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Harvard to Clone Human Embryos?
Lifix writes ""Harvard University scientists have asked the university's ethical review board for permission to produce cloned human embryos for disease research, potentially becoming the first researchers in the nation to wade into a divisive area of study that has become a presidential campaign issue."
Human cloning is scary stuff. What happens when we start to clone the "perfect" human for soldiers? Or when we clone too much that it leaves too little genetic diversity? Or worse, combining genetic manipulation with cloning, creating "super-humans", so-to-speak?
Personally I think those are questions best left to speculation, and not ones that should ever have their answers truly known by anyone.
"Your effort to remain what you are is what limits you."
It will be stem cell research. Then again, with overcrowding in the world, I don't even know if that's the best good idea. It's going to be a long century, and at the moment, this kind of thing isn't safe either privatized or government regulated.
My point is that as long as we keep the clones somewhat small - say less than 1024 cells, I have no moral problem with disposing them - that I'm not killing anything. Yes this has a HUGE grey area, but I think that a reasonable compromise can be reached.
Let the flame/holy wars begin...
..........FULL STOP.
I'd think it would be when brain waves begin...I can't imagine how something that's mindless could be inhabited by a soul. As you pointed out, though, there's no way to prove or disprove it.
The Evangelicals do. And if you don't speak and belive in magic like they, this fact is not something to take lightly.
For millions people a mistake that's strikingly similar to Dan Rather's that cost 1,000 Americans, and counting, their lives can be forgiven because he says he prays. That's enough for them. A request to whatever that inhabits the sky for a magic delivery, not even a request, the demand since the eventual delivery is expected. Think about what that really means. He's not sorry, he won't try to do better, he's not obligated to re-examine his mistakes, he's put in a request for magic, and that's plenty. They're letting him abdicate any responsability for a long series of colossal mistakes. And they are tens of millions strong.
Don't underestimate them. Kerry will likely lose because he doesn't put on the same pomp and circumstance and might well have a very different, more personal, experience of his faith. They've a lot of views they think we should share to save us from ourselves, not the least of which is blow jobs are evil. Which would be funny, except for their commitment to making a world without bjs a reality. Many of their stated goals reduce to, "Get rid of the joy in life" and people are commiting felonies to make it happen. That is bat-shit insane!!!
Hmmm, would the clone then be a native born citizen capable of running for president? Interesting indeed...
at the risk of going a bit off topic here, but couldnt the same argument be used to prevent government spending money on any other arb thing, like, say, executing prisoners, because executions use tax money from people who may oppose it? (i used this as an example cos there's a significant number of people who are opposed to the death penalty).
it seems to me that the government policy on this matter is only what it is, because its more friendly towards the religious groups that are against cloning altogether, without totally snubbing the scientists altogether ("ok mr scientist, you can clone embryos, but we will not fund it")
Is this not what's happening if someone goes for an abortion ? I understand there may be a proper reason for it in some cases, but effectively, what you ARE doing is creating life and destroying it. Does *that* life have a soul ? Does it not ?
The point is, in the course of cloning, we may learn something which will improve our understanding of the human anatomy or DNA. This understanding need not always lead to something negative (like creating super-soldiers etc.). It may actually lead to constructive things which will help us avoid doing something stupid. For example, here are pills which help reduce fat by 'fooling' a certain fat-related gene. Who knows what problems this sort of a thing will create in the future ? Maybe with new knowledge about the human system, we would know.
Science is never at fault. It is the people who handle it.
... and I shall strike upon thee with great vegeance, furious anger and a slightly positive karma.
I agree from a different POV this book IS utopia.
Why do we want choice? Why do we want to be able to choose our job? Why do we want to be different yet accepted by society? I think the answer is easy:
We want the choice of job to be able to get the job that will make us happy. We want to be able to be ourselves even if we are different and still have the community's support. Because that makes us happy and content.
