Cloning human beings

Great Debates
21

Of course the patent story is an urban legend.

But **smiling bandit ** is correct that most of the things people think they might be able to do with cloning aren’t going to happen, barring the repeal of the Bill of Rights. Once cloning of humans actually starts to happen the misinformation about it will largely evaporate, I hope. Cloning produces a human baby who happens to be the identical twin of some other person. No theological issues are raised, I don’t know anyone who believes in a “soul” who doesn’t believe that identical twins have souls, so I can’t understand why they would think a clone might not have a soul.

For people who have fantasies about recreating dead loved ones, once human cloning becomes a reality it will be clear to everyone that cloning won’t recreate dead people, it will create a baby who will look a lot like the dead person and perhaps have a similar personality to the dead person. But take my sisters as an example. They are identical twins…but they don’t look completely identical, anyone who knows them fairly well would have no trouble telling them apart, even if they wore their hair exactly the same and wore the same clothes. And they have different personalities as well, they don’t act the same or think the same. Identical twins gestated in different wombs, raised by different parents in different homes in different years, going to different schools and exposed to different peer groups will likely be even more different from each other than naturally occuring clones.

As for fears that cloning will reduce our genetic diversity, well, that would occur only if clones were a large fraction of the population. I don’t see that happening, ever. Can we take it as a given that people enjoy having sex, and a very large fraction of those people enjoy having sex with people of the opposite gender, and quite a few of those people end up becoming parents without quite planning it? Most people aren’t going to see any reason to have cloned children, so what does it matter if a few people do?

And about the idea of cloning a full grown person, except for the brain, and keeping them alive in a basement somewhere on the off chance that the cell donor will need an organ transplant sometime in their lives. Really, this is kind of ridiculous. Exactly how many people need organ transplants? Now consider the cost of medical care for a person in a vegetative state, as in the Terry Schiavo case. You’re going to create a clone, pith them so that their brain never develops properly, and keep them in intensive care for decades, because you might need a new liver someday? And you’ll find doctors willing to do this for you? Even today we decide to stop medical treatment for brain-dead patients, how many doctors will be willing to create brain-dead babies to order, then spend years caring for those babies as they grow into brain-dead children and brain-dead adults? I don’t think the AMA would allow it. And what would make the brain-dead clone the property of the cell donor, to be killed whenever the cell-donor needs a transplant?

This idea will never come to pass, and besides is completely un-neccesary anyway, since it would be many times easier to grow cloned tissue cultures and coax them to form organs for patients that need transplants than it would be to care for vegetative patients for decades. Not gonna happen.

22

Hardly. But even those who cannot conceive would be better off with in-vitro or other reproductive assistance than cloning. And while I sympathize with those who don’t have children for some reason but would like them, I’m not sure it’s healthy for either “parent” or clone.

Don’t get me wrong. It’s not exactly evil. It’s simply of little value.

I see possible (albeit limited) uses for the knowledge of how to do cloning, but not cloning itself.

23

I also agree that a lot of knowledge and potentially useful science could be gleaned from cloning…but I don’t see cloning ever becoming widespread since we have more than enough people on this planet as it is. We need less, not more.

24

I’m very sorry I spread a fallacy. I was not aware that it was untrue.

I’m sorry if this sounds harsh, but just because you can’t see possibilities doesn’t mean there are none.

Every now and then, we hear on the news of new uses for certain drugs which were designed for other purposes. The developers never imagined this drug could be used in those ways, but further research opened new doors.

Nothing distresses me more than the idea that today’s lack of vision may effect tommorow’s progress unless it’s the idea that “morals” may impede science.

25

When Wilbur and Oville Wright invented the airplane…people were already poopooing this ridiculous flying machine.

Since cloning is literally and figuritively in its infancy, why are so many people reluctant and fearful and negative to going along with this? Lets give it a chance and THEN we can be more critical both positive and negative as progress occurs.

The powerful resistance to change without carefully thought out answers really inmo sets humanity backwards…not forwards

26

For me, the main worries about human cloning isn’t about what IS possible, it’s about what people might expect from it.

With animal cloning, we are already seeing people spending thousands of dollars to get a clone of their beloved Fluffy or Fido. They believe that cloning with give them an exact copy of their lovable but aging pet. They forget that Fido used to piddle in the corners when he was a puppy, and that he was raised with their childern and that he is 12 years old now. They don’t consider the environmental portion of a personality. I am nervous of how this could be carried over to a human clone. I can imagine the damage done to a child by being expected to be a copy of beloved but dead person.

Additional unlikely but possible scenario… Rich, antisocial Fred decides he wants an heir for his empire. Since Fred built the empire, who better to continue it then Fred 2.0. I can imagine that Fred 1.0 might feel that he has a right to much greater control of 2.0’s environment/raising, because heck, they are the same person.

I don’t think that cloning itself is evil. I’m not really even worried about illegal actions towards a cloned child. I am leery of peoples abilities to warp a child, even with the best of intentions. It just seems there could be so much extra baggage attached to the cloning of a person.

