here's a list of real ethical issues having to do with human cloning that I can think of, just off the top of my head.
I rang, you rang, we all rang for orangutang!
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
-- When a fool hears of the Tao, he will laugh out loud.
Why? Because making babies the old fashioned way is just too much damn fun.
-- When a fool hears of the Tao, he will laugh out loud.
http://www.blitzbasic.com/
http://www.blitzbasic.com/
Graphics3D 640, 480
God is supposed to be unknowable, so quit trying to guess his intentions.
If you are so inclined to consider this... try 1st Corinthians 2... God revealed certain parts of His being to us, some He did not... Well why not God? Are you too good for us to tell us everything? Who are you God to be so arrogant to not tell us more about yourself? Maybe you don't exist... Hrmm, BUT WAIT! Perhaps when the Bible records you are infinite that means you didn't tell us certain other things because while we live on earth we are incapable of understanding the infinite until we leave the finite universe & our soul sees the infinite & can comprehend it as God intended...
As far as your definitions go... Dictionaries may be good for many things, but if I really wanted to know what Michael Crighton, for example, thinks & feels while writing his novels, why would I go to a commentary and not Michael himself? So then why not go to the Bible, aka - God's written word, to see what God has to say about what a soul is, if indeed He is the one who has created all of them?
First off the Big Bang is only a theory, but if we must get into it...
If you are up for it you can read this regarding the Big Bang, written by Bert Thompson, Ph.D. (whether you regard his Ph.D. or not is up to you):t m
http://www.ApologeticsPress.org/rr/faq/r&r9206b.h
If you don't care to read it, I'll try & hit a few high-lights as best I can (I'll paraphrase as best I can too, if you want the real quotes, try the actual article):
1) The Steady State model by Sir Fred Hoyle, suggests that matter is created from nothing and that newly formed matter pushes old matter further out right? If this is the case, what do we do with the 1st Law of Thermodynamics... "matter & energy can neither be created, nor destroyed" ?
2) So now onto the Big Bang which replaced the Steady State model by saying there was a "cosmic egg" (quoting from the article there) ... a densely packed proton or what not that exploded... This egg explodes & at some point like a sine wave (the article gives much better detail than this) it reaches its amplitude & comes back in on itself & therefore the universe oscillates forever.
Now, if it does oscillate then can we verify it? [my own comment here: If we say nope, then we're going on blind faith in the theory, not pratical for scientific minds] Welp then the question of whether the universe is 'closed' or 'open' comes up... If it's closed, voila, oscillations possible, Big Bang/Big Crunch seems more plausible, done. If it's open, then nothing there to stop the expansion, Big Bang/Big Crunch dimly fades into the distance.
The next 2 paragraphs are pretty much my own comments & observations from the article:
So if 'closed', then where are the walls? Invisible or not, there must be something keeping everything in then, and the question arises... what is outside the walls? Nothing? universe stops... WOW! however do we explain this scientifically? If there's more outside the walls, then the walls aren't the true walls of the universe... 'closed' universe seems unlikely to me, and while I may not have all the emperical data & such before me, the article seems to suggest that the emperical data we have doesn't support a 'closed' universe at all.
So, if 'open' universe... universe can't oscillate, must be a starting point & some day an ending point...
You can take all or none of what I've said to heart, but again, Big Bang/Big Crunch, is just a theory, and the emperical data doesn't seem to support it at all
A human classification... doesn't guarantee everyone will agree with it, or must agree with it. The scientific definition there for an animal isn't necessarily going to be agreed upon by all, and those who don't agree aren't wrong then... merely their definition of an animal doesn't put humans in the same stack as animals.
Wow, you're pretty bold to make such a statement, but you seem to be limiting the scope of your argument, trying to limit God like this...
Of course, this means God is directly responsible for all the evil and horror extant in the world. Which means God must either be evil, or be capable of evil, which negates God's omnibenevolence.
Do you have kids? Even if you don't, I'm sure this argument is not hard to comprehend... Do parents/guardians keep their children from involving themselves in certain activities they believe to be evil when they're young? The obvious answer is yes. What happens when the kids reach a certain age (i.e. - teens, 20's & so on)? Again the obvious answer is the parents allow the kids to do what they want because there comes a point where even though the parent will continue to warn their child and try to curb certain beliefs & behaviors, they know the child must choose for themselves. Also, consider this: the Bible says those in Heaven won't sin, be sad, mad, etc., but it will be paradise for eternity... Why? because the evil influences have been removed... namely Satan and anyone who will heed what he (Satan) tempts them with.
This may start a religious debate, but I think religion has been swept under the rug by too many people for far too long... Either because they doubt God, or they're too afraid to offer a defense for God, which God has provided for them in the Bible
One last point I felt like throwing in for those who doubt God's existence and know how logic works... Imagine a circle that contains ALL the possible proofs of God's existence. Now according to logic, all I have to do to prove God exists is to take ONE of those proofs and prove it factual. Now conversely, any who want to prove God doesn't exist, has to prove ***EVERY*** one of those proofs is FALSE, thus making themselves God in their own eyes, since ONLY God could prove ALL of them true or false.
"Now according to logic, all I have to do to prove God does not exist is to take ONE of those proofs and prove it factual."
Certainly you could turn the tables again on this argument, but I'd rather see you actually take my challenge then just trying to flip the tables and avoid the challenge... *PROVE* one of those proofs of God's non-existence!
And as far as flipping the tables... far too many precise things in the universe to be coincidence... consider these 4 possibilities (unless you've can think up any more) of time & eternity for the universe: (1) universe doesn't exist (need I try to argue such completely anti-scientific nonsense?) (2) the universe is eternal (same thing, nonsense) (3) universe is partially eternal & partially under the control of time (explain that one in view of science... how does something go from aging & decaying to being eternal, to being finite again & so on?) (4) universe is under the COMPLETE control of time... hence the universe has a definite age... what came before the universe then? certainly not another universe, because it would fall prey to the same 4 possibilities til you reached an ultimate starting point... *WHAT* came before the universe then? And you can't simply apply science to whom or what came before because you can't assume they'd be governed by the natural laws of our universe... big bang, evolution, and other so called theories fall short...
if you're still reading by now, even though this may not prove God 100% to you, it certainly rules out most other theories that rely 100% on this universe's natural laws & philosophies which are biased thereby. and there are much better proofs than this for God that are a whole lot harder to dispute, but this was just something for you to chew on (hopefully for more than 2 seconds, unless you'd prefer to just respond without actually considering what I've said)
interpretations? then should we throw away all historical documents as falsified by agendas & such? should we believe the first say 30 presidents were all made up? should we believe the book 1984? what do we believe & what do we doubt? Do we doubt the Bible because it's one of the best known religious books, or books period & convicts people of wrong doing saying "Don't do this, but do do that" ? Where do you draw the line? Or should we flat out doubt all history and just live for now? While I'm not a huge history buff, I'm not quick to dismiss it all either. And while it may be ok for you to take a dictionary's definition on the assumption that someone probably did the background work for me, I don't choose to do so with an issue as large as religion.
But if you choose to take another direction, that's your own decision to make, I just won't be quick to do the same.
like? i'm not so quick to lend myself to scientific "theories" because some Ph.D. says he/she knows better. I've heard plenty about the bending of space, but the simple truth is... certain of the 100+ theories about evolution and the big bang suggest that the universe is expanding outwards, while all the evidence suggests that the universe is shrinking & decaying... that doesn't say to me... eternal non-decaying universe... that says dying universe that will disappear some day.
most of the soul aspects have been covered already, but would a clone have any legal rights?
does a gene pattern belong to someone? is a clone your property? would illegal clones be steralised or otheriwse treated in an inhuman manner?
if clones have reduced lifespans, will they have the same access to medical care as non-clones? if clones breed with clones will clone children have rights?
Seaquest has covered some amazing theories in genetics...
will clones be genetically altered? to breathe water? to survive on less oxygen? to become armies? will they be able to procreate? will we have a Dark Age of Genetics? if cloning technology is commonplace, will DNA samples and fingerprints be admissable in legal proceedings? will genetically engineered lifeforms revolt? will genetic engineering be outlawed due to abuse? if so will remaining clones be locked up in seperation camps?
some more mundane questions... would a clone of someone with a genetic defect be entitled to health insurance? what would a clone do to a royal line of succession? would churches or politial groups encorage followers to engineer a certain type of child, maybe with blue eyes and blonde hair?
Even with laws in place, discrimination does occur, especially when laws are not enforced.
I like your argument. Unless someone decides clones are property of the person they are a copy of, which i DOUBT, how are they diffrent than a test tube baby. Now if they can make full grown bodies...
"Cornflakes are not the innocent critters they seem"- Sterling Morrison
I think it will be interesting, because when a human is cloned we'll find out. We're quickly closing down what Religion can explain and not science to the beginning.
"Cornflakes are not the innocent critters they seem"- Sterling Morrison
Will he feel regret for not being wanted? maybe. or maybe he will be thankful for his creation. He wouldnt exist were his kidney not needed. Also, I'll bet the practice will be to grow the individual organ/limb as needed, not a whole body
"Cornflakes are not the innocent critters they seem"- Sterling Morrison
1) We don't need more people.
2) What's the use of a clone anyways?
3) If you think anyone except the very rich and famous are going to have access to cloning technology, you're fooling yourself.
4) WE DON'T NEED MORE PEOPLE.
5) Genetic tinkering leads to problems... scientists in Australia were recently trying to find a genetic contraceptive in mice... what they ended up doing was spreading a genetic disease among the mice they were testing on, inadvertantly killing them all. "OOPS!"
6) Oh yeah... and WE DON'T NEED ANYMORE PEOPLE!!
Trying to ride roughshod over nature is not only arrogant, but dangerous and naive. Does genetic engineering have good uses? Sure, but just like nuclear power, it needs to be used responsibly, or we're going to have a real problem on our hands... Earth is overcrowded enough as it is... Nature always takes steps to correct problems... Look at AIDS... where is AIDS most prevalent? In nations that are chock full of people... Nature's trying to wipe out as many people as it can by taking advantage of our breeding urges. Only by *NOT* breeding, can someone stay clear of these sorts of diseases... See the logic? In the face of the potential of a 'genetic weapon', or Nature's reaction to genetic toying, The Bomb looks like a pile of alphabet blocks... Stop trying to be trendy, or embrace every new technology simply because it's new technology, and think about the *REAL* issues at stake.
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"Cut word lines. Cut music lines. Smash the control images. Smash the control machine." - William S. Burroughs
Most of the other posts are urging us to fly forths on the wings of genetic engineering to some great new scientific frontier, but we don't really get a clear picture of what this new frontier is supposed to be. Longer lifespans? Well that's great, but with more people alive making more babies, we're gonna run out of food (and places to plant all that genetically engineered wheat that can grow in the middle of the desert fed by only the sun and dust) real quick. Eradication of all diseases? Diseases happen for a reason: to kill off excess population. Sure, disease sucks... it't not a happy thing, but it's a part of living. Death is something we all have to face, and putting it off isn't going to stop the inevitable.
We just need to take this stuff slower... we need to think about the effects of what we're planning to do *BEFORE* we do them... not after we do them, when there's no going back.
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"Cut word lines. Cut music lines. Smash the control images. Smash the control machine." - William S. Burroughs
What was that movie? Earth Girls are Easy?
I imagine girls with tongues like that would be real popular too.
Geek dating!
GPL Deconstructed
Well, obviously to a series of presidents named "Bush".
suggested naming scheme:
g. bush 5.1 thru 5.20
I'm still trying to figure out what people mean by 'social skills' here.
Then you're an agnostic. People who believe there is no God are atheists. People who never think about God or don't "know" there is no God are agnostics. For the record, I'm a Deist.
