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First cloned human embryo revealed
Stephen Williams sent us the BBC story that American Cell Technology had successfully cloned a human embryo, using a cell from a man's leg and a cow. The embryo was destroyed at 12 days-just prior to when naturally the embryo implants into the uterine wall. They did so wanting to "try and allay fears over artificial life." Wow. The Boys from Brazil indeed-what do you folks think?
Imagine how fun it would be to purchase 2 or 3 copies of Cameron Diaz... Immature I know, but it's a compelling thought.
I'm getting sick of this.
Look, if you successfully clone an adult human, then
in 9 months you get an itty bitty baby that
has the same genetic material as the source.
(Well, there are questions about the telomeres).
You do *NOT*, repeat *NOT* get a duplicate
creature the same age as the source! Why
do people continue to think that cloning works
like some bizzare star trek transporter
accident where you get an identical human
the same age as the source.
IT DOESN'T WORK THAT WAY!
-- cary
I have no problems with clones, probably due to me being a twin. But I do have a problem with the idea that clones are not different people, or that a clone can be treated as a commodity. ;)
Twins/clones are different people even if they look similar. My experience being a twin and with the several others that I know is that the always have different personalities. You can tell which twin is which quit easily. I have never met two that communicate in quite the same way, they usually have different body language and a different vocabulary. Just because you have the same DNA, dosn't meen you are the same. Don't treat us as the same person! (and you thought you had an identity problem
Now a clone as a commodity... Now as a natural clone I have just one question. Is it me or my twin, who is the spare parts?
Sorry about this rant, but..
This is something I've been thinking about for quite a while. The Bible says that God created man. It does not say how. To my knowledge, there is nothing in the Bible that says God did not create man through evolution.
;)
It does say man was created on the sixth day and that could be looked upon as ruling out evolution. But a day is a relative measure of time. It's probably not even meant to be taken literally, being more of a symbolic amount of time. God gave humans 1/7 of the amount of time he took to create everything. Ironically, that's also the amount of time he rested
hmm.. Quite a good refute. I'll have to think about it some more.
I do belive that taking something too literally can be just as bad as not believing it at all. For instance, this created from the dust of the earth thing could be just that we are created of the substance of the earth, not literally the dust. I dunno. Maybe I'm just looking for a way to prove something I believe. You know, you have a way to disprove my theories using something taken as fact, but I have no equally strong way to disprove anything in the Bible. Not that I'd want to, just something to think about.
Read 'Glory Season' by David Brin for an interesting take on that idea.
You piss off the gov't.
They "make" a clone of you.
Bye Bye.
Perfect for those pesky crypto-anarchists and others.
just an idea. . .
---
This is much more important to those scenarios than cloning, because if you do can gestate (and raise) the kids without an opportunity for anyone to have an emotional attachment to them, then it will be dangerously practical to raise slaves, and it won't matter whether they're clones or not.
I can only imagine what Gary Larson's interpretation of this event would be...
You can if their religion is the cause of their ignorance. Religion has a way of brainwashing people who get too caught up in it. Not that there's anything wrong with that..
Seriously though, it makes me wonder where technology will be 10 years from now.
I can see the 'One With The Cow Harem' cartoon already. ;]
Posted by FascDot Killed My Previous Use:
Clones are just identical twins who were born a little farther apart than normal twins. No big deal.
--
"Please remember that how you say something is often more important than what you say." - Rob Malda
Posted by FascDot Killed My Previous Use:
"the resultant offspring will be as unique an individual as anyone else."
Wrong. The clone would be as unique as an identical twin. That's fairly unique, but not as unique as two randomly chosen people.
--
"Please remember that how you say something is often more important than what you say." - Rob Malda
Posted by FascDot Killed My Previous Use:
Clearly they are discrete individuals who can make their own decisions. But it is not clear to what extent their genome influences things like thoughts (or modes of thinking), ambitions and desires.
You should check out some studies on identical twins. Pretty weird stuff.
--
"Please remember that how you say something is often more important than what you say." - Rob Malda
Posted by aPhysch:
Why should the scientific community ignore those who believe in a type of Christian morality? Is it because science is somehow "above moral questioning?" I seriously hope that you don't believe this crap.
If you do, go read a book about the creation of nuclear weapons during WWII, and also read some things on a guy named Norbert Wiener. His "The Human Use of Human Beings" may be applicable. Then perhaps you'll understand that science is not above ethical questions.
And for those that say that because we have the theoretical knowledge of _HOW_ to do something that we must _necessarily_ do that.... grow up a little. Actions like the cloning of humans should NOT be done behind closed doors, and then revealed in a "too late" manner. Instead, there should be long and thoughtful discussions on these issues. Of course, some might say that the average Joe could not understand the implications of cloning in any real sense, and in their ignorance they will not want such a thing to occur. To them, I state that the scientific community then has it in their best interests to attempt to educate these "poor slobs." Then, perhaps the majority will agree with them, and these moral question would all but vade.
Posted by FascDot Killed My Previous Use:
"Discrete" and "distinct" are nearly synonymous.
Maybe you are thinking of "discreet"?
--
"Please remember that how you say something is often more important than what you say." - Rob Malda
I am *more* than a sequence of amino acids. So are you. The creation of a unique (or nearly unique strand of DNA) is not the creation of "me." What makes me unique sis that I think, I have (as the bible put it) the knowledge of good and evil, and the ability to choose between the two. That isn't the case for a newly fertilized egg!
Biblicly speaking, human life is "defined" by having a soul. We have no "soulscope" to detect souls. However, we do have a reasonable scientific alternative; yes, brainwaves. The right brainwaves mean we are thinking, we are making those choices. And we don't consider a person to be a different person if they have a heart, or a kidney, or a lung replaced (by a transplant or artificial organ.) We don't consider someone dead if their heart can't beat on its own. We do consider someone dead if there's no evidence of brain activity. A just-conceived egg doesn't have brain activity. So why not be logically consistent and take the evidence of brain activity to be the start of life? *That's* what logic dictates.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
Two genetically identical persons growing up different wouldn't be proof of the presense or lack of a soul or a higher
power or purpose. There are many environmental factors that are at least as important as genetics, such as how you
were brought up, how you've been treated, your economic well being etc.
And what about identical twins? Same genetics, same environment, and they still end up with different personalities.
Personally, I think that identical twins are very strong evidence that there is more to a person than genetics and environment.
I also happen to think that a cloned embryo is just as human as a naturally conceived embryo, and to abort either is equally unjust.
I guess that makes me a religious wacko. So be it.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers. -- Pablo Picasso
Would it still be a human if you just clone the body, but not the brain? Which part of your body makes you human? I don't know if I buy any of this stuff. We are made of the same stuff as everything else on this planet. We get hurt sometimes or are born with bad defects. Why shouldn't we be able to put together some replacement parts for ourselves?
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
How is morality inherently irrational? Perhaps some of our morals are, but I wouldn't say that morality in general is irrational.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
That sheep wouldn't have had a lifespan at all if it hadn't been cloned. How many experiments are perfect from the start? It may take some time, but I think they will figure out where the problems are and fix them. They've done all kinds of things that nobody thought possible. Why not this too?
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Maybe I'm missing something, but it seems to me that unless everyone made a clone of just a few people, there would be no problem of inbreeding. As long as you make a clone of yourself, it shouldn't be a problem(although I wouldn't want a clone of myself that I would actually raise, I'd want one w/o a brain that I could just use for spare parts, but I doubt they'll be able to do that any time soon.)
"And what about identical twins? Same genetics, same environment, and they still end up with different personalities."
No, they have different names, one was born first, they will probably sleep in different rooms, one will probably be favored by the parents, etc. The only way to test your hypothesis, IMO, would be to make a computer simulation that ran exactly the same every time, and put two people w/ identical DNA in it from before birth. Meaning, they are born into the simulation and have no different outside influences before the simulation begins. Doing that would be horribly wrong though, so maybe we'll never be sure.
heh
I want to hear this
Seems ridiculous to me to. How "just" of God to send an unborn child to eteranal suffering when he/she had no choice.
I also think it's BS that Adam is our "representative". What? I didn't ask for that. Who is Adam to represent billion of people for millenia.
And I also don't understand why God couldn't have just said thing in the Bible that nobody back then would have had any clue of. How about: "The earth is round and goes around the sun and is not the center of the universe". If it said that, I'd be much more convinced. Right now it doesn't seem like anything in the Bible is definitely or even probably God's word, or anything that couldn't have very easily have been made up by people who were delusional or stupid or trying a power grab or anything. Why is the Bible any more or less true than many other religous texts or than something I could type up right now?
"This is a fundamental error committed by many people (including, it seems, you): that they have the right to judge whether the Bible is God's Word, and whether it's true.
You don't have such a right. You are obligated to submit to it."
Even assuming that I would take something on faith and not question it at all, how am I supposed to know who to believe. There are probably at least hundreds of different groups of people who claim to know God's word. Why should I believe Christians? If I don't question what's in the Bible, what right do I have to question what's in the Koran or the teachings of Buddha or anything? If you don't even ask yourself how reasonable the word of God is, how could you possibly know that the Bible is the word of God?
Babies born with no brain at all rarely live more than a few minutes. Most people believe that's for the best.
The big differentiation between brain/brainless is the potential to be conscious.
The ethics argument can cut both ways. Imagine someone knowing that in two years they will be dead from liver failure. Now, further imagine that there is a way to take a skin cell from their leg, and make a new liver for them in the form of a brainless body. How ethical is it to tell that person "you're going to die because the procedure creeps me out".
There are going to be a great many debates on ethics as this and similar technologies progress.
On the other hand, every cell nucleus in my body has the chance to become a person as well, if only someone will kindly stick it in a cow ovum and give it it's chance.
After all, that's how they created that embryo.
For the leg, you'd probably want to use the stretching technique sometimes used to correct a short limb. It would still take time, and the result would probably not be perfect, but it would be better than any prostetic available today.
It may also be possable to accelerate the growth and development of the cloned body in some cases. After all, the overall health of the body wouldn't be important, just that of the replacement part needed.
On the whole though, cloning will likely be useful for internal organs sooner than for limbs.
Send them to the island of misfit toys.
"The number of suckers born each minute doubles every 18 months."
-jafac's law
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Just because it's technically possible to destroy an entire city with one atom bomb, doesn't make it morally or ethically "right". Or inevitable.
.
Michael Chriton said it best in Jurrasic Park; the scientist spent so much time trying to figure out if they COULD do it, they didn't think about whether they SHOULD. .
"The number of suckers born each minute doubles every 18 months."
-jafac's law
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
And we all know that mitochondria are really midichlorians, so if this cow was strong with the force, so will the cloned offspring, no matter what genetic material it had.
"The number of suckers born each minute doubles every 18 months."
-jafac's law
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
#5 would be sick with you, but hey, I'm pretty good-looking!
"The number of suckers born each minute doubles every 18 months."
-jafac's law
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
NO
ObiWan fought WITH Luke's father in the clone wars, as in, on the same side.
"The number of suckers born each minute doubles every 18 months."
-jafac's law
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
come on - PEOPLE did these things. How can you blame a god you don't even believe in? Millions of people were killed by - people.
." - so you can't blame God for things man does. Unless you don't believe in free-will, in which case, it really makes no sense to believe in God either.
If religion made it more convenient to explain why entire villages had to be "put to the sword", then wow, what a convenient tool. Almost as convenient as "weapons of mass destruction".
The first three words God says to mankind in the book of Genesis are "You are free. .
"The number of suckers born each minute doubles every 18 months."
-jafac's law
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
damn.
If I was born without hands, I sure as hell WOULD want my genetic code changed.
If they could fix my nearsightedness, I sure as hell would want my genetic code changed.
If they could fix my back problems (or prevent my offspring from having them), I sure as hell would want my genetic code changed.
Why the hell would I want to pass on suffering to my offspring? A couple of alterations here and there wouldn't hurt - but going much farther, to the point where I and my offspring wouldn't be similar any longer, genetically speaking, I'd kind of shy away from that.
"The number of suckers born each minute doubles every 18 months."
-jafac's law
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
And for the one or two rich, self centered bastards out there who will have themselves cloned, really, :>
I couldn't _think_ of a better punishment than for them to have a child who is exactly like _them_
and for the rich folks who do this, will also be able to afford a nanny to raise the little brats for them as well.
