First cloned human baby is on it's way!

Great Debates
21

origianlly posted byLemur866

Even with adoption clones are created, not because they are wanted for who they are but because they are curiosities in terms of what they are.

One could imagine an angry parent yelling at their cloned kid. “You’re not even mine, you’re a fucking clone.”

There would be unique and significant psychological effects placed upon the clone, beginning from the obvious fact that it would be [called] a clone. A cloned human is different then an uncloned human in so many ways [in terms of origin, why it was created, social roll] etc.]that it out weighs the fact that they are physically identical to humans.

Are there not human races that are indistinguishable physically from each other, yet are distinct?

I think eventually clones will probable be mass produced from their own DNA, and possibly used as spare parts for REAL humans.

In stead of producing a whole human clone we may create body parts, legs, arms, internal organs, hearts, possible brains, etc. At what point can we produce a partial clone before it becomes a whole being? If we clone a brain only, is it a being? buzzz-kill It doesn’t matter if [atheists] do not believe in the existence of souls, as we are talking about consciousness If a cloned brain has consciousness is it a being? And how would we know?

Eventually I think they would be grow, as you say, in vats. Why not? If it is practical, convenient. And they might not even be breast or bottle fed, probably tub fed.

And while we are at it why not produce clones with very low intelligence, just enough to do all the menial, monotonous, banal jobs that most of us humans hate doing?----Analogous to worker ants.

No womb, no vagina. I think they would be a different race.
race

  1. A local geographic or global human population distinguished as a more or less distinct group by genetically transmitted physical characteristics.
  2. A group of people united or classified together on the basis of common history, nationality, or geographic distribution: the German race.
  3. A genealogical line; a lineage.
  4. Humans considered as a group.

Main Entry: 3race
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle French, generation, from Old Italian razza
Date: 1580
1 : a breeding stock of animals
2 a : a family, tribe, people, or nation belonging to the same stock b : a class or kind of people unified by community of interests, habits, or characteristics <the English race>
3 a : an actually or potentially interbreeding group within a species; also : a taxonomic category (as a subspecies) representing such a group b : BREED c : a division of mankind possessing traits that are transmissible by descent and sufficient to characterize it as a distinct human type
4 obsolete : inherited temperament or disposition
5 : distinctive flavor, taste, or strength

Cloning a human creates a cloned human. And possibly to keep racism at bay there may be a concerted effort by clones and others to hind a cloned humans orgin, to conceal the fact that it is a clone.

22

If some system is developed for clones to be grown without a surrogate mother’s involvement, then a lot of ‘natural’ babies will also be created this way. Imagine how many couples would want to have a baby, made from their reproductive cells, without the bother of a pregnancy.

So, once again, there would be no real difference between clones and non-clones, just between vat-born and uterus-born humans.

23

“vat-born” sounds so vulagar. The polite term is “decanted.” :wink: Or am I the only one wondering how many times Iamthat has read “A Brave New World”?

Iamthat, I’m not sure what your intention is with giving the definition of “race” but none of them prove your point that the babies who are cloned would be a different race than those who are not. Take your first definition for example:

  1. The babies would probably live in the same places as the non-cloned babies, which rules out the geographical difference. On a genetic level their DNA should be indestinguishable from other people’s so they’re not genetically different.
  2. They would live in the same place as their parents, and would be of the same nationalities of their parents. I suppose a shared history might be an agument made, but who bases race solely on that?
  3. They’re genetically same as their parents so def three is moot.
    4 and 5 don’t have anything to do with that useage of the word.

So what exactly were you trying to get at?

24

Many theists (myself included) don’t believe that God can only have a hand in “natural” reproduction. Personally, I believe that God puts a soul in every single human being, whether cloned, vat-born, or otherwise.

Of course, the nature of the soul is for another debate. :slight_smile:

So? Because something can be classified means that it is a lower form? Are “green-eyed people” inferior to “people?”

Oh, and elfkin477, does this mean that you don’t think the phrase “uterus-born” is less vulgar than “vat-born?” :eek:

Me, I prefer “naturally-born” myself. :cool:

25

I wonder if they’ll name the kid, “Dolly.”