"Saddam Hussein cavorts with terrorists."
That's funny. Mod this one up.
I'm too sexy for you.
Now that DNA testing is in use in crime solving, what are the implications of cloning technology?
I'm too sexy for you.
But is anyone worried about that anymore?
I agree completely, too many people think that biological differences are a big deal. They may be a big deal physically, but not mentally. Our mental self is formed by social itneraction and experience in our lives. Of course if cloning progresses where they can actually clone a human being right there, i.e. a clone ends up getting copied and thinking its not a clone, that it's the actual person it was cloned from, then many questions such as "Does the mental supervene on the physical ?" will be answered. And this would have enormous implications because then our consciousness arises from purely physical interaction. And clones and their first order counterparts would have the same shared experiences at the moment of cloning etc...
http://www.vanillaafro.com - take me seriously and I will shoot you
I don't know (and nobody does) what affect cloning with have on humanity, our sense of finite lives, the argument of nature vs. nuture, or evolution, but I do know that the first clone will no doubt lead nothing like a normal life. I already feel sorry for him/her.
In Old Compton Street, there's a shop called the 'Clone Zone'. When ever I go past it on the way to the Admiral Duncan pub, I see lots of identical looking guys who all have short bleached hair, moustaches and leather caps coming out of it.
It makes be proud to be British to for once the UK having beaten the vaunted scientific elite of the USA .
"Will clones themselves ache from the sense that they may not be 'complete,' that they're inexorably removed from their so-called peers?"
Hell, I feel like that all the time.
No surge protector will protect my surge. - Commodore64
They'll do exactly what they're socially programmed to do
Which, if they grow into regular teenagers, will be to ache from a terrible sense that they don't belong and... oh.
If the worst they have to deal with is a little existential angst, I think they'll fit right in.
...Philip K Dick. A good proportion of his short stories and novels are about not-quite-humans, most obviously 'Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep'.
I've been reading through the massive numbers of thoughtful, insightful and articulate replies to the topic here, and I have decided that /. does not have enough moderator points going around. People say such good, incisive stuff but it maybe only gets up to about 2 points, unless they are in the first 50 posts.
I wholeheartedly agree with the viewpoint that both cloning and genetic engineering reduces our diversity, which could have effects that we can't even begin to understand. Example: people with sickle-cell anemia, a serious blood disease, are unaffected by malaria. If people had discovered this connection a few centuries down the road, we would be in shafted because there wouldn't be anyone around with the sickle-cell gene "defect." Diversity is a key component of evolution, of course, and we need to minimize use of cloning and genetic engineering for the sake of the species.
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--hongpong.com
I find this attitude rather distressing. No real logical reasoning, just a affirmation that there are potential consequences. To this I say. "Well duh!"
At some point, a human clone will be born, will they be human? Yes. Will they be treated like a freak by a good portion of society? Quite likely. People are xenophobes by nature, only the scale of the affliction varies.
What I'm attempting to get across is, people are asking the wrong question. A simple variation on "should we allow the cloning of humans?" makes it into "why should we...?"
That is the important question after all.
Personally, I think it's a total waste of time, and counterproductive to humanity in general. Watch how fast the superbugs rampage throught the population when you have entire crops of individuals with identical MHC's. I also consider it an inherent ego trip. But it is not inherently wrong. It is little different than parents attempting to mold their natural children into the image they have set out for them, which most people find distasteful, but which is still legal in every country under the sun.
"In my opinion this is something best left in God's hands."
It would seem to me that by giving us the ability to choose that you mentioned earlier, God has already put it into our hands. I think by suggesting that it be left in God's hands, you just mean we should make a certain choice about it. In which case we've really taken it into our own hands. To truly make no choice would mean that we accept what someone else does, in which case it is in their hands, not God's.
I know I'm just arguing semantics.
what if i have 3 clones,how can others distinguish which one is the original?
what if i clone myself and send him to jail,if i break the law/?
xcyber """"""Complexity for the sake of complexity is not a solution, neither is simplicity for the sake of simplicity
So, this is about how people that are not naturally born may feel like outsiders? Oops, forgot in vitro fertilization here. This is not new by any means.
...so anyway, we were talking about people with identical DNA where they would feel incomplete... uhm, like... just like... twins...
No, I don't think the "copy" is going to hear more "you look just like your daddy" than every single one of us do anyway, despite not being clones. Sure, there were huge headlines when the first in vitro fertilized girl was born. I don't remember when that was, her name, nor where it was, and I don't think most of the people she's around these days know or care either.
Crystal Falcon -- At 200mph no one can hear you scream.
This is not heresy by any means, rather, it's an age-old problem so old it even has a Latin name; the teodicé problem, translating to "God says".
"If God is all-powerful, and all-good, why is there evil in the world?".
Various priests have tried various explanations, with varying success. Most of these explanations involve not interfering with humankind's free will.
Is there a single technology invented that has never been put to use? Not that I know of.
I basically agree with your points, just wanted to get that subject line there :-)
Since we have taken from nature the power to regulate us, we must take responsibility for that ourselves. That, on the other hand, is a nasty can of worms.
Cloning humans will bring humanity together like never before, because then 'genuine' humans will be able (and, I'm sure, more than happy) to treat clones as their inferiors.
:-)
I'm sure a lot of people will no longer have a problem with the black family across the street, when that soulless bastard that just moved in next door was grown in a test tube in some friggin' lab!
Of course, a lot of those same guys will see nothing wrong with owning their own copy of Jenna Jameson, but that's good old-fashioned American hypocrisy for you.
~Philly
Here are the "10 Most Surprising Things About the Human Genome."
There's always sufficient, but not always at the right place nor for the right folks.
Re: AC asks "Will people want to bring a non-clone into the world to compete with the Einstein clones?"
If cloning were cheap, this might be a problem, but I suspect that:
A) Cloning will be expensive enough that only the rich or frustrated are going to opt for it
B) People are egotistical enough to want to propagate their own genes, not just copy someone else's (or adoption would be way more popular)
C) The effects of A & B multiply -- i.e. wealth and success will probably make someone more likely to want to propagate his own genes than someone else's. And really, even if he chooses to clone himself, that's not that much worse than normal reproduction -- just sets it back a generation in his case.
One market I see developing is Gattaca-esque half-cloning, where you go to a clinic and they splice your own chromosones with some from the cloning catalog. That kind of genetic tinkering is likely to be much more appealing to self-important people than straight-out cloning -- i.e. "Let's take the best parts of me and add in the best parts of Stephen Hawking and see what we get from THAT."
One of the many things human cloning is gonna destroy is determinism.
After I have received the wisdom of good teaching, I will untiringly teach all people. - The Teachings of Buddha
The divergent views presented in the "article" and here in the ensuing discussion demonstrate once again that religious people in general, are ignorant and fail miserably to defend their positions in the face of rational argument.
This is proven by the complete lack of addressing the identical twin issue.
The primary ( and laboriously repeated ) arguments against cloning all originate from two wholly fallacious assumptions:
1- There is such thing as a soul.
2- There is a God and he disapproves.
Personal beliefs and religion have been in conflict since the dawn of human society and historically have been the cause of most of humanity's misery. It is a telling fact that 95% of humans adopt the religion imposed by their parents, as a learned behaviour in childhood. The memes are powerfully comforting to a young one lost in the immensity of the world. Those memes are consequently quasi-impossible to root out.
Rational thought is the *only* acceptable belief system if humanity is to survive the coming unification and globalization process we have undertaken. A belief is simply that until it can be emprically proven, at which point it moves into the domain of fact. Everyone can refute a belief. No one can refute a fact.
Case in point:
There is no spirit-driven life force, no throbbing, heaving, pullulating, protoplasmic, mystic jelly. Life is just bytes and bytes and bytes of digital information.
"The genes are the master programmers, and they are programming for their lives" - Richard Dawkins
I can't believe people actually think like you.
Grow some humanity.
I got my Linux laptop at System76.
Yes, because that is something intangible, and I don't think physically hardcoded into DNA or anything. That's just me though, please feel free do disagree.
-"Those who fought today will die tommorow."-
this is a real issue - we don't know if souls are cloned along with the flesh..
in the case of twins God bestows 2 souls, so cloning is far removed multiple birth circumstances.
it is entirely probable that we cannot clone a soul so what kind of life are we really giving when we 'grow' a human clone.
THAT is what sparks the question "Can we properly bestow life??"
As for step by step to doom .... well its only a side issue, but what if clones are completely soul-less; based on mans ability to be humane, they would end up being mass produced and used as a consumable item. there's probably even people here who don't think THIS is a bad thing..
Matt
"I split coffee all over my wife's nightie
Just to remind you all- I saw too many people writing a wrong thing, thinking that if you'll clone yourself, and your clone will clone himself, etc, you can live forever this way.
So no. If you remember the sheep Dolly, Cloning, at least nowadays, is pretty primitive and if you clone an old man, he'll die pretty fast. It'll be good for children, maybe..
And also, imo, it's not like twins. They'll die young and grow fast, and.. besides.. who needs that stuff ? It sounds to me mostly like a game.. We play god, we control the nature, we can do anything we want, muhahahaha!!
Stupid, imo. Right. it'll be good for transplants. but what will we do - clone someone and then kill him when he is some months old, in order to take his lungs ? Isn't it.. you know, not humane a little ? just a little ?
He'll have feeling just as all of us, we're just confused a little because he wasn't born in the normal way. We would never think of killing someone 'normal' in order to get his liver for transplanting, would we ?
Will go from "Does she have a sister?" to "Does she have an exact genetic duplicate?"
The biggest hurdles that cloning has to clear are those that are constructed from the prejudice, intolerance, and fear of the religious right. The discussion of the sanctity of life and its creation is already at the foreground because of the debate about abortion. The debate now is whether the aborted fetus has a soul. The debaters now discuss with ferver because the subject has no voice. When the subject shifts from an unborn fetus to a living individual the debate takes on a whole new tone. The religious right will not be championing for the rights of one denied, but denying the rights to one who has been born. Are they going to look into the individual's eyes and argue that he or she should not have been born? When that first clone is born they must take a stance. Either the religious community will be split, or it will be split from the rest of the community. I personally look forward to that event.
- Sig this!
The clone would only be screwed up because of the ideas of identity imposed by others. As in the case of non-traditional families today, it is often from the outside that the damage is done. The non-approving intrude, accuse, and chastise where they have no business. Those with no reason to have an opinion judge without thought of the impact of their sentence.
In the case of cloned historical figures, it would be the expectations of others that would most likely cause the most damage, and this is not a new phenomenon. Consider the children of sports greats who decide to follow their footsteps.
Your post leads me to believe that you have already judged everyone who might want to consider cloning. You seem to assume that it could only be a thing of amusement. Such a thoughtless judgement is what would sentence the cloned individual to an identity crisis. It probably would not be the 'parents'.
- Sig this!
I think that the reason cloning is so often faught against, is because of the undoubtable outcome; complete change in society as we know it. There are so many possibilites within the technologies of cloning that everything else pales in comparison. I personally, in the short term, am against it, I just don't see enough benefit to outweigh the risk. If the technology could exist without being used, however, I would not be against it. There may be a benefit, someday, to mass clone a particular human or immunity. Since that will never happen, and people, scientists, governments, and crazy terrorists are always going to be "running the wrong way", I must profess my dislike with the technology.
Im really bored so I will respond, what advantages does cloning have here? You still have the genetic engineering portion and that is where we start to see a possibility of humans and human species derivatives that may be questionable. I also feel the need to point out that this type of thing can be done with "natural" births very easily, and probably is. Additionally no one seems to notice that this scenario is not bad because of any bio-ethical issues, its bad because we shouldnt go around making elite killing squads regardless of bio-tech.