"The number of suckers born each minute doubles every 18 months."
-jafac's law
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
If I was legless, I could wait that long.
"The number of suckers born each minute doubles every 18 months."
-jafac's law
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
I trusted nature and look what I got-
bad eyes and an aching back, and a predisposition for obesity (not there yet, but I'm working on it).
"The number of suckers born each minute doubles every 18 months."
-jafac's law
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
I guess what would be nice is if they could direct cell-differentiation to the point of, once they begin a cloned embryo's development, they can direct only certain organ tissues to develop, so we grow say, only a genetically identical heart (in a saline bath - credit to Bill Cosby). .
Then the PETA people would have us clone cows, that only grow tenderloin tissue, we wouldn't need to raise and murder cattle anymore. .
"The number of suckers born each minute doubles every 18 months."
-jafac's law
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
(playing DA here)
That "necessary evil", killing an embryo - perhaps the genetic material used was from the GENIUS who developed this cloning experiment in the first place. Perhaps that embryo would have developed into a pretty smart guy too. Perhaps that embryo would have cured cancer, or solved the CIA crypto-sculpture or something.
But now we'll never know.
Did that embryo have a soul?
Da Pope says yes.
Da Darwin says no.
Da ME says I don't fuggin' know, so what right do I have to decide?
"The number of suckers born each minute doubles every 18 months."
-jafac's law
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
--
--
--
Two genetically identical persons growing up different wouldn't be proof of the presense or lack of a soul or a higher power or purpose. There are many environmental factors that are at least as important as genetics, such as how you were brought up, how you've been treated, your economic well being etc.
Even if every gene in a person and its clone were identical the personalities would be quite different if for instance clones weren't given equal protection by the law: You're just a clone, you can't vote, can't own property and oh yeah, if I ever need a liver, kidney, heart or eyes you're just a convenient sack for holding replacement parts.
I was recently visiting some friends in Virginia. They have a daughter who is attending a public school. When I ask her what she had done in school the day before I was shocked at the answer.
Apparently, once a month, they do 'bible study', in class, during school hours.
She was one of the few students who didn't participate, and there was no curiculum planned for the students who were not involved in 'bible study'. Those children were told they could just sit around and draw or whatever that day.
Before birth, a fetus is a parasite, feeding off of it's mother.
After birth it's a small, helpless, hopelessly dependant human.
That gets the timing question down to the cutting of the imbilicus.
Exactly. A clone is a real person, just like an identical twin, not some mindless lab rat. I think we have an irresponsible media and sensationalist religious groups mis-educating the public on what life really is. I can imagine some mindless christians acting like the devil himself and killing people who happen to have origins of cloning, "you are not human!"
Where did education go? Televised news and religious groups? We are in trouble!
So, everyone wondered what religious people might think about this, and while I certainly can't speak for all of them, I'll speak for myself. I find this intensely frightening.
The problem is that this is another in a growing line of medical-ethical questions whose biggest problem is the "at what cost" factor. No one would argue that using this technology to grow tissues for a burn victim from his own skin, or any miriad of similar situations. The part that is of concern is the abuse of the technology.
Some situations: We all remember the frogs with no central nervous systems? Human organs on demand when combined with this technology, and don't tell me you don't think someone will try. Labor pool too small? Human workers on demand. Combined with some fancy genetics, human workers that won't mind being abused as slaves. I suppose some of you have read A Brave New World, so the notion of humans grown by the government isn't really new.
I don't fear new technology, but I do fear the misuse of it. I fear the degradation of human beings grown in labs, and I fear the abuse of life itself for the benefit of a certain few.
Andrew Gardner
Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside a dog, its too dark to read.
I would expect many Christians to be active in the "clone rights" movement in the same way that they were and are active in the antislavery, civil rights and pro-life movements. (In the eyes of these people, those three movements are very closely related.) Obviously there are going to be some wackos who call for exterminating clones, just the way they call for exterminating other races, but those people can hardly be called Christian.
I am interested in seeing what the viewpoint of folks like PETA will be. Logically, they should want to protect these animal-like pseudo-humans as much as they protect animals, but the same logic says that they should also try to protect the pseudo-humans called fetuses, which doesn't tend to be the case.
Replacing "abortion" with "genocide" in your justification for legalized abortion makes that justification sound silly:
"I'd rather have a trained and qualified doctor performing the genocide, than some [incompetant who is prone to failure and/or self-injury]."
If genocide is wrong (as I believe) then wishing for legalized genocide in order to protect the lives of the people who want to commit genocide is ridiculous. Allowing for safe genocide is not better than allowing for unsafe genocide. Likewise, the rightness or wrongness of abortion is independent from its implementation. It is silly to say that regardless of whether abortion is right or wrong, safe abortions are better than unsafe abortions.
The same is true of drugs. If (some types of) drug use is wrong, legalizing and institutionalizing it doesn't make it better. The question of its rightness or wrongness must be considered independently of its implementation.
Oh, give me a clone
Of my own flesh and bone
With its Y-chromosome changed to X
And after it's grown
Then my own little clone
Will be of the opposite sex.
(Chorus)
Clone, clone of my own,
With your Y-Chromosome changed to X
And when I'm alone
With my own little clone
We will both think of nothing but sex.
Oh, give me a clone
Is my sorrowful moan
A clone that is wholly my own.
And if she's X-X
And the feminine sex
Oh, what fun we will have when we're prone.
My heart's not of stone,
As I've frequently shown
When alone with my own little X
And after we've dined
I am sure we will find
Better incest than Oedipus Rex.
Why should such sex vex
Or disturb or perplex
Or induce a disparaging tone?
After all, don't you see,
Since we're both of us me,
When we're having sex, I'm alone!
And after I'm done
She will still have her fun
For I'll clone myself twice ere I die.
And this time without fail,
They'll be both of them male
And they'll each ravage her by and by.
First verse and chorus by Randall Garrett; other verses by Isaac Asimov.
It's not a bluff. And here we go. Remember: since you are a Xtian, I trust that you will have scripture to substatiate all your claims. Believe you me that I will have scripture to substantiate mine:
1. How must I be saved? (Be very careful how you answer this one!)
2. How can God be moral when he calls for ethnic clensing and the murder of infants by ripping them out of the wombs of their pregnant mothers?
3. Why would God kill people for petty reasons, such as touching the ark of the covenant or merely NOT praising God (Acts 12:23) and yet he let me survive after committing deliberate blashpemy?
4. Is a bat a bird?
5. Jesus made a fig tree wither. Did it wither immediately or not immediately?
6. How many Gods are there - 1, 3, or 4?
7. Did both thieves crucified beside Jesus curse him, or did one curse him and the other praise him?
8. How can God be both just and merciful?
9. How can God be considered just when he punishes many for the acts of one?
10. How can God be considered just when he punishes one for the acts of many?
11. How can God be considered merciful when he would punish multitudes of people with eternal torture?
12. What happens to the souls of aborted fetuses?
Please use email.
I don't make the rules. I just make fun of them.
And yet if other parts of the bible are taken literally then the bat is a bird, the ark rested on more than one mountain at once, the earth has for corners, sticks can turn into snakes, and the sky has a window in it. I'd suggest trying to reconcile Genesis 1 with Genesis 2 before trying to reconcile Genesis 1 with evolutionism.
I have never met a Christian who, when confronted with a contradictory or ridiculous scriptural passage, did not play the "That's what it says, but that's not what it means" game. Tell me, does the earth have four corners?
And as far as accountability goes, God killed Herod for the petty act of *not* praising him. David banged Bathsheba and arranged for her husband's death and God let him be king. Furthermore (I'm still better than God who is a wimp and a liar), I have blasphemed every day for the past two years deliberately and God sees fit that I survive. Explain.
I don't make the rules. I just make fun of them.
> For the record, the 'why does a loving God allow
:)
> bad things' argument has been settled for rather
> more than a thousand years now. It has to do
> with free will; you cannot allow free action
> without allowing evil action with it. Then you
> get to the question of why free will; the answer
> is that automata don't provide the same joy that
> individuals do. To be slightly on-topic, imagine
> the difference between a computer, which does
> always as it is told, and a child, who disobeys
> but is an intelligent individual. Which would
> you rather have? I'd rather have the kid. YMMV,
> of course.
Now now now... Be fair this has not been settled but in your own mind. There are many philosophical proofs for the existance and conversely the non-existance of god. We can take any one of these things and make it a proof based on our own perception of the idea.
For instance I can take the proof that the idea of god exists therfore god must exist because we can't conceve of something like that without a truth. Well the problem with that is that I can conceve of a purple rooster. Because I can conceive it dosen't in fact make it true.
But returning to your free will argument. Why does a gods actions soley lay on our heads? I mean the victor does write history. So if it's attributed to a god then he himself made that descision and cast the act yes? if we are in his image then HE has free will also. Therfore if he has free will then he did as he wanted and wiped mankind from the earth. He had that choice nothing forced him/her/it to do that. It's so easy to say that man was corrupt there and that he had no choice. There is always another choice being it a god or human making the descision.
or it was a cataclysmic event that was attributed to a god. Who knows?
oh and let's not get into free will verses freedom of action.
"We want to take over the world, but we don't want to do it tomorrow, it's OK if it's next week"-- Linus Torvalds
I think worries over clone factories and governments using this "revolutionary" technique to stamp out zillions of genetically engineered soldiers misses one important fact - for every single cloned embryo, some woman has to carry that thing in her womb for most of the 9 months and then bear the child. And finding zillions of women willing (and able) to perform such a task for someone other than themselves or their families seems to me highly unlikely.
Cloning sheep is much easier because the ewe doesn't get much choice as to whether she gets impregnated by a scientist in the lab; she's just an animal. But I'm thinking that it ain't gonna go so well for a scientist who attempts to force that on a woman.
Cloning is merely a novel way of creating an embryo, as opposed to the more typical (and considerably more fun) method used heretofore. But it doesn't appear to me that there are any shortage of people willing to contribute to embryo-creation in the old-fashioned way, does it? The real trick, the one that would legitimately raise these questions about what governments and labs might do with them, is if someone figured out how to go from egg to full-term healthy baby without the participation of a female to carry it.
Until that happens, I'm mostly yawning about the "Brave New World" scenarios.
-- Ryan Waldron
Swampfox
Real Hacker (tm) Wanna-be
Deals
> but the same logic says that they should also
> try to protect the pseudo-humans called fetuses
Although I somewhat argree with your general point, just how are they pseudo-humans?
---
DNA just wants to be free...
Since hurting yourself is a crime in some instances or even thought of as a mental illness, you (or all of you,rather) might be locked up.
"Dogs and cats, living together...it's mass hysteria!"
Not to be a panic monger or reactionary, but I find this comment disturbing. I do think it'd be a wonderful achievment if we could somehow grow organs for transplants. However, I think it would be very difficult to grow/clone organs without the rest of the body, since all parts are in someway dependant upon the others. So while the above comment may have been made somewhat tongue-in-cheek, I do think we may be heading toward organ harvesting of 'brainless bodies' (there's money in organs, so i'm sure someone will step away from their ethics long enough to make a few million bucks). This would be all well and good except that there are people born today that are essentially organs in a 'brainless body', and they are very much human; they are people. And herein lies the problem: Is it acceptable to clone/grow people with brains for organ harvesting? I think not, but why not? An important question. And it is not so big a leap from human bodies with brains to those without, or vice versa. So at what point does a body of organs become a person? It's too difficult to draw the line, and if it isn't draw somewhere, we are left with some very fightening prospects.
"onward!" cried the copper man, little knowing brass corrupts...
(2) Knowing that one is a clone is likely to have psychological consequences. I know that I am unique and that's important for my world-view. Imagine that you know that you are a clone of some guy, a copy of him. How does that make you feel?
I think I'm getting more and more depressed. I just realized that I'm a clone of half my father and half of my mother. I'm not complete. Just half of each.
I'm going to kill myself. Gotta go now....