26

When they become common enough they will not be curiosities. Do Test Tube babies have the press hounding them every minute because they are “curiousities”?

Sound’s like my ex-step-father, except he used baggage instead of clone. And if it is that person’s clone, it IS theirs, it is their DNA, their donation, their child. Husband who didn’t donate knew what he was getting into when whife went in for operation, so he should shut up.

Wrong, the first few clones will be publically known and bugged, but the majority wont. Being a clone will just be part of their life. Just like being a twin, or being a test tube baby, or being kid of mixed race.

The HELL this will happen. Cloning real people for spare parts is the relm of distopian sci-fi writers. Real life will probably be pigs growing organs fit for humans transplantation, or, and this is less likely due to moral issues, headless clones grown. I doubt legislation of that would be passed, especially since we have people with brain damage or born without brains that are living on reperators that have legal rights.

Dude, Star Wars is not a good place to get cloning info from.

And Brave New World is speaking out against this, i suggest you re-read it.

The last thing i want is to get into another race argument, but this is a pretty lame claim. So eunichs suddenly become a different race? or people with birth defects? Race has meant color long enough in society that it will not be corrupted into people without vaginas. Not that people will grow vaginaless clones on purpose.

I could see hiding the origin of the child to keep it from being picked on at school, but there might be telltale signs.

In regards to the whole cloning thing, i doubt Dr. Irresponsible has made a clone. Even if by some miricle he performed the adult DNA transfer to a viable cell that rooted on the uterus wall, the baby will be fucked up, and probably not carry to term. IF it does, it will live in horrible pain under birth defects and die young, We don’t know near enough about mammalian genetic transfer to pull this off safely enough for humans, and Dr. Irresponsible is taking advantage of rich fools who need to go down to the adoption agency and adopt a 5 year old. On second thought, no they dont, since they seem irresponsible enough that they do NOT deserve children.

27

elfkin477 wrote

Yes I wasn’t very clear. I was responding to buzzz-kill’s post

In many cases physical characteristics alone do not determine race. I.e. American’s. Australian’s, German’s, Briton’s, Francophones etc. are indistinguishable one from another, in terms of physical appearances. And given that distinction alone American’s would not be a race.

Race is usually determined by:

**1. A local geographic or global human population distinguished as a more or less distinct group by genetically transmitted physical characteristics.
2. A group of people united or classified together on the basis of common history, nationality, or geographic distribution: the German race.
3. A genealogical line; a lineage. **

Among other aspects.

The unique characteristics of clones is that they are the off spring(?)of only one human, have only one parent .

Plus, they are not originals, but rather they are copies. If they made ten clones of you they would all have the same finger prints as you, as well as the same amount and distribution of body hair, the same irises, an identical voice, sex organs etc.

They are a race(?) of [physical] copies.

Where as humans are all physically unique.
posted by ** Soup_du_jour**

No. It was in response to Lemur866 ,who wrote

originally posted by Tras Tarkas

Right–?

There are thousands on waiting lists for transplants who would love to have a cloned organ.

Thanks for the hardy laugh Tras

Vaginaless (female) clones.–:slight_smile:

My point was clones would eventually not be incubated in a womb and therefore would not emerge from a vagina.

28

Buzzz wrote:

Do it without the intelligence of scientists, and then get back to me.

29

I think you need to take some actual science courses. Should there be 10 clones made. I guarentee you all 10 will by physically distinguishable from each other. Fingers prints ARE NOT IDENTICAL BETWEEN TWINS. Distribution of body hair is effected both by genetics AND environment(as is everything else). Eye patterns are also different. Voice prints… not quite sure, but most likely also different. Sex organs? uh. not even going there as I couldn’t possibly see how it’s relevant.