Cloning themselves out of vanity? Superhuman armies? What element of vanity is quenched by having someone exist who is a genetic copy. In case no one has figured this one out, clones are people to, they are not robots who are going to grow up and be paraded around on leashes. Do you honestly think that is what cloning will do? Clones are people to, just like twins are people. OK, superhuman armies? I think this is another example of a few to many sci-fi movies. Keep in mind that a clone doesnt not mature in a week with the instincts of a killer marine and the tactical knowledge to boot even if they were cloned form said marine. And where does superhuman come in? Thats genetic engineering not cloning. And if you just want to engineer than cloning doesnt really have an advantage over "natural" births. In addition, lets assume that we can create superhuman armies in a week, why would it be Iraq and Syria? Why not us? We have a lot more money and a lot bigger base to produce from. So think before you watch your next sci-fi movie, re: Gattaca.
A large part of humanity can't even get over prejudice of skin color, how do you think they will treat clones?
Everyone keeps talking about identical twins as being the prime example of cloning. Problem: twins usually grow up together, are the same age, and are usually subjected to comparable environmental stresses. Why is that a problem? Because everyone here is forgetting the fact that to clone you, they have to start with an embryo. Cloning an adult would require cloning each cell individually, while creating them all at once. Mutation occurs in your cells every time they split. Your cells can split several times a day. Why is age a problem? Because you must create the clone using an embryo. Your clone would be a newborn. If we were to clone Steven Hawkings, he would likely meet someone who looks very much like him, but is totally different due to different environmental stresses during childhood. And yes, the childhood MUST be experienced by the clone. You cannot simply age the clone to adulthood in a matter of hours. They are still human, and age just the same. The result is that there will never be perfect clones. The closest we can come is to children who look a lot like the adults they were created from. As to the moral implications... I think that cloning is warranted in some cases. A stillborn child might yet live if we create a clone. Still, the problems abound: Life will lose worth in the eyes of many if we can simply create more. That stillborn child will only live if the death resulted from external trauma. Murder, bloodshed, etc., will all increase because the value of life will drop in the eyes of the uneducated. Believing that you can create the perfect copy is the first step toward believing you can destroy the original without consequence. 3rd
Windows is like a race car: Looks good, has lots of fans, and has spectacular crashes.
Years ago when the first so-called "test tube baby" was born, the media went ga-ga for awhile, but predictably lost interest after it was obvious that this was just an ordinary, boring infant, without antennas or telekinetic powers. Cloned humans will have all the emotions and personal idiosyncracies you and I do, and will probably react the way most of us would if a drooling bunch of media twits treat them like a sideshow.
In theory (or if we were running things) clones would be cosidered the same things as identical twins (nature). They would of course lack the emotional connection to their twin because they were not concieved, born, and raised with them (nurture).
It would be roughly the same as twins separated at birth. (though they have much more incommon). Or, from a strictly biological standpoint, it'd be the same if they were concieved at the same time, but one was put on a space ship and sent to alpha centuri at like 90% of the speed of light (that'd make him age 1/2 speed or so from earths inertial frame of reference, right? If not, put in proper speed) and returned. They'd be different ages, and have completely different experiences. But both would be individuals and have unique souls (or both not have souls, depending what you view is there..either way it'd be the same for both).
Now for "reality"-- the reality of governmental, industrial, and cultural "stupidity".
Clones might be considered a different race biologically or socially.
Clones might be enslaved like Replicants (blade runner).
Clones armies could be grown (average age of US enlisted soldier in vietnam: 18 or so) in 18 years if you could keep it secret, or lived in a permissive country, or was that country's dictator.The power to indoctrinate these soldiers has been perfected over thousands of years (see "School" "religion" (not all, but many many) "popular culture" etc..etc..)
This is not farfetched...Gunnery Sargent Hartman (played by a real drill sargent in Full Metal Jacket )could do it with a bunch of "legit" humans...i think it'd be easy to do with a bunch of cloned humans who are told they are worthless, who all look the same, have the same physical capabilities, and look alike from day one. All you have to do is make sure they never develop individual personalities (see school et al) from their birth.
Or, clones could be used as slave labor. Or we might enact "separate but equal" facilities for "them"....
I could go on endlessly.
Here is the point everyone seems to be missing.
Clones are not a threat on humanity. Humans are the threat to clones.
I mean, talk about a great way to combine slavery, indoctrination, and genocide at the same time! (when a few humans show clones they are individuals the rest of us will freak....and hear you me, if we have clones I will be the first one at their door telling them "you are unique, not a clone")
I mean, do i need to make a list here?
Egyptians enslaving the isrealites
Isrealites enslaving themselves
Babylonians enslaving Isrealites
Greeks enslaving greeks and a few others
Romans enslaving romans
Romans enslaving everyone else
etc....
etc....
etc....
English enslaving half the planet....(direct slavery, and "slavery" through political, social and economic oppression)
Gee, should i even mention genocide?? Whether it is the "clone army" performing the genocide, or humanity killing off all clones when we get "bored" with them (cultural ADHD!)
If anything is clear, it is that we are so backward (even the "best" of us would be laughed at by a truely mature civilization) that we present a greater danger to everything else, than could be presented to us.
Clones are not the problem. Their potential human oppressors are.
I say before we enact cloning, we put an amendment in the constitution garunteeing Clones the same rights as every single other member in society regardless of who they are a clone of, who they were cloned by, where they were cloned...etc...etc....And make it an enforceable law.
Then clones might be safe in america. Only america...
ETC
Either that or America's sworn enemies like Iraq and Syria will use our technology against us to create a superhuman army to defeat us on the battlefield.
I'm sorry, but I think the genetic genie is out of the bottle, it may be too late for the USA to stuff it back.
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so i says to mable, i says
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so i says to mable, i says
Anticipating the consequences of your actions?? That's un-American!
Reality is indistinguishable from any sufficiently advanced fantasy.
Stupid people won't. That's okay; more potential partners for the rest of us.
And I can tell you, I'm dying to get with some of those stupid people!
Isn't cloning the least of all evils in the whole discussion about genetics and its impact on the future of the human race?
Nota Bene. In case anyone did not "get" the <RANT> tags, the below is not nesecarily an expression of my opinion but an echo of the opinions of other people.
Cloning? It will happen. We live in a free market system, why should those that can afford it not have a headless organ/limb repository cloned to serve them as a source of spares in later life? Sort of like we have savings accounts at the bank today. And as medicine perfects methods of reconnecting severed nerves we could simply switch bodies when the old ones wear out.
It has also been suggested by some that in the future there will be a new class division the "genetically optimized" and the "unoptimized" genetic underclass. The world in this scenario would be divided between those that can afford a 500 IQ, super muscles and stamina, body like the young Appollo/Afrodite, Moviestar looks etc. genetic upgrades for their kids and those that can not.
Is ist so wrong or unrealistic that we will see Genetically optimized/improved people in the next half century or so? Those that can afford this will want it and since they have the most power it will be legalized. And if it is not legalized in the Democracies of Europe/America/Asia there will allways be countries where it can be done discreetly.
This only leaves the question, Do you want a grand child with a little text behind it 's ear that reads "Encoded by Microsoft" or would you prefer an "Open source" grand child? Will there be Geneitic bugfixes and service packs?? Will there be region codes? What about the copyright issue?</RANT>
Da rabbit has spoken!
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
If we can clone body parts, like livers, kidneys, pancreas's, etc we may be able to take someones damaged organ, clone a new one and replace it without the current rjection problems in transplant surgery.
I've got type 2 diabetes. If they could clone the insulin producing cells from my pancreas and then insert them, it might be a cure for at least some types of diabetes.
Are you so soon forgetting about that in the world today employees are being genetically tested? That this information is being stored and quite concievably in the future it could be a business's practice to check your DNA against a central repositry (for example the police for criminal past). So what's to stop people and corps in particular checking to see if you are a clone? Especially if you take into account that governments may require clones to be registered...
As to registered (because I can already see you wanting to refute that claim), how's this for a plausable reason to register clones. For police investigation, in the event that a crime occurs and your genetic makeup is detected at the crime scene, they need to be able to determine who that person is and in particular if it is more than one person...
Yeah, I know no a very creative reason, but c'mon people use your imagination. And if you think governments won't want to track this kind of stuff look at Carnivore or ....
It's in that place where I put that thing that time
Pardon the subject... (I was trying to be funny) in any case I think we might have a gene pool problem if too many people get cloned. The danger in cloning, I think, is that we might innovate ourselves out of existence. Cloning an organ for transplant is one thing (that could save lives and I'm divided on the ethics of it). Cloning an entire life can have serious consequences, and I really don't think that we should be so naive that we've thought of everything to the point where it's a safe thing to do.
Besides - what's so wrong with the old-fashioned way of making humans?
You can accomplish anything you set your mind to. The impossible just takes a little longer.
Ancestry.com is gonna love this. :)
But Yogi, the RIAA won't like that.
Look, why are we bothering with ethical discussions on cloning. That's just plain stupid.
All we need to do is scrape the shroud of turin for Jesus' dna, clone him and then ask him what he thinks about it.
Since he is our lord and saviour, he'll be able to give a definitive answer. Admittedly we're screwed if he tells us that cloning is wrong - seeing as how we'd have already done it. But the risk of sending a handful of scientists screaming into hell is worth it. Espescially since most scientists are atheists and will burn in hell anyway.
The potential benefits would be huge. Imagine if the cloned Jesus sid that it wasn't adultery to keep a Mel Gibson clone in the closet for those occasions when you want something from "down under." And we're not talking about the current, old enough to be my grandpa, Mel here either - we're talking the "Mad Max" era, greatest film stud since Brando Mel.
--Kara
--Kara
Before you ask, I already have a boyfriend and he's more of a man than you'll ever be.
I think there are an awful lot of leaps in reason used in this piece. Maybe we should back up a little and examine the lack of a univeral ethic. Once the legality of cloning is established, and it will be, the next hurdle will most likely be the similar to parenting; clones start out as babies, right? And so far, at least in Western societies, anybody who can make one can have one, issues of moral responsibility and ownership aside. Cloning is likely to be available to those who can afford it rather than to those most likely to be good parents. With the problem of overcrowding our planet looming closer to our consciousness every day, it seems to me that cloning individuals is as irresponsible as it is, well, silly. But it will happen. THere will be good situations and bad ones, but attempting to regulate these situations is as ludicrously godlike as assuming that we can do a better job than Nature did in the first place.
As to the moral side of cloning, I must say that there is no real problem as far as I can see. We already have human clones in the form of twins - the only way that human cloning could become a big problem in this regard is if everybody decides to do it. As it is, it is only the most successful who will be able to afford cloning, and I think their genes are to be encouraged.
Human cloning should be a great boon to Mankind.
--
Clarity does not require the absence of impurities,
/* And you'll never guess what the dog had */
/* in its mouth... */
--Larry Wall in stab.c from perl
heh. if they cloned me then the entire world would be far more beautiful and skilled. it would be neet. heh. can they clone urinary yellow hair yet? heh. if they can that would rule. i rule. heh.
i'm too skilled for a sig. heh.
Ideaology can be dealt with. I'm more concerned about the practical implications of gentic mirroring. Consider that insurance comapanies today have no qualm using a family's genetic/disease history against them -- it's a matter of mathmatics/statistics for them.
I have quite pointedly been taught the lesson that genetics can affect your life -- we have buried four close relatives of similar age for similar cancers in the last year. I'd be a fool to hope that this is an environmental/coincidental. The clock says I got 25 more years before it is my turn. Go Science!!