Since bringing a cloned child into the world would, quite obviously, cause a damn lot of controversy and harassment for the cloned child, is it ethical for someone to do this to a child? Clone or not, it is still a child, just like everyone else, excepting the method of conception. If I know that if I bring a black man to a kkk meeting that the chances are pretty slim that he'll get out unscathed from the ensuing barrage of 'good ol boys', then I would be partially ethically responsible for his misfortune. The same goes that if I choose to bring a clone into the world, knowing fully that the clone will be singled out by an even larger group of 'good ol boys', would I be wrong for doing so?
There's no point in harassing a child because it is a clone. Just like I had no say in the way I was born, neither does the child. No one has a perfectly easy life, but a clone would have an even harder life if the news got out that the person was a clone.
oh my god ...
... Bill gates the second ?
:)
:))
can we stand another Bill Gates on the next generation ?
one with the same capacity to "overrule" the world ? (as we know it?)
maybe we should start cloning Linux activists from now on to get the world a better place !
or we might get that urine sample from Linus so we can clone 2000 of him to get the kernel work done quicker
Freaker / TuC
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
I think that growing replacement parts from a person's own tissues would be a great thing.
I also think that cloning individuals would be no different that spawning a twin of yourself.
What I dread are the failures that will occur along the road to perfecting the cloning technique. Yes, some will be detected early enough to abort, but some will not. Remember the lab in Alien Resurrection? Therefore I do not believe that we should continue to develop cloning of humans, because the price of the *inevitable* mistakes will be paid by innocent people - who never had a choice!! Isn't it bad enough that debilitating genetic disorders arise "naturally"? The whole think reeks of eugenics and Nazi contempt for individual human suffering.
Man, if you can't remember that it came out of the Holy Trilogy, you definitely need to clone some more brain cells.
"UNIX" is never having to say you're sorry.
Would you want to be senile in a young body?
That *WOULD* explain a lot about many people.... ;)
How do you do that? Today we have the technology to clone embryoes, which develop into full human beings. If you take an arm from a clone, the clone is going to be mighty upset Even if we could produce a body without a brain, the body would die because it needs the brain to function
Of all the comments I've ever posted, this is definately one of them
Yes it would be wonderful to be able to replace damaged body parts from the same genetic stock, but if the price of doing so is maiming another Human being (a human clone is still human), then it's not worth it.
Of all the comments I've ever posted, this is definately one of them
Oh, by the way: please don't delude yourself as to whether or not you have made a leap of faith or two. I will guarantee you that you have, m'boy.
I'm waiting...
DFL
Never send a human to do a machine's job.
Ha Ha! That's a good one! Leno must have really been funny the night you heard that one.
Really now. If what you say is really true, then the ranks of "good" scientists must number in the single digits. Let's be honest, friend. Scientists make absolutist claims about evolution, the big bang, the age of the universe, the non-existence of God, etc. all the time. And I know of only one scientist (Lewontin, but there may be others) who is willing to admit the highly religious nature of this behavior (and if you didn't know, Lewontin -- a Harvard biologist -- is no theist).
Get a grip, boy. Absolutist claims are characteristic of all religions -- including evolutionism.
DFL
Never send a human to do a machine's job.
I am not even remotely troubled by the fact that some, few, or many people believe in something as grotesquely wrong as theistic evolution -- with the single exception of being concerned for their souls.
Evolution and Genesis 1 cannot be harmonized. There is no getting around it. One or the other must be jettisoned, or a person must hold in suspension two beliefs that are so manifestly contradictory that I wonder if there is anything that he won't believe.
Sorry, but those are the facts.
Unless you'd like to demonstrate that Genesis 1 "can" be harmonized with evolution?
I won't hold my breath waiting.
DFL
Never send a human to do a machine's job.
Genesis says that God created us from the dust of the earth. See Genesis 2 and 3 and the book of Job. This is not evolution.
Besides this, the sequence of events in Genesis cannot be reconciled with evolution, nor can they be reconciled with the idea that a day is something besides 24 hours. Note how plants were created before the sun as a single example. Now, either the Bible is correct about this or the evolutionists are. The two cannot be reconciled.
The problem with so-called "theistic evolutionists" is that they are attempting to bring harmony to radically contradictory views. They are trying to harmonize what God says with the views of men who hate God.
But a day is a relative measure of time. It's probably not even meant to be taken literally, being more of a symbolic amount of time.
See Genesis 1, where we are told that a day amounts to "morning and evening." How is that not to be taken literally? Granted, the term "day" does (in both Hebrew and English) have the ability to refer both to 24 hours and to an indeterminate amount of time -- depending upon context. There is nothing in the context of Genesis 1, in Hebrew or English (yes, I do know Hebrew) that suggests any other interpretation than that of 24 hours.
This would not even be an issue except that some people prefer to judge the Bible by the findings of men who hate God rather than the other way around. The Bible does NOT support evolution. Period. Any attempt to harmonize the two is hopelessly compromised.
DFL
Never send a human to do a machine's job.
The scientific method cannot establish the Big Bang, because it cannot be replicated in the lab. The scientific method cannot establish that God does not exist, either -- yet that does not stop the evolutionists from confidently asserting it. Go think.
DFL
Never send a human to do a machine's job.
The Hebrew text doesn't support what you are suggesting. The English text doesn't support what you are suggesting. There is not a hint in the book of those days in Genesis 1 being anything other than 24-hour regular days.
As for circular arguments -- I would love it if more evolutionists would admit to using them. Personally, I freely admit it. I use them. Everyone does, because there's no other choice. Evolutionists have assumed things as true that they have never proven.
DFL
Never send a human to do a machine's job.
But there's a difference between saying that someone is wrong and saying that they will go to hell. I don't presume to judge the pope. I don't know him.
DFL
Never send a human to do a machine's job.
DFL
Never send a human to do a machine's job.
You know. You lie to me and to yourself if you deny it.
DFL
Never send a human to do a machine's job.
God surely tolerates error on our part -- but saying that he does that is quite different from asserting that he would induce error by a creation account that was flatly wrong (as you suggest).
This would not even be an issue except for a fundamental epistemological error. The problem here is that you presume to judge the Bible by science. This is an illegitimate endeavor. The Bible is not subject to verification (or attack) by scientists. On the contrary, the Bible stands as judge over all human endeavor including science. When the two disagree, it is *science* that is wrong -- not the Bible.
Consequently, there are a number of people running about desperately seeking to "salvage" the Bible in the face of the "onslaught" of science. So they conjure up syncretistic notions like "theistic evolution" to try and "save" the Bible. It's not the Bible that needs saving. It's scientists who need salvation.
I have neither patience nor time for misguided efforts at "harmonizing" things which are at utter variance when it means jettisoning the clear teaching of God's Word for the sake of "compatibility" with the latest "findings" of a bunch of God-hating scientists. The standard approach has been this: "Hmmm....those scientists say we evolved. Now how do I interpret the Bible to fit that?" The CORRECT approach is this: "Hmmm...those scientists say we evolved. I guess they're wrong." But this is never done. It is an error, and it's not one I plan to repeat. If scientists and the Bible disagree, then the scientists are wrong. Period. God doesn't lie, and he's never wrong.
DFL
Never send a human to do a machine's job.
I've never suggested that we woodenly treat only the words of the Bible without regard for how they are used. The Bible has poetry. It's obvious that it uses figurative language. I argue for interpreting the Bible according to the intent of the author. That means we take into account the author's use of figurative language, and it requires a good understanding of life and culture 3000 years ago.
As this applies to the present topic of creation: as I have said repeatedly, there is NOTHING in the Bible to suggest that the days of Genesis 1 are anything other than literal 24-hour consecutive days. There is NOTHING in the Bible or in the text of Genesis 1 itself to suggest that ANY other interpretation than this is legitimate. Six literal days. It's done, all of it.
Why do you think that you have the right to judge the Bible by what scientists say?
DFL
Never send a human to do a machine's job.
Really?
What is the Bible, then? A bag of neat ideas?
"To the law and to the testimony! If they do not speak according to this word, it is because there is no light in them" (Isaiah 8:20). God seems to disagree with you. So who's right -- you or God?
DFL
Never send a human to do a machine's job.
-God exists Okay so far
-It is necessary to have a soul to really live. Bzzt! Didn't even make it to your most important assumption...unless you are guilty only of poor expression. If you don't have a soul, you're not alive at all. You're dead. Literally.
-To have a soul, one needs to have been conceived naturally. Bzzt!! Baseless assumption. Adam had a soul. So did Eve. So do test tube babies (if they didn't, they'd be dead).
Sorry, but your assumptions failed, so your conclusions are baseless. Please play the game again when you have something more consistent to offer.
In the meantime, think about this: what makes you think you have the right to decide what sort of God you're going to believe in?
DFL
Never send a human to do a machine's job.
Who's right -- you who deny a standard, or God who says there is one (Isaiah 8:20)?
DFL
Never send a human to do a machine's job.
Governments may institute so-called "freedom of religion" but to conclude that God does the same is not only foolish -- it is hazardous to your health.
DFL
Never send a human to do a machine's job.
You don't have such a right. You are obligated to submit to it.
DFL
Never send a human to do a machine's job.
I should say to begin with that I'm not a specialist in the field of human genetics or biotechnology, but part of this story strikes me as a little implausible. Ordinarily I trust the BBC a great deal, so perhaps there is a qualified biochemist/biotechnologist out there who can confirm the feasibility of this for me.
What worries me is the use of a cow egg and human DNA. This seems a little like trying to use an iMac to run SGI binaries; it is my understanding there are significant differences between the internal "hardware" (organels and biochemistry) of cells from different species, and our evolutionary lineage split off from cattle many millions of years ago.
This is part of what makes the "Jurassic Park" scenario unlikely; even if we could extract and reconstruct a dinosaur's DNA, there's no guarantee it would "execute" properly on a modern reptile or bird cell.
parallax
So, in closing, get your facts straight, dumbass.
Besides, there's something to be said for the actual act of creating a child. ;)
WRT your comment on Dolly's clone's age. Frankly, that's not really true. Do you describe your age as how long you've existed on the earth? Or how much life you've lived? Or do you just tell people how long your telomeres are? Dolly's clone is younger than Dolly because she has been on this planet for a shorter amount of time. Sure, her telomeres are shorter and, as a result, her cells can't divide as many times, but that just means her overall lifespan will be (marginally) shorter.
Ack - I'm sure it won't be long before some rouge scientist clones some wealthy individual (like you know who, heheh - I mean Mr. Burns) in an underground lab and the public won't find out about it untill the bugger is over 10 years old or something.
Chuck
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
The cows are it, man. They're going to be running the place before too long. "...and the Beef shall inherit the Earth."
--JT
Ok, let me enlighten you. Force=mass*acceleration right? That has been taught in physics classes as truth. Why? Because it has been proven? No, it has not been proven. However, they can not disprove it and it is right in every case they have tried therefore they accept it as truth.
F=MA can be TESTED repeatedly and used to accurately predict the future! Can this also be said of Noah's arc or people living on Jupiter? NO! This is a critical difference of faith, F=MA is more of an expectation that the universe will continue to operate as we have observed it millions of times before. Believing in Noah's arc or people living on Jupiter requires FAITH in the accuracy of some book or somebody's imagination. If I doubt the physics book I can quickly set up a little experiment here to verify that F=MA appears correct, can you do the same for Noah's arc?
By the way, I think that F=MA may have been PROVEN slightly incorrect. (I could be wrong, I don't remember all of the ramifications of relativity). Much of Newtonian physics has been shown to be just an approximation of reality, although a very good one for people, cars, and other objects that are not traveling anywhere near the speed of light.
You should check out the writing of James Randi at http://randi.org to help sort out the difference between science and, well, not-science.
That site had nothing to do with creation or God. It had to do with people saying that they had supernatural abilities, UFOs, and such stuff as that. The topic here is that creation can be proven through science.
That site ( randi.org) is "on topic" (or as on topic as any of this) because he applies real science (as in "the scientific method", not guys in white lab coats) to psychics other various pseudo-science. Most people have no idea what science IS. Go learn.
The scientific method cannot establish the Big Bang, because it cannot be replicated in the lab. The scientific method cannot establish that God does not exist, either -- yet that does not stop the evolutionists from confidently asserting it. Go think.
I agree. Anyone who claims that the scientific method can be used to prove that God does not exist is probably very wrong. However, I do not think that I have ever seen that assertion made. My point was that believing in F=MA is very different from believing in Noah's arc.