There are problems with this. Mass produced cloned organs would be rejected by people. THis is because of the Major histocompatibility complex(MHC). The MHC is a set of genes that code for the “self” proteins that identify every last cell in your body as “self”. Everyone’s is different. If you transplanted a incompatible organ the body will reject it. Solutions would either be each person clones an organ from their own DNA, or organs be somehow made lacking any MHC identifications whatsoever. The latter seems plausable for mass-scale production of said organs. I do not know if snipping the MHC genes from the genome will effect organ growth.
as for your race comment.
First off, Race is an artificial categorization. We humans created it. I could classify every single being on the planet in a seperate category if I felt like. Point being arbitary classifications mean absolutly nothing. Should there be an implement of a caste where cloned/genetically altered humans are put lower/higher in the social caste a la Gattaca it would be because SOCIETY(or at least a majority of it) accepts this. IMHO that will not happen. Period.

30

Race is not entirely arbitrary. It can be useful, for example, to forensic scientists who might want to, for example, infer height from tibia length.

31

true, but I think that rather stems from actual genetic differences. I would classify it as subspecies. If I remember correctly there are already 3 subspecies of Homo Sapien. Mongoloid, Caucazoid and Negroid.

32

Well, this site says, “A subspecies is a race within a species that shows identifiable characteristics different from other subspecies.” Tomayto. Tomahto.

33

Perhaps I should have put it in the form of questions;

[ul]
[li]Would a clone of you have the same finger prints as you?[/li]
[li]If they cloned one of your hands would the cloned finger prints be the same as the original?[/li]
[li]If they cloned one of your fingers would the prints be the same?[/li]
[li]If they cloned the skin on your finger would the prints be the same?[/li]
[li]As a copy, how good of a copy is a clone? [/li]
[li]Are there different degrees of clones?[/li]
[li]What’s the difference (physical) between clones and identical twins?[/li][/ul]

34

I would guess at some point the cloned finger prints and the original would be identical.
I.E. If they clone a graph of the skin from the front tip of one of you fingers, that is, the skin that has a so called pattern in it, the prints of the clone and the original would be identical.

If they cloned your finger prints the cloned prints would be identical to the original, in as much as something can be identical to another, which might be impossible. None the less the ** cloned copy** would be very close in appearance to the original.

If they use this skin graph to produce a whole clone of you would the finger prints of the clone be almost identical to the original you?
Taking into account any damage or cuts they may show a difference, and putting that aside.

35

Remember that a clone is nothing but a twin. It is not a replica.

36

First of all, your clone would NOT have identical fingerprints. Identical twins have similar, but distinct fingerprints. Clones would have distinct fingerprints.

Second, we have no idea how to clone whole body parts. We can clone tissue cultures, perhaps. So it is possible that we could clone skin tissue for use burn cases. But that skin tissue wouldn’t retain identical fingerprints, even if the original cells came from your fingers.

Third, clones would be MORE dissimilar than identical twins. Identical twins share maternal mitochondrial DNA, clones probably won’t, unless the egg donor shared the same mitochonrial line as the nuclear donor. Identical twins share a maternal uterine environment, they are subjected to the same nutrient and hormone levels. Clones would be gestated in different uteruses at different times. Identical twins are typically raised by the same parents at the same time and go to the same schools and live in the same house. Clones wouldn’t.

A clone is nothing more than an identical twin born at a different time, in fact clones will be less like each other than identical twins are like each other. A clone is not a replica, they are not copies, they are not duplicates. They are human beings. My sisters are naturally occuring clones. But they have different personalities, and different appearances. Sometimes people who don’t know them have trouble telling them apart, but for anyone in our family their appearances are distinct.

Now, back to the organ transplant issue. You could not create a clone in order to murder him and steal his organs, any more than you can create a child in the normal way and murder the child and steal his organs. Yes, thousands of people are waiting in line for transplants, and many of them are desperate. That doesn’t mean that we would allow them to murder children and steal their organs, does it?

Also, uterine replication is an interesting issue. And yes, if uterine replicators were invented, then clones could be gestated in uterine replicators. But the two technologies are separate. There is currently no such thing as a uterine replicator. For the forseeable future, all clones will have to be born the normal way. No clones could be created unless a human female volunteered to have the cloned embryo implanted in her uterus. No doctor would create a clone that did not have prospective parents. No cloned embryo would be implanted in a human uterus unless that human gave her consent. No human being will be deprived of their civil rights simply because they have identical nuclear DNA to some other person.