Now we have the possibility of seeing into the future of a child with an uncanny prescience of thought. A twin at least has the comfort that her sister cannot foretell her outcome (they are the same age, after all).
If momma creates daughter clone and eventually suffers Breast/Cervical cancer (both of which have significant genetic factors) it can (and will) be argued that we are seeing into the future of the child.
We can argue for all the protective legislation we want, the fact will remain that the child is damned by "sins of the mother".
Also, please don't dismiss cloning as a missive of vanity by the "rich" elite. No medical technology remains within those realms for long: witness Lasik, Cosmetic Surgery and transplants. The industry will want to maximize availability to offset research costs. We're not talking about an expensive procedure once you get down to the "CGAT" of it.
A childless couple will do what it takes for progeny. Cloning (or at least the concept) offers a reliable, reproducible product. You can bet it will take hold in the mainstream (even though there are still the same issues with implantation).
Also, scientifically speaking, I have read of significant mitochondrial damage resulting from cloned cells. They tossed dozens of "Dollys" before they got one they liked. In a society where research using stem cells from dead fetuses is an issue what will happen when 38 "Susies" get dumped because it wasn't "quite right"?
It will happen. Don't sweat the larger issues (ethics, religion): nobody ever wins those arguments. Look to the details. The trees for the forest, so to speak.
How many times have each of us hated our lives, and this world? Right now there is a child being beaten by their parents ..
for not being all the parents expected it to be; too loud, too enegertic, too stupid, too cute... etc.
Right now there are probably a large number of 'evil' things going on in this world at the hands of people who have justified their own actions. Weather they are acting in the name of God or according to the result of multi-million dollar
scientific research; NONE OF US KNOW WHAT THE FUCK WE ARE DOING.
How arrogant are we?
Forget about God, if God has forgotten us or never was. All evil and pain come from us.
"Be born from a womb"
No cell in our body shares an exact duplicate genome sequence to any other cell anyhow. This is because you will find at least 1 point mutation per cell division. It is likely that the mutation frequency of repeated base pairs is much higher yet. At the pretty size of the human genome, science will not be able to provide better proof-reading facilities than nature has evolved to date for centuries to come.
For all this there is never an identical copy or "genetic clone" possible.
As this ever-changing genetic load is what makes your phenocopy, there is no such thing as cloning especially on a molecular scale.
BTW, has anyone pointed out that we seem to have several billion "natural clones" on this planet that nobody gives a sh*t about? The average human life on this planet is worth about $20 and we are worried that clones will take over the world? Most lives in this world aren't worth the 20 cents a day it would take to keep them alive, vaccinated, and well nourished. Yet we somehow think that there is a market for zillions of clone servitors. Guess what, in the USA they are called immigrants. Why clone when you can have good old-fashioned slave labor to clean your house(e.g. Bush cabinet nominee maids)?
Natural human trash is much cheaper than expensive lab grown clones. Give some poor Angolans AK-47s for $20 and you too can have a perfectly "natural" destructive army for a steal, without all the eggheads in labcoats.
Souls? Bwahaha. Is this Kansas high school Ethics? Funny how folks can believe in the laws of physics necessary to design computers but cannot grasp that there is no ghost in the human machine. Gasp! Could it be that humans are composed of matter just like everything else? Why is it so mind boggling that matter can be organized in ways that can perform modelling of the surroundings (i.e. a mind)? Nobody thinks software is magic juju because it is "only" matter which encodes information and instruction sets.
Sl*shdot continues to insist on covering biology stories as if none of its readers had a high school education. PLEASE get some vetting from people in the field (e.g. scientists) before posting alarmist drivel about soulless clone armies. The only soulless clones are the bozos reading these articles and believing them.
Maybe we can get Bill Joy to chime in and get a unified robot / clone army together for Sunday brunch.
P.S. UPC codes are the Mark of the Beast, and COMPUTER = 666. Eliza, this evil spirit that inhabits my TRS-80, told me so.
Just think, if I clone myself, and my wife is the 'host' mother, that means my mother is the clone's 'genetic' mother, and therefore my brother. But, instead of just being the son of the 'host' mother, the clone will also be my wife's clone-in-law. This wouldn't really be too bad considering I am from the south. Granted, I'm not from West VA.
Someone hates these cans.
I can't think of anyone I know who is perfect enough to justify having an exact replica made of them. And then there's the cost. And how boring would the world be if everyone looked the same?
There's this really fun thing you can do to create a new human, it costs nothing and the resulting person looks a little bit different to everyone else.
However, when we all do get our own Microsoft CloneTM devices, we should take some tips from here...
THAT is what sparks the question "Can we properly bestow life??"
I wonder what's going to happen when we DO clone a human being, and they grow up normally. (At least, as normal as someone that famous could hope to be.) That would poke some serious holes in the theory of the divine's soul-distribution monopoly, wouldn't it?
I think I see now why the fundamentalists are so scared of cloning. It's not because of some heartfelt moral or ethical argument, it's because the whole idea of cloning breaks all kinds of their fragile laws of the universe.
Or are they going to be advocating the slaughter of these horrible soulless babies?
The "most common" reason, huh? Please cite even ONE reference of a person seriously advocating cloning for that reason. The only people that ever suggest such a thing are the paranoid fundamentalists that want to inspire fear of the technology.
"Why did that little raccoon have to die? He didn't do anything wrong. He was just little! What's the point of putting him here and taking him back so soon? It's either mean or it's arbitrary, and either way, I've got the heebie-jeebies."
- Calvin / Bill Waterson
This is true. But you can't. So it's sort of a moot point.
As to your silly "logical" argument, consider the following rephrasing of the same paragraph:
"Imagine a circle that contains ALL the possible proofs of God's nonexistence. Now according to logic, all I have to do to prove God does not exist is to take ONE of those proofs and prove it factual. Now conversely, any who want to prove God does exist, has to prove ***EVERY*** one of those proofs is FALSE, thus making themselves God in their own eyes, which is pretty much par for the course since they're already convinced they know how everything works."
And one day we'll treat human cloning as casually as organ transplanting.
Really. Genetic engineering is where all the fun is. Clones are just genetically identical to whomever they were clones from, they will still differ because of environment, but there is no chance of improvements because of genetic variations.
A few rich "eccetric" people will make clone of themselves, some will use it as a cure for childlessness, maybe it will become popular among some single women and lesbians, but even here most will prefer the variation and reletive "naturalness" offered by artificial insemnination.
It is just up in the press because it is a new technology, and people fear anything new. In practice, it will probably have even less effect on society as a whole than e.g. heart transplants, which also was feared when the possibility was first introduced.
[1] We already clone fertilized eggs from humans.
we have no idea what the ramifications will be for cloning. We still don't know what will be possible, and what wont be (though we know what things are likely, and what desirable spin-offs we'll be shooting for).
.
Likewise, we also cannot forsee what the political regimes will do with it. You can't go around saying "everything's permissible, because it's science". That's not just a simple lesson from a big-budged dinosaur movie. Early man though fire was cool, until they decided to see how cool it would be to burn-out the savannah to clear out the cover for predators. .
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
athiest?
Oh yeah, just another smart gorilla. who gives a crap? - there's too many of them anyway. Inefficient, the way they just breed and breed with no regard to consequences. . . oughta kill bunch of em. Maybe license some hunters to curb the population periodically. Maybe allow natural predators to come back - yeah, that's it.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
I'm not actually thinking like that - I'm trying to raise a spectre.
The fact is - there ARE some people out there with no humanity. In fact, a lot of those people have lots of money too, and will be the ones funding and implementing things like this. Which is why, repugnant as the idea is, we need to get the politicians on line, and educated, (and not lobbied) - so proper ethical guidelines can be applied.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
one other question - if a clone is made to offer parents a child that they otherwise could not have had due to infertility - etc. That child, depending on it's genetic makeup, is likely (but not guaranteed - depending on the problem) to also be sterile. So what's the point? Okay, then THEY can have clone children too - and so on.
That may not be Darwin spinning in his grave, but it's somewhere in that neighborhood. . .
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Well, here's one that'll raise the dander of the conservatives. And likely the moderates.
:)
.
For your scenario - growing a clone for the purpose of organ transplant. Assuming the application is for an organ that can be transplanted from an infant body - the clone could be treated surgically or hormonally during gestation to prevent the development of a brain. Hydroencephalic. Then at birth, you just harvest the needed organs, and dump the rest in a compost heap. Or maybe grind the remains up and mix it in with cattle feed.
See? Isn't that easy? You lose all those sticky issues of the clone being human, with feelings, thoughts, and rights. .
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
I read a web site somewhere years ago, a religious wacko who claimed that cloning was a secret plot by extremist pagan lesbian witches to eliminate men from the world, all people would be cloned women, and the Y chromosome would be eradicated from the gene pool like a disease.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
"But those are violations of human rights, and could happen just as easily without clones"
er- they already ARE happening - it's just that clones would be oh so much more desireable because you lose that little rejection problem with a genetically identical donor (and hey, who are YOU to tell me what I can and can't do with my own genes?)
Hm - the whole identical twin issue raises that bar higher: whose genes are those?
Anyway, I think identical twins are a bit different, they happen mostly by chance. Cloning is something forged in man's furnace.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
This is the most well stated, level headed opinion I've read so far.
However, it's not as simple as misanthropes vs. humanists. I think there are plenty of misanthropes out there who are all for human cloning, as in; "who are you to tell me I can't do whatever I want with my own genetic material?". The neoliberals.
Those are the ones we really need to worry about. Because those are the ones who are likely to abuse this new toy we've stumbled across.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
I never said that atheists were psychopaths.
;) The other half the time, I just say to myself, what the hell, it's only karma.
I just questioned; without the notion of a "soul", what is the difference between a human and an animal? Really. Intelligence? Define intelligence? Define human.
And if you go that far, how would one justify the differential treatment of animals versus humans. I'm not talking about not killing your friends and coworkers because you like them or rely on them. I'm talking about how do you justify a code of ethics? We eat animals, we wear their hides. Why is any one individual human any different? Any more or less deserving of a life, or humane treatment, or "human rights"? As it relates to this discussion; how about a cloned human? Or what about a cloned human that was modified to not develop a brain, so as to make it a less guilt-inducing organ donor?
Some people believe that animals *should* be treated with the same respect and rights afforded humans - to which I respond, what about plants? Same old familliar slippery slope.
I believe that humans are different from animals *because* of my faith in the existence of a soul. That is why I believe it's wrong to screw over your fellow man, or kill or bribe politicians into passing overly restrictive copyright law. I'm not saying that athiests have no moral sense or base. I'm not pointing fingers at any individual atheists, in fact, I too have atheist friends, (heh, there's that i-before-e rule again!), and they're just as nice a people if not more so than some of the Christians I know (I know some real pieces of work in that department, let me tell you!).
I'm just saying that using atheism (the one *true* religion, yuk yuk) as a moral justification for cloning is a bit suspect.
And I wasn't intentionally trying to troll either - I'm sorry, I'm in counselling for my problem. I'm a compulsive troll, half the time, I don't even realize I'm doing it.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
The second half was pretty much what I was going to say.
We have natural clones and for the most part they seem to be adapting to life well enough.
Right now, even non-clones, non-twins have general tendencies to feel incomplete, so that would likely be the same case with artificial clones.
My question is, of what value is it to humanity to make clones? Vanity? Infertility? Parents want their dead child recreated? A false sense of immortality? I believe Earth has enough people and problems of its own to consider making _more_ of both. Then there's the question of thinking 50+ years down the road, whether this is a valid concern or not, will it ever get to the point that natural reproduction is considered obsolete? Will artificial gestation be possible? Should it ever be used? Will it reduce the maternal bonding, and how much of our mental and emotional development requires being in a living womb?