> Seriously, imagine if that sort of thing were
> said about any religion: Islam, Hinduism,
> Buddhism &c. No civilised person says that
> sort of thing in public (in private, of course,
> we all keep our own counsel on these things),
> and yet no-one is afraid to libel Christianity.
That's because in western countries there aren't powerful muslim, hindu or buddhist lobby groups with influence over government, which pretend to know better than everybody how each person should lead their lives.
I have no love for _any_ religion, not hinduism, judaism, buddhism or islam. Yet these religions leave me alone. On the other hand, it's always christians that lobby for my kids to be forced into prayer at school, that abuse my friends who decide to have an abortion, that abuse my friends who are gay, and who are calling for tighter censorship laws. Some even wish to chastise my wife for using contraception.
If I were living in Egypt, I'm sure the pressure would come from islam. In that case, my harshest criticisms would be reserved for islam, not christianity. See? It's nothing personal - it just happens that christianity is the most powerful religion in these parts.
>Concerning cloning, my opinion as a Christian is
>that it is just one more way of bringing life
>into existence. I find it to be about as silly
>as IVF; the normal way of producing children is
>so much more fun;-) I am rather uncomfortable
>with these people who are so obsessed with having
>children that they go through these procedures;
>it's not healthy to be so consumed.
Maybe, but that's your opinion. And of course you're welcome to have any opinion you wish, and voice it too, as long as you don't interfere with the rights of others. In this case, some people who can't have children will go to IVF, and will consider this to be an acceptable alternative. Nothing wrong with that.
Finally, cloning has valuable medical benefits too. It's possible to work out through cloning how genetic diseases arise, and it could be possible to detect likely victims and treat them early. The benefits are immense. I appreciate you may be against it, but please understand that others may not share your views.
Maybe it is time that we think ahead a bit and introduce some laws that protect the rights of clones (ie. that they are human just like anyone else and *must* be treated as such).
:).
Maybe also a law about genetic privacy (ie no one can clone you without your permission; yeah, I know it won't stop the Illuminati, but...I think it would be good anyway
Granted laws don't really stop anyone who would want to do these things, but at least it would give us legal power to seek damages if they were caught.
Any thoughts on this?
This sig is false.
Delay the inevitable?
I am a christian and I don't try and delay anything. God's timing will not be changed by anything I say or do. The Bible does say that man's knowledge will increase drastictly as the end of time approaches. I therefore expect thinks like this.
Joseph
Romans 10:9-10
"Which bible? "
Not the UNIX bible or the Windows bible, but the Bible. I don't care which translation. English is always good.
"What does 'mans knowledge will increase' mean? "
That is not the exact quote and I appoligize for not having the scripture handy. I will look it up later and post a more specifc passage for you.
"Compared to what? how can this be measured? "
How can any amount of knowledge be measured? Only against what we knew in the past. A paraphrase of the meaning of the scripture would be that our knowledge is going to increase beyond what we ever thought possible. I'll try and give you the verses so you can read it yourself.
"God's timing will not be changed by anything I say or do"
"which god?"
The only God. Which name? Jahova, "I am", Lord God, God Almightly... They all were used at different times because he was different things to different people. To one person he was a healer at the time they were addressing him. To another a friend. The names reflect those relationships.
"The protestant one? catholic one?"
Most religions differ only in a few minor issues such as, "Can you sprinkle or do you need to be dunked"
The only thing that matters is if you accept Jesus as your Lord and Savior. See my signature.
The other stuff is important but not a Heven or Hell issue.
"what if you don't believe in god?"
Belief is something is not what makes it true or false.
http://www.drdino.com is some good reading for you.
or what if our jewish?
Same God, they just don't believe that Jesus has came yet. The Bible even say that they would do so before they did.
What are you talking about?
The only thing that will ever matter in this world. In 100 years, will it have mattered if we ran Linux or Windows? Will it matter if we were famous? This stuff is just along for fun.
Trying to live for the truth,
Trith
Romans 10:9-10
http://www.drdino.com
Romans 10:9-10
This is typical of the blinding nature of faith. It is assumed right IN SPITE OF evidence, not BECAUSE OF evidence. One could just as easily say "I am going to assume that there are humans living on Jupiter until it is proven wrong." If we thought like this person then we would have to accept every hair-brained idea until someone could "prove" it wrong.
-----------------------------------
Ok, let me enlighten you. Force=mass*acceleration right? That has been taught in physics classes as truth. Why? Because it has been proven? No, it has not been proven. However, they can not disprove it and it is right in every case they have tried therefore they accept it as truth. Most people don't know this but it's true. If you doubt, I can give you an e-mail to the guy who invented R2-D2. He is a professor at Tennessee Technological University and in the Engineering department. By the way, they are ranked 5th in the entire United States in Engineering.
Neat huh?
Joseph
Romans 10:9-10
Again, I will present you with facts that I don't have on have on hand here at work. I can get these for you if you need them though.
It can be shown that in order for the Crand Canyon to have been made, the colorado river would have had to flow uphill. It can also be shown with Geological layers that one whale is both thousands of years old and millions of years old. How? Well, there is a whale that is trapped in several geo layers at once. It is vertical. It's called "The Baline (sp) whale on it's tail" It was found in CA. How could this have happened? How could the crand canyon have been formed if the water had to go uphill? Perhaps it was a world wide flood. A flood of that magnitude would be able to wipe out sedimentary rock easily. With all this mud, a whale could have been positioned vertical and dryed accourdingly.
I also love this about science
"How do you know the bone is 100 years old?"
"Because we found it in layer x"
"How do you know layer x is 100 years old?"
"Because we found this 100-year-old bone in it"
Is it me or is this circular reasoning?
There is a dinosaur fossil that has a human footprint in it too.
It takes more faith to believe evolution than it does to believe creation.
Romans 10:9-10
That site had nothing to do with creation or God. It had to do with people saying that they had supernatural abilities, UFOs, and such stuff as that. The topic here is that creation can be proven through science.
Romans 10:9-10
Since science admits when they are wrong. I guess I won't be hearing about Carbon dating anymore. I'm also glad to know that the whole layer dating issue is gone for good. Not to mention that a 2-year-old Biology book at college is still trying to show the horse/graffe argument. Remember, if you keep cross breeding tomatos long enough, you'll eventually get a dog.
Romans 10:9-10
You mean one should wait until they have been born? Some Xtians don't seem to have too much agaist killing them for obscure reasons then... :-)
Anything that pisses off the RR is a good thing.
The brain is just meat right? just like the rest of our bodies.. I think you guys are talking about the soul.. thats the human part. Can we clone that?
"For example, you have two families. Each family has one boy and one girl. Each boy marries the other girl. They have children. They children can't possibly reproduce due to the problem of genetic inbreeding. Think of this on a larger scale. If we start filling up the planet with duplicates, think of how close we become to having just two families left.
:-)
This is the frightening part, we will ultimately breed ourselves out of life."
From someone who earns his Biology degree next semester:
1) Duplicates would definately affect allele frequency (if not all people cloned themselves at the same rate), but this would not be considered "inbreeding", unless there was less stigma for a male clone and a female clone from the same family marrying then a brother and sister marrying...it wouldn't lead to a higher proportion of inbreeding.
2) When two different blood lines combine, it can be considered a "new" line of blood.
3) There are constant mutations, genetic drift, crossing-over, and other genetic forces that will create "new" blood lines and create diversity.
4) Due to geographic isolation, it is very unlikely that all blood-lines would converge faster then the forces that create new diversity.
Find something else to worry about.
As far as I can tell, this is, from an ethical standpoint, no different than in-vitro fertilization ("test-tube babies").
Cloned or not, the end result, had they successfully continued the experiment, would have been nothing more than a baby. Sure, the baby would have been a "delayed identical twin" to the donor of the adult cell, but still just a baby.
Personally, I think human cloning is a non-issue. Since all it does is produce a baby, aside from a few overly wealthy wierdoes, I think most of us would prefer the old-fashioned way to make babies. It's a lot cheaper, a lot more reliable, and MUCH more fun....
Hacker Public Radio is our Friend
This specific technology? I doubt it. In order
for a secret corporate conspiracy to use this, they'll need:
1)Some way of carrying the baby to term
2)An investment of 15+ years to raise and educate the baby.
3)Money to pay for feeding, clothing, educating, medically supporting, etc. the baby....
And that's on TOP of the cost of trying to clone an adult, which gives them no benefit over an ordinary baby, which has the same requirements.
If you think ConspiracyCorp, Inc. can pop some cells in a vat and quickly pump out an army of trained atomic robot zombie clones, you've been watching too much star trek or something...
Hacker Public Radio is our Friend
People have been making new people for quite some time now. The advent of a new way to create people should not surprise us. We humans are rather clever.
BUT! If we do create new people via cloning, I know it would be WRONG to not grant them the same level of rights as a normally created human. Would you create another person to harvest his organs? Would it matter if that person was cloned or born via natural pregnancy? It should not matter. I don't fear cloning. I fear the extreme abuse and reaction to it.
I am also not too keen on cloning human embryo's, then destroying them. I feel uneasy about it, while I do understand the reasons behind it.
Be cool.
Bad Mojo
"If you can't win by reason, go for volume." -- Calvin
Right, yes, certainly a clone is a human just as much as any other human, in discussion between two sensible individuals (of a modern Western background, with moderate religious views ... other times and cultures may differ). The problem is, however, that laws only erratically reflect the ethical agreements of humanitarian philosophers, and even when they do, not everyone obeys the laws. There are several scenarious that are likely to actually happen at least once in the future.
An eventual problem will be slave-clones, born and raised to work in factories. This is going to be science fiction only for a long time to come - it requires that cloning be relatively cheap and reliable, and that it can be done without a human host mother. The last I heard, the latter hadn't been accomplished. Advantages to this technique - in some countries with views other than ours, such clones -may not- be legally human, and this will be legal. Even if it is not legal - there are no mothers, no birth records, no evidence at all. If the international ethics groups come looking, the slavers can just fire the whole setup, and claim accidental disaster. Look for the problem in 50-100 years.
Then there's the immortality quest - a forward-thinking individual who makes his first million by 25 or inherits his money could freeze a sample of his cells, start a clone growing when he's sixty, and at his age 80, depending on if the Dolly problem is solved, have either 45 or 25 have fully genetically compatible parts. This requires only the technology we have, but will be rendered pointless if we learn to clone body parts without growing a whole person. Good argument for continuing research. Look for this problem in as little as 20-30 years, or the moment the Dolly problem of aged organs has been solved.
A more subtle, creeping problem - genetic purism. Take a cell sample of an 'ideal person' (probably the cloner him/her self), tweak any genetic deficiencies (anemia, nearsightedness, colorblindness, allergies, crooked teeth, whatever) and raise a flock of children with the same ideals who in turn raise another generation... This is not a problem when it's one looney in a backwater. Look for it as a problem if cloning-as-reproduction becomes acceptable, but remains expensive, because then racial wealth divisions come into play. Look for this problem in... oh... a few centuries. No society I know of would tolerate this right now, so time is needed for culture shift. May be self-solving when the lack of genetic diversity of the 'problem nation' does them in.
Perfect Soldiers and Perfect Spies - in combination with genetic engineering, raised by espionage agencies to replace field agents. This could begin immediately, but there's little benefit. Once the Dolly problem has been solved, there will be clones of the very best soldiers and spies. If artificial aging can be induced, there may be perfect dopplegangers, but as another poster pointed out, cloning isn't magic - the clone grows at human rates. Solving the Dolly problem may (or may not) reveal a way to induce artificial aging selectively so you can age features but leave organs intact - or age everything - depending on the accuracy needed. Replacements will still probably need -at least- ten years to be grown, maybe a full 18-20, so they will be rare. Perfect soldiers and spies have the all the advantages of the slaves in the first scenario - look for them almost immediately.
None of which means that we should not research cloning technology, of course. Human beings will be vicious animals towards each other with or without technology, and -I'd- sure like to be able to live for two or three hundred years, which cloning research will directly and indirectly enable, with replacement organs and a better understanding of aging triggers. I just want my replacement organs grown -without- my twin.
--Parity
'Card carrying' member of the EFF.