It all somehow drops back on us wanting to be happy. But people in BNW ARE happy. I'm not too sure if I'd resist such a world. Because right now I'm very individualistic yet I am not really happy.
Our individualism comes from remembering how we were slaves of kings, despots and dictators. But is a dictator something bad? Is it bad to be told what to do? Yes it is... unless you are told to do what you love to do. And in this book people can do exactely what they like. They couldn't choose what they like and what not but what good does choice if the outcome is killing poverty and overall unhappyness?
One of the things that worry me most about cloning humans is, considering the corporate situation, it is very likely that companies will be able to PATENT human beings. This is the US patent office we're talking about it. If you asked for a patent for the wheel or blowing your nose, they'd probably give it to you if you can dress it up in enough technical sounding language. The ensuing haboo would be "Not their problem because insteading of actually doing our jobs we'll just accept all of them and let the courts sort it out".
In my opinion, cloning embryos is a trivialization of the creation of human life. And I see that a lack of value for human life has preceded many historic tragedies. That is, lives and their loss are being made to represent something other than and in precedence to its value as people: in war, life and its loss is made a military tool to an end; in genocide, it is abstracted as some negative impact or social obstacle that needs overcoming. Okay, so the comparisons aren't perfect because they deal with life rather than the creation of life. But what I fear is that they all constitute the use of life and the destruction of it for a secondary purpose. And it's a crucial similarity - you can't maximize for two variables, so to speak. When life is used effectively (in a way that involves its destruction) for another end, ethics and the gain compete in importance. In the case of Harvard, corporately-funded research will choose its pragmatic interests (gain and profit) over ethical concerns anytime, and so we shouldn't mix ethical dilemmas with the free market if we expect to have a well-considered outcome.
(To avoid 5, Funny posts: Yes, it's extraordinarily naive to say that conception is considered sacred. It's certainly not. But it's never been commercialized before (as opposed to what, er, precedes it, which obviously has been commercialized - i.e. pr0n.))
This isn't the same argument as the one over abortion, which is the termination of a life (whose status is disputed) for personal reasons. And IVF uses embryos to create life. What we should fear are industries made out of the use of the creation of human life as a tool to another end. Stem cells may not have any profitable purpose yet, but as soon as they do, and if we depend on cloning embryos to create our stem cells, there will be NO turning back. This is an argument to have now. Does this trivialize the creation of life? And does a trivialization of the creation of life lessen the value we place in life in general? What are the consequences of that? Think about the ultimate point to which the decision here leads, not just its immediate results.
I've never understood the premise of the movie Gattaca. In the movie, the "hero" cheats his way into an astronaut's position by using the DNA of another man. But the "hero" should never have been an astronaut. In one scene, he's running on a treadmill and his fitness is not up to par, so he fakes his heartbeat to fool the medical doctors. In another scene, he loses his contact lenses on a busy road and is almost killed rather than admit he can't see. The "hero" was entirely inadequate for the position of an astronaut. He circumvented the genetic and non-genetic screening that would have proven he lacked the basic requirements for fitness and eyesight.
But at the end of the movie, when he flies up in the spaceship, possibly putting the entire mission and the rest of the crew at great risk due to his physical inadequacies, we're supposed to feel happy for this idiot?
I personally look forward to the day when genetic screening is as accurate as that in the movie. I'd like nothing better than for imbeciles to be sacked from positions they should never have held in the first place.
Funny, we do not think about saving 70 and odd cells while killing other life for our survival - namely food. The only reason this becomes a big issue is because the cells happen to be human.
Btw, you must surely know that for such research, they just use a few cells off embryos that would be destroyed otherwise, right?
Somehow I find that ironic. There are very few who share your beliefs - while I do understand and respect your point of view, the fact remains that the legislation behind this is largely stayed by right-wing politics rather than any laudable ethical reasons.
Ah, watch that karma burn.