All in my opinion of course, and the questions I raise are hardy original and I can't say I can answer any of them. That is the point of the debates.
My sisters are identical twins, and certainly they're no less human for that, nor does either feel that she is.
However, there's a big difference between twins and clones, namely that with twins there is no sense of "original" and "copy." That's where the potential problem lies. Twins don't work for that.
----------
2) clones are denied certain rights through legislative action due to religious and other group's pressuring (try and argue with a straight face that Congress won't pass stupid, knee-jerk legislation affecting important issues)
I'm sure someone will try to pass stupid, knee-jerk legislation. A ban on human cloning, for example, would be likely. But to remove civil rights of cloned humans? Like hell. Even if something got by Congress, there's those pesky equal protection amendments to consider, and I'm pretty sure the Supreme Court wouldn't need to consider them very long.
But really... isn't this step, rather than 1) a human is cloned, the step where things go bad? Why not stop the sequence here, rather than at the cloning stage? Or for that matter, why not just ban all genetic research, and push things two steps back instead of one?
3) society becomes stratified along the clone/non-clone boundary due to the differences in rights
Exactly how many clones are you picturing here? What percentage of the population is going to want exact duplicates of themselves? Even if there are enough clones to count as a sizable minority, it's hard for even a grossly bigoted society to express prejudice towards targets it can't identify. It's not like clones would be a visually distinguishable racial group; they would just happen to exactly resemble a DNA source human much older than them, as the source appeared decades earlier. How do you express prejudice toward such a person? How do you avoid the "decoys" like identical twins and sons who "have their father's eyes"?
4) clones become increasingly violent in an attempt to regain the rights perceived as being lost
There are a lot of people in the USA today who perceive their rights as being lost. Most of them are resorting to politics and non-violent protest to change that.
5) clones militarize
And so, if all the wackiness in steps 2-4 comes to pass, what is the final step before ultimate doom...? A military battle. Like the sort of thing that could be touched off by China/Taiwan, USA/Iraq, Palestine/Israel (just to list situations with the potential for atomic/biological/chemcial weapons to be used), etc. at any time. If a military battle is the last stage before our ultimate doom, we have bigger things to worry about than artificial twins.
Then we'd be having more "Galileo trial"s now, rather than having to reach centuries into the past for anti-science witchhunt examples that bad.
Granted, "clones are people too" is a little more complicated than Galilean astronomy, but the message is more immediately worthwhile, too.
"I think the reason that the popular media has been so obsessive about cloning while respectable journals avoid the issue is that the popular notion of "cloning" and the scientific notion are so very different."
I agree. From here on out we should use the term "deep copy" instead of "clone".
Learn to spell: nickel, missile, lose, solely, amendment, speech, kernel, probably, ridiculous, deity, hierarchy, versus
According to that reasoning we shouldn't be having children the natural way either. If we were to wait for conditions to be perfect we'd never get anything done.
Speaking of misanthropy, I'm the total opposite; the human race will infest this galaxy like roaches someday... I just wish I could be around to see it. :)
The Bible is not my book, and Christianity is not my religion.
we are given the choice to lead our lives as God intended, or to try to create new life on our own
So, what did (does) God intend?
Do we really know what will happen generations down the line if there's a genetic defect that we've created?
If it's beneficial, it will probably spread alot. If it's harmful, it will find it's way out of the Genome (or at least be reduced to a small minority). Genetic defects are a very common occurance.
In my opinion this is something best left in God's hands.
I'm unclear on what is meant by leaving something in God's hands. What steps would one take towards that end? How would one know he was truely leaving the situation in God's hands?
Here in Denver, the spotlight swung over to the Christian Scientists recently because a kid died whose parents did not seek medical attention. Were they leaving it in God's hands? Or were God's hands waiting in the form of readily available medical treatment but were pushed away?
Vidi, Vici, Veni
You forget that clones will not fall into the laws of our Genome, because they are beyond the laws of nature.
I submit that they are in no way beyond the laws of nature.
Vidi, Vici, Veni
Someday soon, somebody is going to do it somewhere, legal or not. And it's not going to mean anything. We know exactly what we'll get (if done right) - the equivalent of an identical twin, but younger. Identically twins are fairly common, and of course they often turn out quite differently (nature/nurture and all that).
The only meaning in the event, when it happens, will be symbolic.
Vidi, Vici, Veni
I'm a religious person, and I happen to believe that only God can reproduce the spirit.
Are you implying that if we have a 'spirit' (soul, whatever it might be called), a clone would not?
Vidi, Vici, Veni
Ok, fair enough. But just for pure curiosity's sake, I've got another question:
What is a soul? Is it like the concept of a zombie in philosophy? A zombie is not conscious and feels no emotions, but is indistinguishable from a human by any test you could devise. So as far as I know, everyone on the planet except me could be a zombie and as far as you know, I could be.
Is that kinda on the right track?
Vidi, Vici, Veni
Sounds like he's saying people should avoiding cloning because bigots will think of the clones as being "incomplete" and will even go as far as to try to put that idea into the clones' heads.
IMHO, bigots' problems are just that -- their problems, not anyone else's, and not the problems of the ones who they discriminate against. By arguing that cloning should be avoided due to that discrimination, he's trying to make it everyone's problem, thereby legitimizing the bigots. I think the optimum strategy is to ignore that type of argument, and let the bigots sort out their feelings among themselves.
---
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
I'm astonished you mentioned the problem, without realizing it: Only the most successfull will be able to clone. But what definition of successfull serves mankind best? Do we really want more buisseness execs? Do we really want more shareholders? Is that what would benefit mankind?
I would rather get more hackers, street artists, theater actrices, scientists and whatever, just not marketing execs, please!
And, who if humans are to decide what genes to duplicate - we defenitely are back at 1945.
--The knowledge that you are an idiot, is what distinguishes you from one.
We've all seen B-budget sci-fi movies in which the mad scientist uses his cloning machine to make a duplicate of Fred of Sally and the evil clone then replaces the "real" human. But REAL cloning doesn't make a "duplicate" of a human, just another person with the same genes. That's all.
There are terrible things that we could do with cloning... growing clones and treating them as non-humans for instance (used for organ transplants, etc). But those are violations of human rights, and could happen just as easily without clones (suppose we started using 3rd-worlders for spare parts for Americans... it'd be just as bad). Cloning itself is not the source of the problem.
And as proof, I submit that human clones already exist among us! Really. On rare occasions, a fertilized egg will be split in half, and both halfs will implant in the uterus and grow. The result is two humans who are perfect clones of each other -- they're called "identical twins".
Identical twins don't think share the same mind or memories. They don't try to secretly replace each other. They don't provide a sort of immortality. And they certainly don't lack a soul. Artificial twins would be EVEN MORE DIFFERENT, because they wouldn't be the exact same age, and (often) raised in the exact same family.
So please, avoid the fearmongering. Cloning itself -- even human cloning -- is not a terribly force in the world. It could still be misused, but if anything, spreading un-true fears and rumors INCREASES the chance that it will be abused.
-- Michael Chermside <mike.chermside@destiny.com>
Movie reviewer? Over-the-top "the sky is falling" rhetoric? Do we know that this guy isn't just JonKatz in disguise?
Instead of just pondering this in such dramatic fashion, just find some twins and ask them. Sheesh!
I bought this new CD burner. But now I realize that the CDs I've copied are inadequate. They "ache from the sense that they may not be 'complete,' that they're inexorably removed from their so-called peers". This sucks.
It's not the clones that will be a problem. That should offer no more or less problem than identical twins or sons or cousins or nieces across generations that happen to appear, act, and be eeriely close to the parent.
Rather, because of cloning tech, we will see huge advances in evolutionary biology, developmental biology, and gene expression technology. Imagine a hundred otherwise identical embryos but with one gene changed, removed, deactivated, or enabled? As we start to catalogue and decipher genes, introns, junk DNA, and chromosomes, then we'll truly have not just a map, but a travel guide to our DNA.
At which point all the Sci-Fi coolness can occur. People tailored with cancer-like abilities to survive in space, or to prolong life. People who are radiation hardened, or disease resistent. People who can see enhanced spectral ranges, or tougher bones and muscles, hard skins, etc.
Especially if this is spread to the animal kingdom. If viral vector research is successful, can you imagine ordering a leapord skin pattern and over the course of three weeks getting spots and a slight orange fuzz? Or a beautiful pair of wings growing out of your back? Or an extra long tongue, like a gecko's?
This is sci fi now, but what with the confluence of the mapping of the human genome, it's sequencing, viral gene therapies, and clone technologies, any of those things could happen.
It's not even about good, bad, ethical, or moral. It's about fashionable, useful, cool, or risk taking. People today pierce, tattoo, dye, mutilate, and deform in the name of tradition, fashion, rebellion, and style. Why would this change 100 years from now?
-AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
Are twins then born with half a spirit? Or one of them without (Evil Twin (tm))? There is no difference between a clone or a twin, and regarding them any differently or debating them as being anything other than a twin with different birthdate is erraneous and fraught with the perils of having bad science fiction influence feelings.
What about mitochondrial DNA? There was a recent documentary on DNA where they proved the ancient Egyptian dynasty family tree by DNA analysis from samples obtained from mummies (pretty damn cool!). Part of it was proving the maternal line via mitochrondrial DNA.
Incidentally, 'sorting out' the 'telomere problem' would largely solve the problem of aging, wouldn't it?
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Humans are like us. Animals are quite unlike us, plants more so. This is why we have a bigger problem eating humans than animals than plants -- the feeling that we could be next on the plate. We anthropomorphize cats and dogs -- and we can't bring ourselves to eat them.
-Grendel Drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
However if by "soul" what you really mean is sentience, and for some bizzare reason a cloned baby never developes consciousness then I'd say that means the experiments a failure, and clones aren't much good for anything but organ transplants, in which case it would probably be cheaper to just grow the organs on an as needed basis from the patients own DNA. Anyway the way cloning works today makes "mass production" of cloned humans impracticle as you would need an army of host mothers, and have to wait about 15 years for each cloned human to be useful.
You need to abandon your irrational fears and childish myths.
"Listen: We are here on Earth to fart around. Don't let anybody tell you any different!" - Kurt Vonnegut
I don't think that you need or want to have people mate with as many different people as possible. This would cause the population to increase too quickly, and would result in one type of genetics possibly being overspread. While a female is somewhat limited in how many children she can have, men can father hundreds of children indiscriminately. This type of activity also can lead to the spread of STDs. See what is happening in parts of Africa were men regular have multiple sexual partners in short spans of time, sometimes fathering children through several different women.
I do believe that people should not be limited to sexual partners within their own race, national origin, or religion. This type of self-impossed genetic isolation can only do harm. It tends to lead to genetic diseases within the group in question. It also leads to discrimination.
I worry that cloning could be misused in various fasions. For example, one rich person could have herself cloned thousands of times just because they felt like it. Not only is this bad from a population stand point, it reduces the diversity of the gene pool. This increases the chance that recessive genetic disorders could arrise. It also prevents natural selection and evolution from being as effective. While unhealthy genetic mutations would be avoided, healthy ones would also be avoided. This would lead to a more static species. Static species tend to have less of an ability to adapt to changes in their environment.
About the only possibly good area for cloning is for couples who could not otherwise have children. Then again, this could reduce the already problematic adoption rate. Why adopt when you can clone?
-- soldack
Isn't sexual reproduction a big part of how humans changed for the better and adapted to their environment? Other forms of life use asexual reproduction and do not gain the genetic variety that humans and other sexual reproducers gain. As another example, look at what happens in sexually reproducing species when interbreeding occurs. Various deficiencies spring up including inherited diseases. Extremely isolated cultures and also have similar problems. Couldn't cloning on a large scale effect the gene pool? Even ignoring all the ethical questions, this genetic one still concerns me.