Cloning in my opinion is NOT a good thing, too many downsides. First of all, a lot of people wouldn't like the idea of being an artificial clone. Second, imagine, Bill Gates, cloned, and cloned again, living F-O-R-E-V-E-R! I constantly have nightmares about that, he's rich enough to have his own cloning labratory and already have clones. It may sound like science fiction, but what if he already died 3 times and no one knows?!?! Think about it.
Your Momma's so fat she makes emacs look like nano!
{Begin sarcasm}
Ruthlessness has delivered such fantastically
superior monoculture to our computing environment
that I'm sure we'd all love to apply the same
model to our biological infrastructure. Look at
what a horrific and extinction-destined mess that
altruistic open-source movement had as its
computing environment!
{End sarcasm}
The overman lives, then dies.
The community thrives because of an infrastructure
of compassion and good will. Evolution occurs
within such a population. As an individual, I
hope that I contribute to that biological, mental,
*and* spiritual evolution, but it is a terrible
mistake to usurp judgement of an individual's
capacity to contribute. E.g., you might have
discarded the design for one Stephen Hawking.
There are other models for the survival of a
species, but they aren't to my taste. The
cockroach, for instance.
I don't think that any of us here object to fighting for the basic rights of clones -- a right NOT to be a guinea pig and to be respected as a life form (most especially if it's a conscious life form, which is what a human clone would be).
The problem is that religious fundamentalists have consistently tried to stop science from "knowing" what they think "Man was not meant to know", which is a pretty ridiculous phrase. Knowing how to make an atom bomb and using it are two different things, and while morality can tell us that using it to kill people is wrong (even in WWII, though it undoubtedly saved more lives), it cannot tell us "not to know" it.
"... I declare our city to be a free and independent state to be named Tri-Insula!" --Fernando Wood, Mayor of NYC 1861
Perhaps I'll go down and get some Ben & Jerry's (TM) now, or perhaps not. Perhaps I'll go to the bathroom. Perhaps I'll spend another hour on Everything or watch a Seinfeld rerun. Perhaps...
you get the idea. Perhaps the embryo would be the next Hitler? And perhaps not.
"... I declare our city to be a free and independent state to be named Tri-Insula!" --Fernando Wood, Mayor of NYC 1861
...I like most anything that pisses people off. ;) Don't get me wrong, I'm not advocating the breeding of human clone-slaves or the torture or anything living, because if we didn't have any ethics whatsoever we'd all be dead. But upsetting those religious kooks who think that the materials of life are 'special' and can't be put together by humans is just plain fun!
"... I declare our city to be a free and independent state to be named Tri-Insula!" --Fernando Wood, Mayor of NYC 1861
There was a Sliders episode which, like most of the recent Sliders episodes, was cheezy, but also dealt with some of the heart of this issue. I imagine that it would be much, much more difficult to clone just a leg, than to clone a whole person. The problem is, what do you do with the rest of the body. It is a clone of you, and thus, by any sane reasoning, has all the rights and protections you should have. Sure, you can never educate them, other than to impregnate in their mind that they exist to provide you with replacement body parts. Self sacrifice to save someone else's life always has been a noble purpose, but conditioning thousands, if not millions of people that self-sacrifice is their only purpose in life is definitely cruel. Cloning a genius after they die could prove to be a great boon for technology, but it would also, no doubt, make the clone's life hell. They would spend their whole life trying to live up to what their previous self did. It would be far better, I think, to track traits of people, and encourage geniuses to breed together. You also might argue that one should encourage geniuses to breed with morons. Again, either way has serious moral difficulties. One way favors the production of an elite class, which would certainly bring discrimination and unrest. The other way might raise the intelligence of many people, but also might slow, or even reverse, evolutionary progress if practiced for a long time. It would be a good experiment into how much of intelligence and such things is genetic, and how much is innate, although I doubt that any human would ever be capable of treating it in a sufficiently objective way so as to get accurate results out of it.
What's the bottom line? Any kind of messing with the way evolution naturally procedes can cause serious practical and moral problems. Not to say that the pursuit of this kind of knowledge should be avoided, but its use should be thought out carefully. Research laboratories should not be shot up like abortion clinics occaisonally have, but they also shouldn't go crazy with putting this kind of technology into every aspect of our lives.
-Cheetah
Sure, thats all true now, but whats to stop the government from narrowly defining 'human' or 'person'?
Ala, "A person is one born from the coupling of a man and a woman". Clones aren't born that way, therefor they aren't human, therefore the rights that protect people from the treatment you spoke of don't apply.
Don't think they wont, btw, look at the narrow definition of marriage that is used to block same sex couples from getting right to adopt, pensions, health benifits, etc.
And the robot says: "In the begining was man. Man created all things. Man, with his infinite skill, created machines
Linus, Larry Wall, Alan Cox.
Microsoft aggravates my tourettes syndrome.
Oh geez...this is starting to sound more and more like the movie Gattaca, where they have 'testing' centers where people take DNA samples to be sequenced...
Let's have a poll for the clone worthiest person.
As with the abortion issue, you end up needing to create categories but not being able to draw firm lines. Or you do draw firm lines, and have to face their arbitrary nature when someone goes to court.
I see two basic categories in the clone issue.
First is growth from a single cell to some early fetus state. In this stage one could _arguably_ say that the being does not have consciousness or a soul or whatever, and that we can ethically harvest stem cells or other products for use in people with serious diseases. _Arguably_, I said. Some people would go further and say we could use the cells for any purpose (cosmetic surgery, or vanity brain pumping through neural injections), while some would say using any products to save human lives or quality of life already goes too far.
The second stage starts roughly when a fetus achieves some form of consciousness or "humanness", after which it should be illegal to kill, abandon, or exploit the fetus (person). This would be an extremely hard definition to draw. It differs from the "viability" test in the abortion issue if we are talking about clones in a general sense without host mothers (think Brave New World or The Matrix), as the fetus is never dependent on another human's body.
Despite the difficulty in drawing such a line, to me it is crystal clear that a human child or adult born from cloning technology, even from a Brave New World vat, is a human. Just as a twin is a human, as is his/her twin. A "cloned person" (which is a slightly nicer term for someone than a "clone"; would you want to be called a "f*ck"?) is a person, and you cannot harvest a person's kidneys without their permission. Unless you are some Dr. Mendele freak living in Brazil, in which case you are already a serious criminal trying to live outside of the law. For the Mayo Clinic, there should never be any question that a cloned person is a person with rights.
Thus to me the most interesting question is at what point I would say "leave that zygote/fetus alone, it's a person you're now committed to 'birthing'."
If we're being theoretical, then it's not unreasonable to assume the brain would be on a Zip or Jaz drive, then it's just an upgrade.
Why on earth did you pick China, of all countries, as an example? China already has lots of people; I doubt they are under any pressure to make more.
Hmm... except that gives me an idea. Certainly some aspects of human psychology as genetic. Normally, if I wanted to start a cult consisting of people, I would have to sift through a lot of people to find the sheep-like ones that would obey me without much fuss. But if I could find a particularly good genotype for this sort of thing, I could using cloning to make a bunch of them. (BTW, I would probably pick a female, so that I could use them to incubate the next generation.)
The Chinese seems to be pretty competent at using violence to keep its people in line. But if they could replace their citizens with clones based on an order-obeying genotype -- imagine a China that didn't have to point guns at its own people! They could divert resources from urban control to ... the front lines!
How's that for a paranoid wacko idea about cloning? ;-) The problem is that roughly the same thing is achievable with selective breeding; cloning isn't really needed. In fact, a lot of my exploitive ideas for cloning are in fact do-able with good old-fashioned Nazi-style eugenics. Oh well.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Honestly, it's not really a big deal. All a clone is is an identical twin who happens to be a generation younger. That's basically it. Big Deal
:-)
But Dolly the sheeps clone is just as "old" as Dolly, so it's not really a kid that's younger, just a kid that's less mature(?) (If you dont know what i'm talking about look around the article was announce here on slashdot a few weeks ago)
The whole thing is kind of freaky. Personally I think clones should exist within the scope of the person being cloned, i.e. if I had a clone it would also have my name, my social security number, my credit card number, etc.. That way people wont clone foolishly as they wont want to fight themselves for their personal resources/property.
-Rich
Geez! This is terrific. Geez! This is terrible. Therer are two main arguments regarding this matter. Yes, it would be wonderful to clone, say, a leg for one that was lost in an accident. It would be beautiful to give somebody the hand that was maimed at birth. How horrid to have to worry that you were the only you in the world. Awful to consider the ethics of this.
So, good? Bad? Who knows. But, this is for sure "Stuff that Matters."
Heart, Hands, Honour
...when you could have your own Mini-Me?
Of course this could end up being very good for Christians. What if they allow a clone to grow, and it has a completely different personality... interesting, Genes have 0 to do with the "Id", or Soul? Very interesting.
I think there are some ethical issues, but I'm not as much against it as most Christians, since it may end up helping prove a major seperation between Soul and Body.
And yes, abortion of clones is a Bad Thing(tm), as are any others.
-- Keith Moore
This sig is the express property of someone.
While I agree with clones being real persons, and about "irresponsible media" ...
This rest is sheer FUD, of a quality that would be shouted down on /. if Microsoft were the target.
I have never heard of any religious group, sensationalist or otherwise, "miseducating the public" that cloned humans would be souless. In fact, much the opposite, and Christians are taking a lot of heat on this topic here on /. because the vast majority of Christians understand that clones are persons, and plan to act on that understanding, whether the "enlightented"[sic] science-mongers like it or not.
While (sadly) the scenario you outline is not impossible, please note that at this time it is merely theoretical. At this point, if the BBC story is true, clones have been killed, and it wasn't by torch-carrying peasants. I am willing to bet that the lab scientists and clinicians will have a higher body count by several orders of magnitude for the forseeable future.
Maybe I'm getting old, but it seems that the rate of technology advances are accelerating faster than ever. In the last year or so we've seen clones, ion drives, artifically-sort-of-intelligent spacecraft, phasers and theoretical advances in, oh, everything. All of which is, of course, a Good Thing.
As far as ethical considerations of cloning are concerned, reports of the dilemma have, I think been greatly exaggerated. If you clone someone, then
1. The result is a child. This child is a normal child in more or less every way, and should be treated as such.
2. A physical clone does not a mental clone make. the resultant offspring will be as unique an individual as anyone else.
3. Remember the brouhaha about IVF when it was first introduced (death of society, brave new world, etc, etc)? Same thing.
the story not too long ago. About the sheep (goat?) or whatever that was cloned, and in just half over a few years, it had already showed signs of equal age to the original subject. Those of you siting examples of using spare body parts need to remember that we are only what we put into ourselves. I personally wouldn't want to have someone else's parts inside me. I think that the technology by itself is a great thing to have, but instead of cloning, why not go into the direction of regeneration, rejuvination so that we would be healing ourselves.
Secondly, someone had mentioned that they didn't see any real threats to having human clones walking around this great planet. The problem is simple. Inbreeding doesn't work, ask any redneck. It's simple really. The world has a finite number of people, multiplying. And eventually everyone will have reproduced with everyone else. We are constantly shortening the distance between clean/new lines of blood.
For example, you have two families. Each family has one boy and one girl. Each boy marries the other girl. They have children. They children can't possibly reproduce due to the problem of genetic inbreeding. Think of this on a larger scale. If we start filling up the planet with duplicates, think of how close we become to having just two families left.
This is the frightening part, we will ultimately breed ourselves out of life.
--nuff said
think before you write, it'll save me moderator points.
It's a Judge Dredd thing.
What defines "getting ahead"? Your goals are not necessarily mine. Morality is not necessarily irrational, certain people's moral systems may be, but other's may not be.
Published in 1978, this book was my first exposure to the topic. I recall that at the time, there was some discussion about whether this was fiction or not. Funny that in > 10 years, none of the social/ethical issues have been resolved. Like we say at work: "Do it before someone tells you NO".
-WMc
Every great advance in natural knowledge has involved the absolute rejection of authority. - Thomas Huxley (1825-1895)
My view of abortion is the same with drugs, making something illegal doesn't stop it from happening.
I'd rather have a trained and qualified doctor performing the abortion, than some lab assistant with a bottle of dubious chemicals or some scared teenage girl trying to abort herself with a heated knitting needle.