And why do you insist that clones would have only one parent? Looked at from one point of view, the parent of the clone would be the nuclear donor. But in that case, the other parent of the clone would be the spouse of the nuclear donor. If I am married, and I decide to have a cloned child, my wife would be the other parent of the child. And in most cases of this sort, the gestational mother would either be the nuclear donor herself, or the spouse of the nuclear donor. So there you have two parents. But what if those parents are unfit parents, who have created this baby only to abuse and enslave it? Well, what do we do when parents abuse a non-cloned child? We have long-established legal methods of dealing with child abuse. Whether a child is a clone or not has no bearing on child abuse cases.

But looked at another way, we could say that the parents of the nuclear donor would be the parents of the cloned child. After all, if I have an identical twin I am not the twin’s parent, MY parents are the twins parents.

Or what if a third party, genetically unrelated to the nuclear donor, wished to become the parent of the clone? Well, we allow such things right now. We allow sperm donation. The sperm donor is not the parent of the child. We allow egg donation. The egg donor is not the parent of the child. We allow surrogate motherhood. The surrogate mother is not the parent of the child. We could have a case where a couple gets donated sperm, a donated egg, and a surrogate mother. They would still be the legal parents of the child, even though they are geneticall unrelated to the child and did not gestate the child.

Now, I’m sure we will have to work out guidelines for nuclear donation. It should almost certainly be a crime to create a clone without the nuclear donor’s consent, just like it would be a crime to harvest eggs or sperm without consent. But simply because the nuclear material was used illegally would not affect the legal status of the cloned baby. Currently a rapist can impregnate a woman, creating a child. The fact that the creation of the child was itself a crime has no bearing on the legal status of the child. Yes, the mother could terminate the pregnancy, but she has that option for any child.

Look, cloning really creates no new ethical problems. It merely requires us to think clearly about the issue, and apply our current ethical standards in a human way.

37

Iamthat, a nuclear-transfer type clone and its respective clonee(?) will be unlike identical twins in that one will be older than the other. Also, mutations, or possibly differences in gene expression, will likely be introduced by the cloning process, I take it. (Or whatever it is that apparently causes birth defects in clones.) They will also develop in separate wombs, something that I think has never been done with human twins before. And unless an ovum from the same female lineage is used, their cytoplasmic DNA will be different.

They will in all these respects be less similar to each other than identical twins. I would guess that they would in no way be more similar, but…

Hm. I was going to say that a cell from your finger contains no more information about your fingerprints than a cell from any other part of your body. But then I remembered that different genes get “turned on” in different parts of the body. Could genes in different cells of the same type in a single individual, or two genetically identical individuals, sometimes get turned on in slightly different ways, thus contributing to the development of certain characteristics, like fingerprints, and could some of this information theoretically be preserved by cloning? I highly doubt it, but I’m not ready to rule it out entirely.

Also note that the fingerprints of twins are indeed similar, although not exactly identical, as Cecil explained.

38

Going to assume the misspelling of my name was accidental. and why not give them your organs? got any proof you aren’t a clone and therefore some sort of soulless organ factory? Since apparently where you are conceived determines whether you are a real person or a “robot”

Being incubated in a tub does not a different race make. Next thing you know you will say fat people are a different race, since they were incubated in fat women, and therefore must be a different sub-race, so lets rake them for organs!!

That is what should be. But it is apparent from this thread that is not what is happening with some people. And some of those people are writing laws that affect jobs like mine. Such fun!

39

from here: http://www.i-sis.org.uk/cloning_humans.php

This seems an agenda driven site, but the part i quoted i’ve seen on many other sites. (and they say on their website i could quote a whole chunk of it for just linking to the site)

40

Sorry, let me rephrase my statement. Certainly Cloned humans would be put into a seperate category just as test-tube babies are in a different category. But the category is merely that. A category and has no intrinsic meaning other then the requirment for the categorization.

[hijack]
on a side note, Libertarian. I was wondering. do you have the most freaking posts on sdmb? I think I saw someone else with 8000+, Eve I think.
[/hijack]