-- soldack
On the news the other day they were describing a compony which would perform cloning for a fee. Potential clients included people who wanted dead loved ones "recreated". I think that is the type of stuff we need to analyze. Imagine, growing up, and living your whole life, knowing that you are not anybody's "child", but merely supposed to be a duplication of someone else's loved one, for their own amusement. I think that would really screw a person up and lead to all sorts of identity problems. Also how would it feel to be the reincarnation of a historical figure?
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
There are actual scientific/evolutionary ramafications of cloning (at least "perfect" cloning). I repeat what I just posted (#137 or something like that) but there some good books on the subject of human evolution, which give some good arguements about why cloning without modification, or "perfect" cloning, is bad for humanity.
Try reading the following:
Children of Prometheus by Christopher Wills.
The Red Queen by Matt Ridley.
Unfortunatly my roommate, an evolutionary psychologist, is not here to give me some more names of good books on the subject but those two, especially The Red Queen, are very good sources of information.
There are psychological issues about cloning that identical twins don't have to deal with but I don't have time to go into right now.
Disclamer - Opinion of Person
It is #135
Disclamer - Opinion of Person
All very good questions, my thoughts on them are as follows. I know that cloning won't happen in the US first, or if it does it won't be published in anyway shape or form because it is illegal. There are US biologists working with Italians in Italy where it isn't illegal. In Japan it is legal so long as the clone is terminated after a certain period of time (I have forgotten that length of time but it is a matter of weeks or days).
Within the US, Europe and most other 1st world nations there is an ethics board that regulates scientific experiments performed on/with humans. They generally have control over who gets funded, published, and repromanded. Chances are very good that they are working on international rules on the ethics of cloning humans right now. We will see what happens when the first human is actually cloned.
Although the ethics board generally controls who can do what type of experiment on humans, the location of the experiement will be the deciding factor. So long as the US has, what I consider a rather backwards, law banning human cloning we know that the forefront of this technology will be outside the US. Although I believe that Japan's law is also somewhat backwards, I feel that they have a better understanding of how the people perceive human cloning and how to ease it into society. The baby step approach that Japan takes may be what the US needs.
I also believe that China will start to see an influx of scientists. China has the technology and resources of 1st world countries while not subscribing to the laws placed by the ethics board. If the forefront of this technology is in an area of few restrictions like China then all the US has done is shot itself in the foot because the technology will be developed but they have been excluded, and will thereby have no say in how it proceeds.
Who do we want deciding who cloning is done? A country that relies on an international ethics board, or one that is internationally renoune for its human rights abuses?
It is all fun and games until someone loses and eye. Then it is a new game, find the eye.
Disclamer - Opinion of Person
Like many have already pointed out, clones are (well, will be) just regular people, and once they're among us they'll be able to tell us that themselves. And twins are already a common case of people with identical genes.
Still, some thing will be different and unprecedented.
As a clone you will have the identical genes of somebody older than you. Possibly much older. You'll be able to see how that persons life has deveoped. What is that like? What if the "original" was a really accomplished athlete/scientist/haxxor? People will expect you to be as talented. That's some pressure for a kid!
And what if your "original" gets some creepy gene related disease at 45? What's it like to know that you'll probably get the same thing?
Parents are important for kids. Who will you regard as your parents? Will your "original" be both your mother and father? In some sense you are your own parent. What's that like?? Nobody knows. Yet.
Is there a good word for the relation I call "original". If I get cloned, the baby is my clone. But what am I to him? His clonefather?? We're gonna need a word if there isn't one already.
I wonder if Choas Theory would apply.
:).
It seems to me that my adult psyche is a stack of cards where everything that has happened to me has a greater or lesser effect on who I am now. I think you would have to reproduce this house of cards pretty much exactly to end up with me. If my 'clone' didn't get teased in school, would he have turned inward to the world of computers as much as I did?
I would know my clone would have an LD, so I would probably compensate for that much earlier then it was when I went to school (heck, learning disability are much better understood, so likely even if I ignored it, to try and produce 'myself' it would be more effectively handled by the school system.) Bullying is much more severely delt with in our current world then it was when I was a kid (at least locally, can't speak for other schools) and that would definately change.
I doubt even if I tried that I could produce a clone with my same aptitudes now. We are a product of our environments, good and bad. And our society is part of that environment.
Short of a Cyteen-like universe, where you can control every aspect of a childs upbringing, I don't see ending up with a clone that by the age of 27 resembles me physically or intellectually any more then I resemble my parents. For better or for worse, Chaos wins
--
Remove the rocks to send email
On the whole, I find that I prefer Slashdot posts to twitter ones because I don't get limited to 140 chars before
*grins* well looking at your original posting, I think you can see why I might have mistaken you for a troll, my appologies for the implied insult :)
:)) which I think is a reasonable premise for any discussion down this line, then canabalism is generally ruled out by most codes of ethics/morals, (as well as being evolutionally selected against, to look at it from the atheist pov, let's not turn it into a creationist vs evolutionist argument tho, please.) If canabalism is morally repugnent ("Don't eat people, eating people is wrong"), it would follow logicly that killing people for a reason less then food would be also morally wrong. So Athiests are precluded from killing people by their own codes of morality.
:)), if there was a way to survive without killing animals or for that matter plants, I'd be happy to go along with it. As soon as we come up with a protien substitute created without killing anything I'd be first in line to change. I'm not 100% sure they don't have souls, and killing or being part of the death of any living thing is something I would prefer to avoid. Unfortunatly in our current state of scientific development that is unrealistic.
OK, if you're willing to stipulate a code of morals for atheists, (I hate the i before e thing too
Speaking personally (as opposed to Atheticly
Cheers,
--
Remove the rocks to send email
On the whole, I find that I prefer Slashdot posts to twitter ones because I don't get limited to 140 chars before
Ok, it's bad to reply to flames, but I couldn't resist.
If someone is genetically identical to yourself then (to the extetn that behaviour is gentically determined), you'll know EXACTLY what their strengths and weaknessess are - it's YOU!
Unless someone actually clones a human, and we find out otherwise, only a certain percentage of the traits of the ancestors (note the plural) are garunteed. The manner in which they are raised plays an essential role. Other posts in this chain have already addressed this.
Hey, does anybody know what the statistics are on say, idential propensities towards math / music in twins? A clone is almost identical to a twin except that they're brought up in a different time with different people (and with more worn DNA).
Another issue that I seem to recall is that the birthing development period plays an important role in the child's ultimate character. Obviously things like gender can't be manipulated, but something as simple as brain development might be. The DNA just sets up the protein structures, not necessarily their arrangement.
-Michael
So, say you did something rather stupid that was inevitable due to your personality, but it changed you for the better, taught you some valuable lesson. Well, when you saw your little copy coming close to this, you stopped it to keep it from getting hurt. It never learns from it's mistake and keeps stumbling on in blind ignorance.
You started off with a good argument, then you fell off.. This is exactly what all parents do with their non-cloned offspring. They try and prevent their children from repeating their mistakes, which often times (especially in the case with my father towards my brother) prevent them from developing common wisdom.
-Michael
-Michael
Assuming widespread cloning.
DNA evidence and Identification will become much weaker evidence, possibly to the point of being useless.
You raise an interesting point.
:)
... just wanted to add my voice to the chorous.
:)
But if medical science advances to the point that most of the human population has some horribly debilitating natural (ie: genetic) disease, to the point where they can't even reproduce without serious medical help, don't you think medical science would have advanced enough to cure that debilitatin genetic condition
I know it's already been said
Of course, in this hypothetical future, if there was a huge medical monopoly, they might decide to make the entire human race dependant on their procedures, rather than curing the problem. Ah well, I'm tired and cranky
Dave
Barclay family motto:
Aut agere aut mori.
(Either action or death.)
Barclay family motto:
Aut agere aut mori.
(Either action or death.)
The consequence will be a lot of irrational thrashing about by everyone except the folks who decide to make money on this whole business -- using international seams via which to conduct their business.
Seastead this.
it will mean that hannibal will be able to replicate his favorite dish...
- passion
I didn't mean to start a whole nature vs. nurture argument but I guess that's what it is turning out to be.
What I mean is, I'm pretty damn happy with myself. I'm intelligent, successful and reasonable attractive (if I could change that we would be having a discussion about genetic engineering not cloning). I don't have a substance abuse problem, I'm in pretty good shape and definitely not a homosexual ("Not that there's anything wrong with that!"). I'm the pride and joy of my parents. Nothing in my genetic code seems to have predisposed me to anything remotely problematic.
At the same time, I really wish I had gotten started with computers at a much earlier age. I got into the game rather late, and now my career is a great deal of catch-up. I flopped from interest to interest until I found something I was good at. Imagine if I could have known earlier and taken C/ASM instead of music?
Consider Tiger Woods...his parents started teaching him golf when he was what, four? How did they know he wouldn't become fat and uncoordinated after adolescence? They didn't, it was pretty much a crap shoot. There are probably a hundred other kids that could have been even better at golf than Tiger Woods, the only problem being they didn't identify their talents until they were adults.
Obviously, raising a kid knowing his strengths and weakness would alter the result. But as someone else pointed out, parents are always trying to manipulate their child's outcome. But I think parents would also like to know what their child is naturally good at so they can focus on nuturing those talents.
It would also be helpful for health reasons. If I develop diabetes or heart disease, my cloned child would have enough warning to alter his/her lifestyle to avoid aggrevating that condition. This is all just speculation.
Of course, there is one downside that I just realized. This wouldn't really work for couples. Imagine a father trying to raise a daughter that was the clone of the woman he was sexually involved with. Or a mother trying to raise a son that was the clone of the man she was sexually involved with. Talk about your mixed messages. Then again, maybe if the guy is shallow enough, when his wife turns 40 he can dump her for the younger 20-something version of herself! It wouldn't be incest technically cause the genetics are the same as his wifes, would it?
Now THERE'S a moral issue that needs addressing!
- JoeShmoe
-- I wonder which will go down in history as the bigger failure: the War on Drugs or the War on Filesharing
Um, except for the age difference?
I think a better comparison would be a son/daughter that is literally the spittin' image of his/her father/mother.
Personally, I'd love to raise a clone of myself as a child. I'd already know what talents the child would have, what health issues, what physical characteristics, sexual predisposition, etc. No surprises.
It'd be like all those movies where you get to go back in time and right all the wrongs you did that made you life turn out a little less than perfect.
Then again, it seems a little narcissistic...
- JoeShmoe
-- I wonder which will go down in history as the bigger failure: the War on Drugs or the War on Filesharing
We could call it a Woody Allen complex
-no broken link
Visit GenoChoice. Not just simple clones; DNA corrections and upgrades are available.
Have we really finally reached the point where we're capable of asking about a technology "should we do that"? I don't think so. Cloning is making it pretty clear that there's always _someone_ willing to take the chance. So if we can't rule out a technology, once it becomes possible, what do we do with it? Wait for government to figure out how to regulate it? Take to the streets with placards and gasmasks? What?
_____________
I'll bet / with my Net / I can get / those things yet.
_____________
I'll bet / with my Net / I can get / those things yet.
--Dr. Seuss
There's a very strong possibility that the sum of the substance of each person's existance is only their physical implemenation. Soul, Spirit and similar concepts may be just romantic notions or wishful thinking. There's little reason to believe that there are extra-worldly beings (invisible friend who always loves you no matter what a fuck-up you are, named Jesus). The concept of life after death, much like the typical spam emails I receive, sounds much too good to be true. Equally unlikely is that it comes in only two extreem flavors.