Also, abortion isn't a modern creation. In the old days, the village wise woman, who generally served as the midwife, was quite able to provide the villagers with the right potion to sort out there little problem.
Related to cloning, the thing I don't understand is, ignoring the can't-have-children idea, the classical use of cloning is to create another you.
Who on earth is vain enough to assume that they are physically perfect, there's always something you would like to change, I'd love to have perfect eye sight.
What would be preferable, and what cloning can't provide, is to allow you consiousness to be preserved. You then have the ability to live different lives in different bodies. You grew up once male, next have a crack at being female.
Mind you, ethically speaking this would open one hell of a can of beans.........
>(3) I think that the thing that most frightens ... have breast ... ".
>people about cloning is not cloning per se, but
>rather the ease of genetic manipulation that
>cloning provides. What is a big ethical problem
>s how to treat designing humans. "Hmm... I
>would like my child to have blond hair and blue
>eyes, be tall and not chunky,
>size YYY / dick size XXX
[snip]
>Or, alternatively, imagine clone banks where you
>can go to pick the genes of your child when you
>can check out how these genes turned out in real
>people.
Consider social forces a bit and these things don't seem quite so scary.
Here's how I look at it:
For society to exist and prosper, there need to be people who do the less desireable jobs, of which there are many. The "designer genes issue" posits that if everyone is shapely and beautiful and has a 160 IQ, there will be nobody to do those jobs, and society will collapse.
The thing is, most people would never, ever take the designer genes route. There was a Time phone poll (admittedly not the most accurate barometer) which said something like less than 10% of the population would want their genetic code changed. Almost nobody would *want* this process, so having a few people use it isn't going to hurt anything.
Of course, a small problem might arise due to social stratification between "dids" and "did nots," but anyone who tries to tell you that stratification isn't already one of society's largest problems (so adding a little bit more isn't really going to change anything) is full of it.
Those who are polled, cold, like the Time poll you mention do not understand how genetic engineering works. If 20 years ago they did the same poll about breast implants, you'd likely get a similar result. It's not lack of desire, it's fear of the process out-weighing the desire. Once it is a proven, low-fault process, everyone will be genetically enhancing themselves/offspring etc...
Blar.
Like many others, I am gleefully awaiting the response of the religious right, but even more so, I'm dying to see what the outer frontiers will be. Practical applications are also beside the point for me...just keep pushing and let's see what we can create! This is exciting new territory!
If virtue is its own reward, jsut imagine what vice offers!
Mama had a chicken, Mama had a cow, Dad was proud,
.mil and .gov
He didn't care how....
Sorry, had to say it...
Rko
------------
Sgi, we put the . in
I'm pretty fly for a white guy
I do wonder how the Religous Right will react to this. I mean on one hand cloning is against God's way (or so I've heard said). And abortion is evil also. But what about aborting a clone (which they kinda did)? Is that bad? Oh well I guess they won't need any special effects for 'Multiplicity' anymore.
-cpd
Don't worry, I'm fine. Your concern is just the result of your incapability to fully comprehend the situation. Your judgement appears to be blurred by (outdated) relegious concerns and moralism.
Really what objection could one have to slave clones. Of course they should be thoroughly dehumanised: no hard feelings about their fate and a positive attitude towards their job, like horses just love to pull cars and dogs just love to fetch our newspaper.
Jilles
Who said anything about using full grown human beings for such a task. What a waste of energy to let 'em develop a personality and an emotional life just to take it away in order to obtain some spare parts. I say just grow the parts and all that is needed to support them. Pretty much as is done today on a much smaller scale with skin and other types of cells.
What Mengele did was quite a different thing, he took living human beings and experimented on them, quite a cruel thing to do.
Jilles
educated, rational people will react in educated, rational ways, regardless of their religion.
Unfortunately the world is much more complicated than you seem to believe. "Being rational" means very different things to different people. Besides an off-the-cuff definition of rationality would probably look something like "A rational person is one whose system of beliefs is logically coherent and whose behavior is consistent with his beliefs". Do you see the problem here?
Try thinking not in terms of US college-educated suburban upper-middle-class, but in terms of, say, Saudi Arabian or Vietnamese college grads.
Basically, people react based on their value system which has nothing to do with rationality and little to do with education.
Kaa
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
Can someone explain what is so "scary" about this? I'm not really that frightened -- the "huge ethical questions" raised seem to have simple answers. (Are clones human? Well, yes. Do they have full human rights? Well, yes. Huh. That seems to end the discussion.)
... have breast size YYY / dick size XXX ... ". In the extreme case I can imagine designing a child, tracking its development as an embryo to see if the manipulation turned out to be OK, and if not, clone the embryo, terminate the unsuccesful one, and go to work on v2.0.
:)
Nothing particularly scary, after all single-egg twins (~1.5% of births IIRC) are clones. Still, there are some things you might want to consider:
(1) If you believe, as a lot of Christians do, that putting the soul into a body (embryo) is God's prerogative, then trying to clone people is a sin of hubris (arrogance).
(2) Knowing that one is a clone is likely to have psychological consequences. I know that I am unique and that's important for my world-view. Imagine that you know that you are a clone of some guy, a copy of him. How does that make you feel?
(3) I think that the thing that most frightens people about cloning is not cloning per se, but rather the ease of genetic manipulation that cloning provides. What is a big ethical problem is how to treat designing humans. "Hmm... I would like my child to have blond hair and blue eyes, be tall and not chunky,
Or, alternatively, imagine clone banks where you can go to pick the genes of your child when you can check out how these genes turned out in real people. "See, the type CX774976 has a very good body, but 56% of these develop mild depression around the age of 30... if you check out type DN8743992, it has no depression tendencies, but it's grade point average in high school tends to be noticeably lower, and of course they have to watch their diet or they'll become fat by middle age...".
And think of how great the responsibility of parents will be...
(4) There are undesirable long-term genetic and demographic consequences to widespread cloning. Working them out is left as the exercise for the reader.
There is more, just think through the consequences and don't stop halfway
Kaa
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
Hm, some people tended to understand my comments as going against cloning. That was not my intent. I think that cloning is morally neutral (as organ transplants per se are morally neutral) and inevitable. All the wailing and gnashing of teeth that's coming from the morons and the religious right is not going to change the fact that the cloning and genetic manipulation of humans is coming.
I think that at first it'll be treated similarly to the way various fertility techniques are viewed now: not necessary for "normal" people (heavy, heavy quotes around 'normal'), expensive, not the proper topic of a party conversation
Kaa
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
Damn tab key. Please ignore the previous post. A note to Rob: perhaps it's a good idea to reconfigure the posting screen so that tabbing out of the comment text box gets you to the *Preview* button instead of *Submit* button?
:). The point of my argument was that cloning is not a cut-and-dried moral issue (as in the post that I was replying to: clones are full humans, problem solved). Yeah, clones *are* full humans, but there are other problems, too... I don't think that we (most people, that is) right now have the concepts and the framework to think deeply and clearly about cloning/genetic manipulation. This is a new area that has been little explored and sweeping generalizations of both kinds (It's evil! No, it's science, so it's good!) do little to help.
Hm, some people tended to understand my comments as going against cloning. That was not my intent. I think that cloning is morally neutral (as organ transplants per se are morally neutral) and inevitable. All the wailing and gnashing of teeth that's coming from the morons and the religious right is not going to change the fact that the cloning and genetic manipulation of humans is coming.
I think that at first it'll be treated similarly to the way various fertility techniques are viewed now: not necessary for "normal" people (heavy, heavy quotes around 'normal'), expensive, not the proper topic of a party conversation, but very useful if you really need them. Later the cloning/genetic manipulation should become more accepted and get to the status of, say, plastic surgery.
There is nothing intrinsically evil about cloning and even nothing clearly evil about the scenarios I described. What's evil about clone banks where you could pick the genes for your child? Still, the idea seems to make most people uncomfortable
Kaa
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
There are non-religious objectors to cloning as well. Maybe we should just remove all ethical questions from the mix and say "anything goes". After all, ethics just hinder science.
Speaking of women - if we men can clone ourselves, we don't need women any more. All we need is an ample supply of cows.
What with cows being used in cloning technology, and cows being used to build that nanotech railway (see previous Slashdot story), this week seems to be a really great week for cows. They seem to be sooo versatile. And they're edible. Cows rock. Is there anything you can't do with cows? Don't answer that.
I don't think your boss would have any reason to suspect anything. Do you like working that much ?
Message on our company Intranet:
"You have a sticker in your private area"
beauty is only a light switch away
Agreed. I am having trouble understanding what all the excitement is about considering clones are not duplicates. A clone would be an individual who just happens to be genetically identical.
Frankly I don't see much advantage. Genetic diversity is generally considered good for a species.
Like Julia Roberts, Sharon Stone,... and some other that aren't known.
Bu this is doomed to stay in my dream. they wouldn't be slave and would have the same right that other people.
Given that they must have these rights (they are human isn't it) we can't produce them to provide implants so would it be worth to do it???
Of course you will always find a nuts to make an army of clones but this would be easy to fight it (just find an allergy or a disease these clones are subject to and they will be diminished).
BTW, in TPM isn't the war called the Clone War???
"The obvious mathematical breakthrough would be development of an easy way to factor large prime numbers." Bill Gates,
6)create a secret clone and make robbery "No Mister the policeman I was with 200 persons all this evening"
7)Create an army of Schwarzeneger/Stallone/...
Like all technology we can imagine the best and the worse with it.
BTW i suppose you wanted to say "send the clone at work and go to the Bahamas" because what you said is worse than the reality. Why would I pay a travel to the Bahamas to my clone if I must work for it??? Are you dumb
"The obvious mathematical breakthrough would be development of an easy way to factor large prime numbers." Bill Gates,
I have no problem slandering Islam, Or Scientology... Islam seems almost worse then Xstianity, and Scientology... well I just find that weird
---------------
Chad Okere
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
There is a single difference that makes me worry: it is completely controlled by human beings.
Just like I'm not comfortable with Microsoft controlling the whole computing community, just like I'm not comfortable with US (or any other nation) controlling all the world. I'm not comfortable with human beings controlling the whole process of reproduction.
In evolution, each species struggle to maximize the chance that the species surrive. Therefore, natural cloning is always small-scale, and do not affect the chance that human surrive in face of environmental changes.
Human decisions are, on the other hand, not always trying to optimize the chance of surrival. Our other desires, like economical and emotional, are good reasons for us to worry.
While I worry, but not reject. I think this technology can be made into good use if people use it wisely (enough).
How the blydi hell do you expect to do that?
Bear in mind that memories are stored in the pattern of nerve cells in the brain, so you still need the same brain. Brain cells get old just the same as any other cell. Would you want to be senile in a young body?
Don`t be silly. A clone is a person just like anyone else. They start off as children, and as they grow up they might well say `No, I don`t want to join your army; no, I don`t want to be your slave`. Yes, if you bring them up right you might be able to turn them into demoralised or deluded slaves, but it would be no less difficult than for any other person.
If I clone myself, do I/we have two votes or one votes in elections?
Two, of course. You clone isn`t you. They merely happen to share the same set of genes. With a different upbringing (several years later, for a start) they may well turn out quite different from you.
If I clone myself, and then kill myself: Is this murder? Do I still live?
If you clone yourself, and then kill yourself, this is suicide. Your clone still lives. If you clone yourself, and then kill your clone, this is murder, and you still live.
Your clone is not you. Nor is it a slave, or someone without personality. Why do people find it so hard to understand this?
By the time your food gets to the mitochondria, it`s been converted into sugars and amino acids anyway, which more or less anything can deal with. Besides, most of the genes in the mitochondria are actually made in the nucleus, and are transported in via pores in the mitochondrial membrane. Those that are made in the mitochondria are pretty similar in all animals, and certainly in all mammals, since they do the same job everywhere.
If 100 people with identical information on the inside get exactly the same information on the outside, well, there's got to be a name for that.
Esteem isn't a zero sum game
Been there, done that.
Full brain transplants are not only do-able now,
but have been done in monkeys. The problem
right now is re-connecting the spinal cord
(the transplantees wind up quadraplegic)
-- -- The Dragon De Monsyne
Honestly, it's not really a big deal.