When I first read the book back in high school I was shocked to discover that it presented a world that most of my peers considered to be desireable. Lots of sex and drugs. Sure, not too much freedom, but lots of sex and drugs. Everything is planned out for you...but lots of sex and drugs. It has its appeal to the modern mentality. Has society changed so much since Huxley's time?
The Moore-Murphy Law: The number of things that will go wrong will double every 2 years.
the rallying cry now is When Conciousness Begins; however, according to current research into cognitive psychology up to half of all our actions/interactions may have a genetic basis that varies from individual to individual meaning that conciousness or the blueprints to a unique conciousness are inherent from the conception.
Consciousness and the blueprints to consciousness are completely different things. Just because consciousness may be affected by genetics doesn't mean that a single-celled fertilised egg is conscious.
Indeed, by that logic, sperm and ova are conscious. Any man should be considered a mass murderer, but no one ever seems to care about these living cells.
You should spend an hour caring for a person with a spinal cord injury. Better, why do you not move in with such a person and live with them for a week or so. How many of you will handle it?
I am not taking this out of my ass; I have actually been around people who cannot move and have no hope of improvement because of their conditions. My best friend has a mild-form of CP; the guy has been suffering all his life because his fucking legs are crooked and there is nothing he can do about it! Do me a favor, look into his eyes and then tell him that you are against stem cell research. Tell him that it sucks to be him because he was born different. Then visit a nursing home and try to take care of patients with Alzheimer's....
I still do not realize why this issue is an issue for our presidential candidates... This is a no brainer that should not be discussed in a country where religion is separate from the state. Then again, just like Kerry I am a liberal guy from Massachusetts :)
Sexual reproduction as a method of survival (considering evolution) has in my opinion become obsolete. Weak individuals are allowed to survice and by helping them we are seriously hindering evolution and making things worse. So I disagree, technology is definitely needed to help evolution since we are currently hindering the natural process.
To be perfectly selfless some people should also consider NOT TO REPRODUCE or atleast not to reproduce naturally in order to strengten the next generation. Some carry dangerous genes that might lead to extinction of human race if allowed to pass over to the next generation.
I believe science can help. You might consider it next level of evolution.
This is the narrow view of natural selection that gets people into trouble, in much the same way as when we introduce new species into ecosystems and then realize 10 yrs later the new species has dramatically altered the place and has not given us the results we wanted.
Genetics and natural selection are COMPLEX. No, not like long division or network configuration or even tensor calculus. The DNA in your body is being effected by not only the DNA in my body, but also the DNA in the trees outside your window, the salmon in Norway, and those bacteria that live in the clouds.
Claiming to know that some gene is more likely to lead to the extinction of the human race is beyond ridiculous. The whole point is that it's all one big interconnected system, and changes in one species ripple out to all the others, then those ripples reflect back, get stretched, squeezed, inverted, etc etc. In our small, personal perspectives, it's easy to say that asthma or diabetes are detrimental to our species. But did you know that sickle cell anemia, so prevalent in Africa, actually helps combat malaria? It is naive and arrogant to think that just because some genetic feature makes you unhappy, that necessarily makes it something we should change.
I am all for genetics, biotechnology, etc, but to take such a short sighted view of things as to think that getting rid of some diseases will overall strengthen the species is beyond me. The prospects of those technologies is incredibly exciting. At the same time, the attitudes we take when approaching the technology must be very carefully examined.
"I must not fear. Fear is the mind killer." -Bene Gesserit Litany Against Fear
Yes, it is different from killing prisoners to extract their organs. Blastocysts have no central nervous system, thus no concept of pain or existence. To be a human being, you need a central nervous system.
Others suggest that to be human, you need higher-order consciousness. That is why it is acceptable to "pull the plug" on hopelessly brain-damaged patients that have no hope of recovering consciousness, even if the brain stem survives and there is some level of autonomic respiration.
On the other hand, allowing REAL human beings to die by our inaction on studying blastocyst stem cells, I consider that unethical.