27

This is all the same sort of baggage that “normal” children deal with. Maybe the risk is higher, but it’s the same sort of risks. If parents got some special counseling on raising clones, they might be better-equipped than a lot of the parents out there already to raise a healthy child.

My concern is the societal ick factor, which parents and counseling cannot change. You see a few folks like Charlie Sheen out there occasionally, but it’s rare that a child looks like a virtual twin of his or her parent. Clones are twins, and will probably look a hell of a lot like mom or dad when they were kids. Even if the parents are very discrete, it might not be too hard to figure out who is a clone of who, even without DNA analysis. Kids get enough grief when other kids find out they’re adopted. I can’t imagine what it will do to a kid when his or her friends start yelling “Ewwwww, you’re a CLONE!!”

Then again, the world is cruel. Always was, always will be. Not doing something because of the human capacity for cruelty may make no more sense than worrying about the next sunrise. I don’t know myself.

28

Do you think the religiousists of this globe would allow human cloning to take place even if proof of beneficial limbs and organs could be harvested?

Or do you believe that the power of religion and its extreme view that life must be preserved at all cost would nix any progess along these lines.

I guess another way of saying what I am trying to say: Do you think that religion would be loathe to make any belief changes in the above regard?

29

Driving down the residential street at 80 mph has the same sort of risks as driving at 35 mph, just higher. Society imposes a speed limit to reduce these risky. The chance of a higher risk, or even a perceived higher risk is a what I was trying to point out. I think that many of the objects to cloning now are an attempt to reduce the risks.

As for

Currently, many religious groups object to stem-cell research, because it involved tissue taken from a human fetus. Do you think there is any chance that they would find harvesting links or organs from a clone that was actually brought to term any more palatable?

30

Harvesting limbs and organs from clones will never be legal, or approved, or tolerated, or winked at, or anything. The only countries where this will be allowed are dictatorships. Simple human rights forbid amputating limbs or organs from healthy babies or children and transplanting them to other people simply because those other people are their identical twins.

What kind of a question is that MadSam? We will never, ever ever allow people to murder children and harvest their body parts. Never. Not going to happen. Ever. It would be just as much of a crime as if I walked up to you, kidnapped you, and removed your organs. I don’t have the right to do that, do I? Why would I have the right to kill a person who happens to be my clone?

Did I mention that this is not going to happen?

We may someday be able to grow new organs for people, but we will never allow people to kill clones for their organs.

Why would anyone think this will happen? I cannot understand it. Why do people think that a clone would automatically be a slave that can be killed or forced into involuntary servitude?

As for worries that parents will have unrealistic or unhealthy attitudes toward cloned children, I’m sure that will happen. However, once we actually start seeing cloned children running around, those misconceptions will mostly fade. Once people see for themselves that Bob’s cloned son Bob Jr isn’t an exact minature copy of Bob, that Bob Jr has his own goals and dreams just like every other kid, then they’ll mostly give up these silly ideas.

31

If you produce a cloned embryo, and from that produce stem cells, from which you are able to stimulate specific organogenesis in vitro, is this the same as cloning the whole person, from an ethical standpoint? If one deliberately gestates acephalic clones in utero through to some necessary stage of development (say it’s only possible to grow organs first through at least partial gestation of a fetus) from which organs are harvested and grown ex vivo until suficciently developed for grafting, is this fundamentally different? Or, say it’s possible to grow a fetus in vitro, but not individual organs for autologous grafting, so you use the previous protocol, only it involves no gestation in utero, is this different than aborting a fetus or killing a newborn organ host? As the organ host is deliberately grown with no brain, it cannot suffer. Is this murder or child abuse?

I think all of the above are potentially doable. Never gonna happen? I have to wonder.

32

As a Christian, I’m a bit surprised that, after some careful thought, I find the “YOU CAN’T PLAY GOD” rationale against the frontiers of science to be ridiculous.

Not that I’m cautious about cloning (or any human endeavour, really). It, like everything else, has the potential to be abused horribly, and I worry about all the potential lives that will be inevitably lost in the march towards “progress”. (Heck, I’m worried about the general cavalier attitude towards the meaning and value of life in general, but I don’t think that any amount of technology, or lack thereof, is really going to affect that.)

Cloning isn’t going to lead to some dystopia of people being raised just for their spare parts, except in a few cases. (And heck, those few cases would probably be the first to develop cloning, because they have less ethical hangups about this business.)

Final verdict: Onward, boldly! But with much caution.

33

First of all, how many women are going to volunteer to gestate anencephalic babies for nine months? That’s not going to happen.

And I really can’t see a technology that allows us to gestate a baby to term in vitro, but we can’t grow an organ in vitro. You have support systems advanced enough to support a baby for nine months, but you aren’t able to support the growth of an organ?

Anyway, I will state with confidence that headless babies are never going to be raised for organ transplant purposes. It will not happen, it will be completely unneccesary. I refuse to believe that doctors will agree to perform such procedures on purpose.