:>
All a clone is is an identical twin who happens to be a generation younger. That's basically it. Big Deal.
Even if the technique becomes accessable to the point where any hospital can do it, it probably won't be used much. It'll have less impact than In-vitro fertalization.
Mostly, cloning will be used for exactly what it started with. Cloning sheep. (and prize bulls, etc) that's where the money is.
And for the one or two rich, self centered bastards out there who will have themselves cloned, really, I couldn't _think_ of a better punishment than for them to have a child who is exactly like _them_
-- -- The Dragon De Monsyne
BTW i suppose you wanted to say "send the clone at work and go to the Bahamas" because what you said is worse than the reality. Why would I pay a travel to the Bahamas to my clone if I must work for it??? Are you dumb ;)
that's why it was funny. If I make a clone for some spare parts, it would only be fair to keep it happy.
+&x
..what sci-fi did the "Clone Wars" come from. I can almost remember, maybe I need to clone some more brain cells...
+&x
And Sodom and Gamora, infidels, anyone not around to here the 'wonderful word of god', and even men who have had their penises crushed by a rock. No lie. Look around in Deuteronomy, I think it's in verse 26 somewhere. Bastards can't 'enter the house of the lord' for 5 generations, even though the great great great grandchildren had nothing to do with the fact that a man left his wife so many years ago. Judaism is a tyrant religion.
The Anti-Defamation League will be by to see you shortly...
Seriously, imagine if that sort of thing were said about any religion: Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism &c. No civilised person says that sort of thing in public (in private, of course, we all keep our own counsel on these things), and yet no-one is afraid to libel Christianity.
For the record, the 'why does a loving God allow bad things' argument has been settled for rather more than a thousand years now. It has to do with free will; you cannot allow free action without allowing evil action with it. Then you get to the question of why free will; the answer is that automata don't provide the same joy that individuals do. To be slightly on-topic, imagine the difference between a computer, which does always as it is told, and a child, who disobeys but is an intelligent individual. Which would you rather have? I'd rather have the kid. YMMV, of course.
Concerning cloning, my opinion as a Christian is that it is just one more way of bringing life into existence. I find it to be about as silly as IVF; the normal way of producing children is so much more fun;-) I am rather uncomfortable with these people who are so obsessed with having children that they go through these procedures; it's not healthy to be so consumed. Also, I wonder what the actual purpose of cloning is supposed to be. Sex works most of the time, and IVF the rest AFAIK. What's cloning for? So that I may feed my pride and produce copies of myself? I don't see that it has a purpose.
Regarding the destruction of the embryo they created, I hold to my standard position: life begins somewhere between conception and the first cell division. Therefore they killed the poor thing (just like they do with unwanted emryos in IVF); I am very upset regarding that. Think about it: right there they had a creature fully capable of growing up, of going through the perils of childhood, of experiencing his first love, his first rejection, of going to school, of installing Linux :-), of getting married and having children. And they destroyed him, squashed him like an insect (or poisoned him, or starved him, or whatever they did). He never even got to see light, or achieve consciousness (indeed, never even got the chance to grow a brain).
If anything, how can a loving parent allow that sort of thing to happen?
Clones (or modified clones with a "dumbed down" nervous system) are every bit as human as you or I. If some government decides they will start producing clones for labor, defense, etc., they'll in effect be doing not much different than what happened in the US and other countries when slavery was legal and rampant. Basically, you'd have a clone "race" discriminated against and racism not unlike that encountered during the slavery era, except that now you'd be considering these clones as subhuman.
It's fairly unlikely such a thing will happen now, considering that the practice of slavery has been abolished from the majority of countries in the world, and I'm fairly certain that if some government decided to discriminate against the clones, they'd fine themselves in a lot of trouble - be it external pressure or internal rebellion - either from naturally born people or the clones thereof. So I don't find much reason to be worried about such misuse.
Bzzzt, wrong.
If that were the case, Slashdot (and all the geeks who frequent it) would be a part of Microsoft by now. They know how to make money, big-time.
Or is Slashdot not part of the modern world?
--The basis of all love is respect
- cloning of a human body, and
- religious aspects of the mere existance of the clone
While maybe the replica of the body is mostly identical to the original, what about personality (one may say soul). Since birth (end of cloning) every human goes through his/her life and experiences quite different set of events. All those, though maybe not determining, but substantial factors that regulate and control who and what it is. So, can we think that clones are different than those who have been born though "standard" procedure?One gives his/her human cell and after a while there is a "clone". But clone of what? To what extent they are similar, so we call another being a clone? Thay have same DNA, and essentially identical cell level structure, but are they mere copies of each other? Since the very first second their lives are different, they were grown differently, they were born at different times, in different places, experienced different circumstances, met different people. So after we'd "cloned" a body, or raither produced new one that is very close resemblance of the original (more precisely - we just initiated that process, in somewhat unusual way), the nature (God, if you wish) took care of the rest. At the end we have just another human being. Yes, conception was different, but still - nature produced just another human being.
What if we consider that astrology has some merits. Then probably a "clone" would be more distant from the original than a regular identical twin would be - different times, different places, different sky over the clone's head. So, why not we just look at it as just another human being, that has remarcable physical similarity to one of us?
I'm stoked! We're -so- close! The technology is almost there!
What I -really- want to see is the whole bioethical Pandora's Box opened up. I crave the sort of world-wide debate and advancement of opinion you never see these days, Internet nonewithstanding. Religions will topple, new philosophies will emerge, and all modernized cultures will have to adapt their concepts of humanity and life.
We live in such interesting times.
What so many people seem to (conveniently) forget or ignore is that genes evolved for a ruthless and deadly purpose: to outlive all other genes. The most kick-ass gene, the toughest, hardiest, most ruthless son-of-a-gun is the one that lives on. The weak, the defective, the inflexible, perish.
So it's quite logical that to properly use genes(as opposed to being used -by- them) requires a healthy dose of mental, spiritual, and social ruthlessness.
Now, there's a lot of buzz about clones being "people"... they don't have to be. You can easily induce an embryo into not developing a cerebral cortex. You don't have to have "people" as bags of spare parts, because a human body without brain activity is essentially a slab of meat. If we eat and wear animals bred for the purpose, what's wrong with getting a liver or a kidney off of a clone? And if you someone comes crying about the 'sanctity' of human life, just remind them how much easier it is to repair Grampa Olie's '52 Chevy than it is to repair Grampa Olie.
And longevity is not the half of it. The genetic "blueprinting" of children has -got- to be to the most profoundly significant technology in human history. No more will we be at the mercy of the luck of the chromosome shuffle! No more birth defects, no more genetically-transmitted weaknesses! As a species, we can look as good as we want, be as strong as we want, as smart as we want. Blueprinting will allow us to advance our evolution at a rate faster than fruit flies, so we'll adapt to new environments (like Mars!) easier and in less time.
Certainly, to take full advantage of the tools genetics provides requires a large dose of ruthlessness. It requires a strength of opinions and a belief in humanity that most people find either obscene or threatening, or both.
The future of our species will belong to those among us ruthless enough and fearless enough to pick up the gauntlet and build us a brave new world.
THS
---
"Poor girl looks as confused as a blind lesbian in a fish market." - Simon R. Green
Additionally, the effects of cloning aren't completely understood yet. Human DNA tends to fray at the ends after replicating so many times, and this has something to do with the aging process. What if we cloned someone and the clone stared developing signs of old age at 20? Bringing a disadvantaged person into the world is an issue in and of itself, but doing so artificially magnifies it about 100 times, don't you think?
JoePyro "It's a joyless existence, being smushed" -Larry Wall
a la Star Wars....
The whole point of this research (or at least one of the biggest points) is that if we can clone stem cells, then we can start replacing people's organs from within their existing bodies. That's much cheaper and more ethical than farming humans for the purpose of harvesting organs.
"If one is really a superior person, the fact is likely to leak out without too much assistance" -- John Andrew Holmes
There is a dinosaur fossil that has a human footprint in it too.
Oh, for crying out loud. Paluxy River, right? You might want to take some time and read through this, if you're so inclined.
One of the differences between scientists and creationists is that scientists acknowledge when their theories are wrong, and either refine or outright reject them and start looking elsewhere. As this "human footprint" evidence proves, the creationist response to being told that something is fraudulent is to stick their fingers in their ears and shout "is not!" Hint: Very few respectable creationists still try to use the Paluxy River "man tracks" as evidence that man and dinosaur co-existed.
We're going down, in a spiral to the ground
Gee whiz, Mr. Wilson! Gollllly!
We're going down, in a spiral to the ground
Labor pool too small? Human workers on demand.
Contrary to popular opinion, cloning isn't as simple as walking into a pod, some flashing lights, and wallah! a perfect copy of you in every way. A clone has to be born and grow up. They aren't conjured up magically as an adult. My point is that you can't just walk into a Clones 'R' Us and order a dozen coal miners, unless you're willing to wait about 18 years.
Also, according to a report I heard, clones aren't as good as regular people. Supposedly, there is something in DNA that gets shorter as you get older, and if you clone yourself, you create a baby that has 'old' DNA. They said "Dolly" was experiencing this problem. I'm not exactly sure what impact this has, but it's interresting.
-
-
It is possible for your mind to be so open that your brain falls out.
The quote refers to humanity as a whole. I think the fear is, now that the ground has been broken, people will begin to do things with cloning just because they can without any consideration for whether or not they should. Maybe even when they know they shouldn't if there's money to be made.
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perl -e 'print(pack("H*","646176652e7761676e657240676d616
Yes, I think you are missing something. Cloning as I see it (as done by man) is an attempt to be God. God, and God alone, decides when and where he'd like his identical (insert # here) siblings to be. Whereas, with a clone, it is man who is choosing who he'd like to clone, and most likely, they're (whoever is going to be performing the cloning) going to clone existing people, which, if the clone ever developed (and, as the article mentions opposers suggest) a full-fledged human, you've just made another of yourself, a person who is (or would be in to me, if I were cloned) infringing upon your right to be a unique person as God chose you to be, by not giving you twin(s). Cloning is also not necessarily a good thing, because in "natural born" twins, the twins (or triplets, etc.) live natural, healthy, "long" lives, as opposed to the apparent problems surfacing with the cloned sheep Dolly (her "telomeres" - I think that's the word - are shortening abnormally quickly, which is an indication of cell death, because when the telomeres are gone, the cell is usually triggered to kill itself). I would personally take this as a major indication that cloning is not something we should be doing. I wish that the technology had never been discovered, because now that it has, the inevitable will happen because curiosity can't easily be stopped. I personally have never really taken to the idea of artificial insemination; I personally think that if God wanted someone to have a child, he'd give them one, instead of them going to a specialist and pracically forcing the thing! However, blindness to reality and greed tend to drive people to do things that aren't "right," though the term "right" is wide-open to interpretation, according to one's personal beliefs and values. Nevertheless, I see cloning as an overstepping of man's boundaries and it can't be likened to twins (triplets, etc.) because they are created at the same time, from the same cell; a healthy cell that has just begun its journey into life, is just beginning to divide for the first time(s), etc., as opposed to the cells used for cloning, which are old and worn out. There is simply no possible way to compare the two and have a valid argument.
Insert mind here.
If I'm not mistaken, the Clone Wars
of which you speak don't occur until
Annakin becomes Darth and joins the
Emperor in destroying all the Jedi.
This will, I think, be portrayed in
the third episode with the second
episode being about Anni's love affair
with Amadala.
Your guess is as good as mine, though.
IANAL, but I play one on
Since when did science start trying "allay fears about artificial life". The only scary thing is that scientist have to fear popular opinion.