PJRC: Electronic Projects, 8051 Microcontroller Tools
The work is being undertaken by the Raelian-backed Bahamas-based Clonaid company, which is charging a few hundred thousand dollars. Clonaid says that if it's successful, they intend to make it a business. Some independent scientists who have examined the Clonaid methodology say that it will "probably" work.
Cloning a dead adult is not the same as bringing the adult back to life, because the clone would not have the dead person's memories. But cloning an infant seems different. Clonaid actually refers to their work as "bringing back to life a 10-month old child". (Even a new-born infant has some memories from its mother's womb, though--as well as some affects from the womb environment.)
The London Sunday Times has the story. Brave New World, here we come!
______________________________________________
Don't blame Windows--if you were a Microsoft operating system, you'd have problems too.
Wired (yes, I know it doesn't have a sterling reputation at slashdot at the moment) had a pretty interesting article on cloning last month. You can find the text here. It points out that not only has cloning become so accessible that a moderately skilled scientist could do it by themselves, but it's quite possible it has been done already because of this.
--
I'm sorry, but that appears to be absolute crap. Would you mind sharing with us your factual basis for the above claim? "Test-tube" babies being treated as subhuman? By various "Christian" factions? Hmm, I musta missed that sermon... Oh no, wait - I didn't, because that hasn't happened. Perhaps you've been watching too many Seaquest re-runs?
Think outside the... Hey, where'd the friggin' box go?
You seem to think that clones will not have a soul because transferring DNA is not enough to transfer/copy a soul? OK, that sounds reasonable. But what about normal children? Normal pregnancy involves a transfer and mixing of the parents' DNA. But, transfering and mixing DNA shouldn't be enough to make a new soul either, should it? So, I think there is something "more" in both cases.
Of course, we might be particularly suspicious about the motivations for people wanting to have a "clone" and what kind of psychological implications it has. But there is nothing particularly new about it. Most of the genetic manipulations people are worried about with cloning don't require cloning. You can already create and select children specifically for tissue compatibility. And parents already project all sorts of ideas on their children, including "the kid looks just like me", even when the idea seems completely ridiculous to an innocent bystander.
Just about the only thing that to me looks like a possible concern is a loss of genetic diversity in the human population, similar to what we have seen in our crops and livestock. But that is merely theoretical as far as I'm concerned. Any program of cloning that would put us at risk would be enormous, and other attempts at manipulation have failed miserably (China can't even get people to have only one child). Furthermore, cloning is so expensive, time consuming, and unpleasant (compared to the traditional way) that it wouldn't become a threat to diversity until a large part of the world population could afford it; we can worry about that when we have conquered world hunger and poverty.
It seems every time this subject is brought up, it ends up being an argument about exact clones and whether or not they will upset the balance of society. Personally, I think this is very shortsighted. If cloning technology never progresses past making exact copies of people I doubt it would have a big impact on society. However, it won't stop at copies, genetic engineering is the next logical step and already available. Consider the parents that want to clone a child they lost in a horrible accident (this is a case many scientists are pointing to as an ethical use of cloning). They figure they can give their child a second chance. Then they realize it might be easier this time if he didn't have asthma, or that slight heart problem. It starts with tweaks like these and soon we will have the ability to engineer nearly everything. Perhaps there will be laws against it, but all that will do is stop everyone but the rich from using it. Suddenly every wealthy family in the world doesn't just have the biggest house or the nicest car, they have the superior children. The rich get richer. I think this technology has a good chance of reshaping the world in the next 100 years, and I'm worried about it. People need to see past the surface. Ben Reierson
I've always disliked this argument, as I've never really seen the point. If there is a God, then our recognition of "evil" or "good" is completely pointless. If God exists, then we have no point of comparison, because our sight is infinitely shorter.
I don't mean to turn this into a religious debate, or philosophical even, but the presence of God negats our understanding of ANYTHING, therefore "evil" is no longer a definition, just a perception.
Technically nothing can happen without God (who is all powerful) permitting it to happen.
Of course, this means God is directly responsible for all the evil and horror extant in the world. Which means God must either be evil, or be capable of evil, which negates God's omnibenevolence.
Of course, this is regarded as a terrible heresy by the Catholic Church, precisely because it makes so much sense.
Despite persecution which at times crossed the line into genocide (the Cathars, anyone?) Gnosticism was a recurring heresy until the time of the Renaissance, when the even more compelling heresy of rationalism took its place.
Brackets contain world's first nanosig, highly magnified:[.]
The answer for clones is: if a clone is born, they're a human being with the same rights and potential as anyone else. He or she has the same claims to protection by the law as anyone else. And you bring up a good point. While, like a twin, a clone would wear the body of another, and perhaps have similar personality quirks as that other person, they are a distinct person with a separate soul. So, basicly, if we don't fear and discrimate against twins, why treat clones any differently?
"We sat and watched...as the Moon rose...for the very first time" - "The Carnaval is Over", Dead Can Dance
I also consider myself to be a fairly religious person. I've thought about this over and over, and I came to my own conclusion regarding this issue. Naturally you are free to your own opinion.
My opinion is this: that God gave man the choice and ability to do a great many things. We have the ability to help people, or to wage war on them. We have the ability to learn and better ourselves, or to live off the backs of others. In this particular instance, we are given the choice to lead our lives as God intended, or to try to create new life on our own. God obviously gave us the ability to make this choice. However, it is up to us to consider the consequences of our actions. How many lives can be created and then ruined if something goes wrong in the process, for example? There are many other examples of things that could go wrong.
The fact is, no matter how convinced we are that we have the process down, something could go wrong. We simply don't have all the variables. Hell - we can't even accurately predict the weather yet, or earthquakes. Do we really know what will happen generations down the line if there's a genetic defect that we've created?
In the end, I hope that we decide that we really aren't prepared to meet the consequences of these actions, and that we don't go ahead with human cloning. In my opinion this is something best left in God's hands.
You can accomplish anything you set your mind to. The impossible just takes a little longer.
Will clones themselves ache from the sense that they may not be 'complete,' that they're inexorably removed from their so-called peers?
They'll do exactly what they're socially programmed to do, just like all of us non-clones.
-- Truth goes out the door when rumor comes innuendo. -- Groucho Marx
There are other viewpoints too.
We can sorta do an extrapolation. Imagine cloning technology exists. What does that mean?
It means you can take a cell out of a living creature and grow a new creature out of it. Independent of this process, there's the mother to be taken into account, and until we can develop artificial wombs, we'll have to do it the old fashioned way and implant these embyoes in females.
In this respect, cloning is no more or less hard or difficult than having a child. Ethical issues aside about individuality and morals, sex just seems to be more fun and more exciting, so I don't think this is a terribly big issue.
On the other hand, cloning as a process gives us another tool in our genetic toolbox. I've said this in another post, but I think it's important enough to bear repeating.
If we can clone a mouse 500 times, but in each case change, remove, replace, or add to the gene sequence, we can do much more precise genetic research. We can figure out evolutionary biology, developmental biology, structural biology, and a whole host of other things.
Just being able to produce clones at this level means we can create drugs and viruses that attack specific cells, like cancers, because we know enough about genetics that we can actually have tailor made viruses that target cancer cells, reproduce in cancer cells, and destroy cancer cells.
We can fix near sightedness or far sightedness. We can deal with male pattern baldness. We can fix glaucoma. We can wear tiger skin patterns or stripes in our hair. We can grow extra teeth, fangs, or tusks. We can grow wings, or gills, or extra tough skin, extra tough bones, extra strong muscles. We can create humans that can survive the radiation of space, the atrophying debilitation of zero g, or the stresses of a recycled and constrained environment.
Cloning a person is a separate issue than the process of cloning as a technology.
-AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
And a lot of the people saying "only god can reproduce the spirit" will use that as an excuse for treating clones as subhuman... Just like various "christian" factions (acting in a not-very-christian manner) have in the past for the status of "test-tube" babies.
Personally, as an atheist, and not subscribing to odd notions about "souls" or "spirits" or anything else that's not a falsifiable explanation of our perceived reality, I'll regard clones as human - except of course, that clones may have shorter lifespans if the telomere problem isn't sorted out...
Choice of masters is not freedom.
The problem with god is that she's not needed and very arbitary (you can adequatly explain most everything without introducing a god. See Occams razor) Introducing the existance of god and an afterlife just because we're afraid of death makes a lot of things a lot more complex. Cloning is one of them. I belive that humanity is completly alone and doomed to freedom (ah, thank you Sartre). Life is a lot harder without a benevolent father taking responsibility and protecting you. But as long as we're doomed to complete freedom, we should do everything we can to advance ourselves (which is mostly done with technology).
Cloning and genetic modification is something we *should* do - to improve the lives of humans. Denouncing afterlife comes with a few consequences.. one is that (human) life is absolutly the most valuble thing there is. There can never be a justification to kill someone else in cold blood. Another one is the realization that we need to have genetic engineering to (in the very long run) make humans immortal. If dying is the end of existance, every effort should be made to abolish death from the world. (i'm obvoiusly not talking about something that'll happen in the next few hundred years. my regret is that i was born too early (but then again, it wouldnt be me.. anyway, that's another discussion :))
-henrik
Of course, you make the mistake of thinking that genetic makeup form very much of the personality. If I remember correctly, genetically identical twins that are separated at birth (adoption, etc) are less similar in personality than genetically different twins who are raised in the same family.
That means, loads of surprises. Different health issues, probably similar physical characteristics to an extent, but food and environment affects that a lot too, as well as new diseases, etc. Sexual predisposition might be entirely different, since what forms that is largely unknown, and probably to a large extent formed by environment.
Many parents seem to dream about being a perfect parent. Give it up. Start up a therapy fund that the kids can use when they turn 18, because if the parents themselves dont screw the kids over (and you will _never_ know how a kid will react to the most innocent correction, unfairness, too much fairness, pampering until its far far too late) then the rest of the world will.
If you look back at Genisis, you'll see that God completed the creation at a specific point. Wouldn't his "handing out" souls be contradictory to this?
He doesn't create new souls. It was quite a breakthrough for me personally (on the issue of cloning) when I realized that the creation of a new soul is built into humanity, and happens at conception. So when a sperm fertilizes an egg - boom - new soul.
Ergo, I believe that clones will be distinct individuals. A soul is created at the moment of conception, and so, until we can 'manufacture' sperm or egg, we won't have a problem.
Granted, it will be disconcerting to have people walking around with the same looks, personality type, and mannerisms, but he/she will still be born of a mother and a father, and therefore human, with all the "rights and responsibilities" that go with that.
Oh please. athiest != psychopath.
:). I think we could all use with more tolerence in the world. Simply because people don't believe the same as we do does not make them evil or sub-human. This goes for clones (although I cannot see how they would be treated any differently then an identical twin would be, as that is exactly what they are), operating systems, slashdot editors, linux distributions, and even John Katz :).
On the off chance that you're not a troll, and for anyone else who might be tempted to buy into your argument:
Just because you don't believe that if you step out of line you'll burn forever does not imply that you have no morals. People confuse athiests (and agnostics) with psychopaths (having no ethical/moral qualms). It's simply not true. Athiests simply do not believe in God. (For that matter they don't believe in the devil ethier. So maybe you can just cancel them both out and call it a wash if you perfer).
For the record, I'm not an athiest, but some of my friends are, and none of them have killed me off yet
Minupla, "OK, now go to your corners and come out tolerent!"
--
Remove the rocks to send email
On the whole, I find that I prefer Slashdot posts to twitter ones because I don't get limited to 140 chars before
could anyone give me a nice plausible step by step theory where step 1 is "a human is cloned" and step n is "our ultimate doom"?
I think it's a very cute notion that most people have when arguing about preventing the cloning of humans. Why do you assume that anyone who is in favor of holding off on this for a bit longer believes that clones will, in fact, spell out the demise of all life on earth?