As far as cloned embryos used to produce stem cells…eh, so what? Although exactly what the difference is between taking a donor cell, removing the nucleus, inserting the nucleus into a fertilized egg cell, encouraging the cell to divide, then removing some of the resulting cell lines and encouraging them to grow into tissues and ultimately organs and discarding the rest–and taking a donor cell, encouraging it to divide by some unknown other method X, and encourage the growth of those subsequent cell lines into tissues and organs.

As long as you never have a headless baby with a beating heart that you subsequently kill and harvest organs from, you’re fine. Any cells that can be kept alive by the same technology that we use to keep tissue cultures alive isn’t going to raise many more ethical issues.

Anyway, the whole stem cell issue is something of a sidetrack. Will we always HAVE to kill fetuses or embryos to harvest stem cells? We’re postulating easy cloning and in vitro gestation of babies, and yet these future doctors can’t generate stem cells from other methods? They honestly can’t grow organs in vitro without killing babies? I’m skeptical. And if the method for growing organs requires murdering babies, even if those babies could be grown without brains, it won’t be allowed.

34

Maybe that woman has three kids and a husband with…oh, I dunno, dilated cardiomyopathy. He’ll eventually need a heart transplant or he’ll die. The cause of the defect is identified (mutated cardiac troponin T). A match for a donor cannot be found. The anticipated wait is long, and the patient may not survive until then.

There is an alternative: Take a biopsy, and grow somatic cells in culture. Use genetic engineering to repair the mutant troponin and introduce changes that cause anencephalia. Perform nuclear transfer and generate embryos. The only way to get a usable heart out of this is to implant and gestate. The time frame required is, say, less than that expected to find a suitable donor heart, and, unlike the allograft option, provides a guaranteed autologous graft, requiring no immunosuppression.

Again, I dunno. Some people might take the option, if it were available.

35

Lemur: neither you nor I will be around to prove either of us right or wrong. I disagree that cloning human beings will never be allowed to produce harvestable organs…As horrible as it may seem…the future is unpredictable. Perhaps it will never be necessary to do the above but I don’t believe that ethical, moral, or religious beliefs will prevent this from happening.

I always wanted to give up 10 years of my life now to be able to come back in 10,000 years or so if man is still alive to see whats going on.

36

Of course if liberal democracy fails and America reverts to some third-world dictatorship and we repeal the bill of rights, then hey, sure people will be able to grow clones, murder them, and take their organs.

I’m just arguing that under any quasi-free society, with some sort of human-rights protections, even at the level of, say, El Salvador, cloning humans for spare parts will not be allowed openly, and anyone who grows a clone, murders them, and takes their organs will be prosecuted for murder if they are discovered, just like any other murderer.

If murdering your clone were the only possible way for someone to save their life, perhaps there would be a motivation for it. But you’d also have to find doctors and hospitals to go along with it, organ transplants aren’t exactly basement science experiments. Only the very wealthy and politically powerful will be able to find doctors competant enough to perform organ transplants, yet unethical enough to murder someone for money, and reckless enough to believe that the murder will never be discovered. The intersection of the set of qualified transplant doctors and reckless sociopaths is likely to be very small. Saddam Hussein and his ilk will be able to find such people, but most will not, even the very rich, even to save their lives.

But of course, creating a cloned embryo, finding a surrogate mother to gestate the embryo, finding foster parents to raise the child until the organs are large enough for transplant, finding a doctor to kill the child and remove the organs, and finding a hospital to perform the surgery…this will take years. If the situation is that serious that the psychopathic transplant candidate sets this plan in motion, they could easily be dead by then. And if medical technology is advanced to this point, growing cloned organs in vitro seems likely to be possible as well. Or artificial organs. Or medicines.

It seems to me that the whole clones for organs thing is predicated on the idea that people will do anything–even commit murder–to save their own lives, and that the rest of us will just shrug our shoulders. And also that organ transplants from a cloned donor will frequently be the easiest and most effective treatment for some diseases. The set of diseases that cloned organ transplants will treat is small. The set of people who will murder their own child to save their lives is small. The set of those people who have the wealth and power to arrange the transplant is small. The set of doctors who will risk their careers and face life imprisonment for murder to perform the transplants is small. Will it happen sometimes that some third-world dictator will secretly get a liver transplant from his own cloned child? It probably will. But it will never become common, it will never be socially acceptable, it will never be legal, it will never be safe.

37

Murder = illegal killing…I can conceive of legal removal of organs to sustain the life of a human being. If legal, it is not murder. Until the time comes, its anyones guess.

38

But not if extending the life of one human being means ending the life of another. I don’t have the right to kill you to extend my own life, right? I don’t have the right to kill my brother to extend my life. I don’t have the right to kill my child to extend my life. I don’t have the right to kill my identical twin to extend my life. Why would I have the right to kill another human being to extend my life just because that human being has the same DNA I do?

Given the 13th and 14th amendments to the constitution, exactly how are we going to legalize the enslavement and murder of clones? Sure, sure, we could throw out the constitution and be living in a Blade Runner style dystopia. But as long as we have a constitution we aren’t going to make murder and slavery legal.