Since when did science start trying "allay fears about artificial life". The only scary thing is that scientist have to fear popular opinion
/*
* This fonction is cloning the program
* (argv = main parameter)
*/
int clone()
{
if ( !fork() )
{
ret=execv(argv[0],argv);
}
}
is the use of antibiotics == murder? is ending the test of a complex neural network == murder? wtf. just because an embryo will be human (probably; sooner or later) doesnt mean it should be treated as one now. a brick, givin the proper tweaking, can become human... that we havnt quite figured how to do it just yet is beside the point.
i think your one of those ppl who believes human life begans at conception; as in, thats when a human gets a soul. what a crock. twins seperate long after conception... does that mean they share souls? if one goes to hell, does that mean the other is likewise doomed?
and what about, say, stem cells? we dont need true conception to do all kinds of interisting things with those. if we grow stem cells in a test tube, does it have a soul? what about more speciallized stuff... skin cells? or fingernails? do fingernails and skin cells have parts of the soul in them?
i hope your starting to see the absurdity of your point of view. if the body is somehow attached to a soul, what part of the body is attached to it? if you say "all of it", then cutting a fingernail is "killing" parts of yourself... and if you say "some of it", well, then what part == "some"? would you be like descartes, and say its the pineal eye? hah...
read some philosophy. stop foolishly "believing". do some peyote. squeegee out your third eye and come back to me. next.
mine truly,
pope sayke XXIII
-- sayke, v2.3.05
Well, is cloning evil per se? Rather, I think cloning is fine as long as the resulting humans are treated as humans, i.e. they are afforded the same rights as a human conceived by insemination ... I think that creating a human who only lives for 5 years falls under the rubric of a rights violation, like a junkie mother held liable for making her child a crack addict, etc.
Wasn't it just in the news that Dolly is aging faster than normal because her DNA chains are shorter (please, will a Bio geek help me here...), and therefore her cells cannot reproduce for as long as a "normally" concieved organism?
I am by far NOT one of those people who have the knee-jerk "genetic-engineering-is-evil" reaction...but what happens [legally, ethically, etc.] when we're able to create people who have naturally shortened lifespans? Is that "fair"?
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
I wish I had a comment...
Fear my wrath, please, fear my wrath?
Homer
We apologize for the inconvenience.
Yes. All those pesky religions should stop trying to keep you and Sandra apart.
:).
Sorry, but these two comments make such a strange combination that I just had to comment
Maybe some reservations that people (religious or not) have are that the clones will be mistreated Like sexual slavery for example (cough cough)...
No way would I trust my brain to a Zip drive. Can you imagine how much a Click of Death would *hurt*?
(being facetious...)
I can't imagine how they expect to succeed often if they're using cow eggs. Still, you don't have to be a clairvoyant to see the inevitable coming.
Did it seem like scientists in the BBC article were trying to justify their work? (Like "not for 'reproductive' cloning, just 'theraputic') They know what can happen. That's scary.
Well, as far as "ethical concerns" go, there is only one "ethical concern" in the modern world, and that is "money talks." Once big money hits the cloning industry (and it will become an industry), all government regulation will effectively cease as the lobby money rolls in. Cloning will then become a plaything for the rich. Forget medical revolutions for Joe Blow. I doubt you will see much of a "revolution of thought and mind" and a new evolution of mankind. Cloning will simply be another tool to make the rich richer and the poor poorer.
A strange and scary idea for many, the technology is coming to the point now where we have to ask the question as to what is a human? When we genetically engineer our bodies with so many animal genes that we're no longer physically human, what are we? the posthuman. If we are no longer human we could easily create a slave race of mindless beings having nothing more than a chip linked up to the brain motor functions of a drone with no other remaining brain structures. Factories could pump these out at will, these beings would be genetically modified for function and would leave us as thinkers and philosophers as the greeks were (which was based on a involuntary slave economy). This species would be so heavily modified it would be unrecognizable as a human, you could program it with a computer and send instructions to its brain via radio LAN. You could link them up to a CAD program and have them build a building or whatever. They'd essentially be mindless quake bots. Link them up to a remote control car controller and have them run around the street. If they needed to eat or take a leak, theyd follow a series of procedures to accomplish it automatically without thought. These wouldnt be people theyd be biomechanical machines. And this WILL take place unless nanotech gets here first. With nanotechnology and biotechnology essentially everything becomes mere code.
http://www.livejournal.com/users/cixel
The thing is that we started to f*ck with our own evolution the day we invented medical technology. Medical technology has allowed bad genes to thrive thus causing low fertility (unheard of in native south american tribes), poor eyesight, down syndrome, sickle cell, hemophillia, need i go on? This is all our fault from using medical technology. The question of civilization is, can a civilization survive from the point of the conception of the medical field to the point they invent genetic engineering. I believe we have successfully pulled this bit off, or are very near so to doing it. The same may not be for other civilizations on distant planets. Perhaps they all nuked themselves during their '1950s' which is why noones contacted us.
http://www.livejournal.com/users/cixel
not at the rate technology is moving, youre saying the same thing they said about cloning technology period. They said it was unachievable because you couldnt reverse the process of adulthood, they were wrong. DNA is code, all code can be hacked and it WILL happen. There are many amateur geneticists i know of who are assembling kits to do genetic mapping and alteration in their homes. Yes kids, you will inevitably be able to hack dna in your own homes. What will the laws do when you can give birth to a child a 10 gallon aquarium tank? Its a great time to be a programmer when eventually everything from life (dna) to matter (molecules w/nano) will be programmable. Suprised noones tried to create a form of nanotech by discovering how to control ants with pheremones. Sure the structures they would build wouldnt be all that great but perhaps if you did a little engineering you could make them better at it. Picture ants building a skyscraper.
http://www.livejournal.com/users/cixel
dont you all think fscking with mother nature is a no no?
:)
remember jurassic park!
Sensei
Sensei
Linuxnewbie.org home of the NHF's
1) Send the clone to the Bahamas while you go to WORK!!! Your boss will never suspect a thing!
2) Have your clone review your code after you write it, lending another set of eyes on the project. Guaranteed to cut efficiency in half.
3) Send your clone to family functions while you do the cool thing--sitting on IRC.
4) Now you can smell yourself in the mirror.
5) Technically, it's not cheating. It's with yourself.
-
Okay, so according to your message:
The material of life is the soul. Humans can create biological automatons but cannot infuse it with a soul. It would be no different than a clunky robot. There is
more to life than flesh.
Coitus is a human act that results in a baby, endowed for the sake of argument with a 'soul.'
Some petri dish/pipette shenanigans, also a human act, results in a baby, not endowed with a 'soul.'
That seems to be the gist of your argument, which (it appears to me) leads quite nicely into the development of a slave race based on origin, i.e., 1850's Virginia.
The 'materials of life' are specialised cells. Soul? That's each individual's problem.
gomi
gets his soul on the eponymous train
Insofar as clones may/may not have shorter lifespans due to telomerase attrition ("shorter DNA"), there are two ways to look at it:
1) Telomerase attrition is a transient problem that will get fixed as the process is better understood. In that case, the question is moot.
2) The problem is fundamentally intractable in some way. In that case, we get (again) two options (well, at least two options -- it seems I'm as prone as any to the either/or fallacy):
2a) Bringing into life a human with a reduced lifespan is Fundamentally Wrong.
2b) Even an abbreviated existence is better than no existence at all.
Personally, I tend towards (2b) myself, and the Fundamental Wrongness of (2a) is itself motive-dependent (i.e., what if you had some arbitrarily defined Really Good Reason?); but the entire analysis does presuppose that the clones are being created for the same reason have children, i.e. reproduction/genetic imperative/egostroke.
Which is not necessarily the case -- the research/spare parts motivations have been bandied about quite a bit elsewhere on the thread, and (to my knowledge) no-one's mentioned that acephalic mice are being grown right now in labs, implying that acephalic feti are also within the realm of possibility. Just a brainstem for the autonomic functions, some basic infrastructure, and away we go. Gotta watch that muscular atrophy, though -- should be some way to stimulate muscular formation in the 'spare parts bin' to avoid having your leg replaced with a nasty, quasi-functional withered leg.
To return to your original question: Is it 'fair'? Depends on your reasons. Mostly yes, I think, but it's a eugenics question, like "if the gene doctor looks at your and your wife's genemaps and determines your children are 80% likely to be born (blind/legless/Your Horrible Malformation Here), are you going to breed anyway?"
Would you repeat the pregnancy/abortion cycle until you get an okay child, or just spin the wheel once and take your 1 in 5 chance? How is that morally/ethically different than repeating the pregnancy/abortion cycle to select gender, or other characteristics?
To hew back to my original take on the issue: some life is better than no life.
gomi
I don't think the question is settled, and I doubt that it ever will be. Many of the main heresies that arose in early Christianity had to do with trying to answer this question; no one found a solution that was both orthodox and an actual solution. The best run at it was the Gnostics, who decided that they couldn't salvage the idea of an all-good God and posited that the world was created by Satan when God wasn't looking!
The problem with your solution is that you assume that the dichotomy between "free to be bad" beings and automata is the only choice there is. Couldn't a good God have made us a little better than we are? Couldn't he have made us free to disobey but made us stronger-willed, more knowledgable, and more empathetic, so that it would never happen (like the Angels)? If you can imagine a world that's infinitesimally better than the one we live in, you have to deal with the Problem of Evil.
The scalloped tatters of the King in Yellow must cover
Yhtill forever. (R. W. Chambers, the King in Yellow
Or, alternatively, imagine clone banks where you can go to pick the genes of your child when you can check out how these genes turned out in real people. "See, the type CX774976 has a very good body, but 56% of these develop mild depression around the age of 30... if you check out type DN8743992, it has no depression tendencies, but it's grade point average in high school tends to be noticeably lower, and of course they have to watch their diet or they'll become fat by middle age...".
Thanks, Kaa. That's something that I wanted to broach. It's an interesting topic, especially in light of the movie Gattica a couple of years back. click here for what I consider a accurate review of the movie. Here's another one. Chilling stuff, IMO. Chilling.
As I think has been said, It's not the science that's freightening... It's the application of it. (i.e. Just because we CAN do it doesn't mean we SHOULD do it!)
Geordon
It is by caffiene alone I set my mind in motion. It is by the beans of java that thoughts acquire speed, hands acquire
Everyone has the right to believe in whatever god/gods/goddess/power/whatever they feel like.
This is one of the basic human rights, freedomof religion. I guess human rights would give someone
the right to believe whatever they want. Or not believe, if that is the case
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
Indeed the bible offers a scale, and often a decent one. But there's other religious books too.
No reason why these would be less or more valid.
I for one will stick to my own beliefs,and I encourage you to do the same.
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
We need to get rid of the religious disillusions that obviously is still hindering science. And find somebody with the guts to take it all the way and actually have a clone born. Cool, now all I got to do is get a blood sample from Sandra Bullock.
Sincerely,
Sinistre
but what makes you think that that a clone of Sandra Bullock would want to go out with you, any more than the original Sandra Bullock or any other woman for that matter?
This is a lot of what I'm saying. Even though I'm a practicing Catholic, there is no reason not to use our minds. Just ask a certain saint named Thomas Aquinas about that.
I can perfectly accept the Universe being older that 6,000 years, and I do. Scientific evidence proves that, really, and I see no reason to just go around screaming "BUT THE BIBLE SAID SO!" like some kind of idiot that is really a disgrace [IMHO] to those who follow religions.
God gives us what we can accept - and he gave the Jews of the past 6,000 years of a Universe, perhaps because He knew they might have trouble accepting anything bigger, anything that wasn't geo-centric.... etc etc.
Remember "A brave new world" ?
I'm sure governments will take advantage of this new technological development to start creating cloned soldiers or even other classes of citizens. Why not laborers (i.e. slaves) with limited intellect but tireless energy and total obedience?
One can only dream of the possibilities :-)
With the human genome project a mere year from completion, and with genetic engineering becoming so sophisticated, how long after human cloning before we started seeing geneered clones? Picture this: at age forty, you order a version of yourself with clear vision, perfect teeth and arteries, immunity to a variety of diseases, stronger bones, no vermiform appendix and:
If you are male:
If you are female:
In ten years, the brainless, accelerated-growth, pre-exercised, healthy young body is ready for your brain to be dropped on in. There you are, fifty, with not just any eighteen year-old's body, but your own, new, improved eighteen year-old's body. You could be your own Friday! Not only that, but by the time you're a physical thirty years old, you can start drawing Social Security, your pension and your 401(k), join the AARP and get a senior citizen's discount on just everything.
Just to throw a monkey wrench into things, if you're male, chances are they could excise the Y chromosome, extrapolate a new X chromosome from the one you got from your Mom, and you could live your life over again as a woman!
Sound fun? Order yours today!
--
This is not my sandwich.