I, for one, am an opponent of cloning humans (at least right now) for several very simple reasons. A) I believe that we (as humans) cannot take very good care of ourselves or our home (read:earth) right now. 30 years ago we came exceedingly close to ridding this planet of all life, except possibly that of insects. That does not bode well for any other life we bring into the picture. I trust this society to not fuck this up about as much as i trust a recovering crack addict locked in a police evidence room.
B)This is a pandora's box. The arguments i've seen on this matter come down to the same thing. Two groups arguing over which is right, caution, or innovation. This argument starts out in a relatively intelligent tone, and soon disintegrates into a "Yes you are," "No i'm not" debate about who's a prude and who's a moron. So i will say this once, and all i ask is that people seriously reflect on this: Cloning is a one way function. we now have the power to clone a human. And, i agree that this, in and of itself, is a signifigant achievement. But, what we ALL need to ask ourselves is what are all of the consequences of this action. Good and bad. If you think that no good can come from this, then you are naieve. If you think that no bad will come from this, then you are as equally naieve. But, in all honesty, i haven't seen a perfectly intelligent argument as to where this will put us in 50 years from either side. And that, to me, is not a reason to give the go ahead to something that has the serious potential to alter all of our societal views as this does.
Fundamentally this argument is between the misanthrops and those who have faith in humanity. Me? I take the misanthropic view: we, as a human society, can't even raise our own children to be good people, why bring clones in to the picture now? we're just going to fuck that up too.
FluX
After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -David Hume
You know, the article brings up some good points. I'm a religious person, and I happen to believe that only God can reproduce the spirit. I don't know what will happen here though. Technically nothing can happen without God (who is all powerful) permitting it to happen. If God didn't want it, then...? But, also God has given humanity the freedom of choice, and where does that lead?
I agree that this is an issue not being given enough focus in the mainstream media/philosophical circles. This is an issue that will be at the centerpiece of human society in the next 10 yrs. Will clones be treated as humans? Or will they be treated as some kind of subhuman slaves? This kind of reminds me of the X-Men and the country of Genoshia. There are certain elements in humanity that will never permit clones to be regarded as humans, and in this case we have to wonder, should we regard them as humans?
-"Those who fought today will die tommorow."-
Too many people get the order of that reversed. Case in point, from Tatara's article:
However, before we give a sentient being life, we had better recognize that we may be incapable of properly bestowing life...
I suppose it's arguable that many of the lives on this planet already were "improperly bestowed", but I doubt that the recipient of an expensive cloned birth will be subject to the same substandard education and lousy family situation that our less fortunate sentient beings are stuck with today. Of course, he/she will have been bestowed with the genes of an existing, happy human being, and will have to suffer the consequences. Darn.
But what will happen to these clones if we discover that science can't regenerate a soul?
Someone's been watching too many movies. Repeat after me: "A clone is an organism whose genetic code is copied from another organism". A clone is not a vat-baby, or a teleported copy of yourself from the Evil Star Trek Universe Where Everybody Has Moustaches. In fact, in the special case where that copying occurs at conception, we call the clone an "identical twin", and most of them claim to have souls.
Will people dare to fall in love with, and mate with, a clone?
Stupid people won't. That's okay; more potential partners for the rest of us.
Again, I feel myself wanting to apologize for what seems like crackpot issues.
You know how if you're unsure on multiple choice tests, they advise you to go with your first instinct?
The dangers of pushing this particular button simply aren't as obvious as they are with the destructive energy of a nuclear bomb.
The dangers of polka music are equally subtle, and for much the same reason.
If it gets out of hand?and I think cloning a human being will undoubtedly be the go-ahead for taking things too far?our ultimate doom could slowly arise over a matter of time.
Aside from "it's neeewwww, and scaaarrryyy!" could anyone give me a nice plausible step by step theory where step 1 is "a human is cloned" and step n is "our ultimate doom"? Perhaps I just lack imagination, but I'm having trouble filling in steps 2 through n-1, myself.
I'd insert the requisite "I can't believe this made it to Slashdot" bitching here, but it's been such a slow weekend that I'm almost happy to waste my time ranting at the clue-deprived.
How does this effect cloning. If we make "perfect" clones then there is no modification. If there is no modification then we aren't running fast enough and we will lose the Red Queen races. The survival of any species over time requires mutation and genetic variance. So if people decide to just clone themselves and transfer their brains to new bodies they are contributing to the downfall of humanity by not allowing for genetic variance. Ergo, "perfect" clones are a bad idea in general from a scientific/evolutionary stand point.
This leaves us with "imperfect" clones. So we can let the process be somewhat sloppy so as to allow for genetic drift and mutation or we purposefully modify the clones genes to add variance. Scientifically speaking, the sloppy process is foolish, whereas the purposeful modification is not. Why, might you ask. Well, a purposeful modification, even if done to a large portion of the populous that can afford it, would not be wide spread enough to cause significant to the overall genetic variance within the human species while at the same time it would not damage it like a "perfect" clone would, if you want a good arguement and numbers read the book mentioned above called Children of Prometheus.
There are a couple problems with purposeful modification though:
I agree that we need to start thinking about the cloning of humans. Within the next two years a human will be cloned. Science will not stop just because a large majority of people are unable to handle to concequences, or fundamentally disagree with the process. People will be modified within the next 50. Cosmetic genetics will arrive even through heavy protest. The best thing that we can do now is understand it, and human evolution. I mentioned two good books up above on the topic, there are many more on the subject and believe that our society should start reading them NOW so we do not make blind decessions for or against it.
Disclamer - Opinion of Person
Identical twins are geneitically MORE simmilar than current cloning methods will allow (because, in the case of twins, they share their mother's Midocondrial DNA).
Which is the "real" child and which is the "twin?" Which the "original" and which the "clone?"
"Clones" will be regular people, like twins, like bastards, like test-tube babies, like adopted children, like suragate-mothered children...
The major issue that concerns me regarding cloning is not whether it is possible, or whether clones would be soulless robots, or whether we would create an army of clones that think and act exactly alike. localroger's post is a typical counterexample that effectively dispels these concerns, at least for me. The major concern that I have is why would we want to create a clone?
I have followed the issue of cloning for a while, and I have seen several major reasons advocated for cloning, all of which deeply concern me.
The most common reason I have seen for advocating cloning is to create a genetic duplicate of someone who has a dehabilitating injury to provide tissue for transplantation. Let us say for example that an illness (not a genetic condition) has resulted in the failure of a patient's kidneys. Biologically, there is no problem with causing a genetic duplicate of the individual to be made, and transplanting one of their kidneys. Psychologically, however, there are some serious implications. The clone to be created will be an individual, a person, and his future feelings need to be considered in the equation. This individual will grow up knowing that he was born with one single purpose in the world, to save his duplicate's life. He will have the feeling that he was not actually wanted by his parents. Even if his parents actually did want another child at the time, he will know that they chose to have him with an ulterior purpose. Look at the emotional trauma suffered by many individuals who were placed up for adoption, thinking that their biological parents did not want them. I imagine that clones created for the purpose of saving another's life will suffer from similar agony.
Another reason that I forsee clones being created would be in cases where a child died tragically early, say in a car accident. The distraught parents decide that they want to have another child, a copy of their dead child. Currently, this already goes on, with parents who have lost children sometimes trying to replace them. They have another child, and they ignore that this child is a distinct individual, that this child is not their dead child. These children grow up continuously having to struggle under the burden of their parents expectations of them, expecting them to like the same things that their deceased sibling did, trying to force them in directions that they would not have chosen for themselves. How much worse would the burden be if they were physically identical to their sibling, especially if their parents were unaware enough to believe that clones are also mentally identical?
Likely, some people would also create clones of themselves. The reasons behind this could be many, including a desire to live vicariously through a child. How many times do children today have trouble with conflicts between themselves and their parents about the path their life should take? How many children are told by their parents that they have to be a doctor or a lawyer? How many times are children told by their parents that their parents know what is in their best interests, or that their parents understand exactly what they are going through and what they are thinking. How much harder would it be for a child to argue with the lawyer parent he was cloned from and convince his parent that being a lawyer is not the path for him? How much harder would it be for a child to convince his parent that the parent does not automatically understand the thoughts and feelings going on in the child's head because he is older, and has gone through more, if they are genetically identical and the parent has a basis for arguing that they should have similar thought processes? (Note, I said a basis. I am not saying it is valid, only that the argument would be used to the child's detriment.) What about the difficulties of convincing a parent who had a 4.0 in school that even though you have the same genetic coding, the "same brain", you were trying your hardest when you got only a 3.7?
My concerns about cloning have nothing to do with the concerns that we often see put forward and the concerns most commonly debunked, the concerns of superstition and misunderstanding of what cloning means. I recognize that a clone would be a distinct individual. I have enough understanding of biology and medicine to recognize that cloning could have many beneficial applications. However, my concern is that because the clone is a distinct individual, the needs and rights of that individual cannot be ignored. I am greatly concerned that those rights will be ignored because the decisions that would infringe upon those needs and rights would be made in the act of cloning, long before that individual is recognized as an entity by the law, and even longer before that individual has the ability to defend his rights. As shown in my examples above, several of the most common reasons given for why someone should be cloned could result in serious psychological harm to the clone. Before I could ever advocate cloning, I would have to have some explanation of how these problems could be prevented.
A better question would be, what makes you think humans are fit to guess as to what that policy is? I mean, I doubt the bible says anything about cloning. God is supposed to be unknowable, so quit trying to guess his intentions.
Furthermore, you don't even know what a soul is. Maybe it is encoded in the DNA. Maybe the clone and the original can make nice and share. Point is, you don't know, but you're perfectly willing to make judgements about it. I checked the dictionary, and there were a number of interesting definitions. Obviously this is not the end-all list, but it's a good start.
the immaterial essence, animating principle, or actuating cause of an individual life: So, since those cloned animals don't get a soul (or the animal equivalent), they are really just undead zombies? ... what? That certainly clears things up for me.
the spiritual principle embodied in human beings, all rational and spiritual beings, or the universe: So it's this intangible, invisible, immaterial thing that does
a person's total self: So, the whole flesh and blood part doesn't count?
the moral and emotional nature of human beings; the quality that arouses emotion and sentiment: So any human clones will be mindless, immoral, unemotional borg drones incapable of feeling anything at all? Somehow, I just don't think so.
That last is a good question. What does a person without a soul act like? Nobody I know of can answer that for one simple reason: nobody can identify anyone with or without a soul since no one can show any concrete proof whatsoever that there is such a thing. For all we know, only one person in a million gets a soul and the rest of us bumble through life without one.
If you are religious and don't like cloning, fine; don't make one, in whole or in part. But you do not get to tell me that I cannot, ok? Your faith is your own thing, and I do not have to subscribe to it's tenets.
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Dyolf Knip
Really, the implications of cloning are being waaaaaay overblown. Is an identical twin somehow "less" of an individual because he is a twin? Of course not. We would have a better perspective on this if we weren't so quick to attribute every little personality quirk to genetic causes (so convenient for those who believe in eugenics).
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We have gotten so good at correcting problems which would once have been crippling or deadly that these traits are propagating rather than being culled. Probably the most interesting of these is infertility.
In the past if you were blind, prone to disease, or infertile, you tended not to reproduce. Now you can get Lasik, take antibiotics, and launch the entire might of modern medical science against your low sperm count and leave plenty of offspring with your exact same problems.
I'm not saying this is bad, just that cloning adds nothing new to the mix. Within another hundred years humans probably won't be able to reproduce without massive technological intervention. Cloning will be just one set of pliers in the toolset that makes it possible.
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