I have something to add to this thread for consideration.
While I may not have objections in general to babies being born that are clones I would object to someone cloning ME. Is it pride or egotism to feel that I am uniquely different in a way worthy of merit? Perhaps even special? If there is another genetic duplicate of me am I less special? (yes, yes… I know that there’s already natural “clones” in the form of twins, triplets, etc.). What if there are 10 duplicates of me? 20? The chances of me being cloned are of course slim… I mean, geez, who’d want a dozen Grim_Beakers running around?
Perhaps not as slim (of course assuming perfected technology) would be the possibility of recreating some of histories great minds. Is there anything wrong with creating a dozen people genetically identical to Albert Einstein and raising them in the same manner as the original Einstein in the hopes of producing the next great scientific discoveries?
Absolutely, but news reports from places like India do state that people are selling their organs cheaply to meet the supply and demand over there. While there is no confirmed report of organ stealing, giving some peasant $200 for his kidney and selling it to a hospital for $2000 seems real close to ‘organlegging.’
If you think real organlegging can’t be possible, just wait. I’m probably older than you and I’ve discovered a whole lot of things possible that I never figured would
happen.
As for surgeons risking their careers, we already have disbarred doctors illegally practicing medicine, some have been caught doing surgery
in fact, several ‘doctors’ of Hispanic origin were arrested recently in Florida for practicing medicine without a license in a Hispanic community. Reasons? Their own licenses were no good here, plus the Hispanics found it cheaper to go to these guys instead of expensive, regular doctors.
A few decades back, doctors risked their licenses doing abortions and taking bullets out of gangsters and doing plastic surgery on them.
Your analogy is flawed.
BTW, the current surgery to remove a kidney is actually simple and fast, if you don’t want to keep things neat. They no longer gut you with a huge lateral incision.
We cannot do complete cloning today, not in the true sense of the word, which is to culture a complete human being from a random group of cells out of the womb. We squirt DNA into fertilized eggs, basically, and reinsert the egg into the womb. We might inject specific cells into a fertilized eggs, but we are not doing true cloning.
When we have a complete, sentient being cultured from random cells, grown out of a body, then we will have a true clone. By that time, genetic manipulation will be advanced enough to remover undesirable inheritable traits. You really think that genetics will not be used in cloning? Right now the concept smacks of billions in bucks for the possibility of cultured kids, so familles may eliminate undesirable traits such as dwarfism, MS, Chorea, inherited mental problems and genetic things like addictions. Work is proceeding on that rapidly.
Currently, the overwhelming majority agrees that slavery is wrong. The Blacks alone make sure that we don’t forget the evils of the past. History, in some instances, repeats itself. Look at my example of the motorcycle helmet laws. Now, slavery is not acceptable or viable, but suddenly develop a surplus population of created people, who have dubious status as human beings, and somewhere, slavery is likely to spring up.
Our corporations are using slaves today. I guess you did not read my post closely. The most legal is overseas where the labor laws virtually do not exist and working conditions are nasty. We have closed down sweatshops here, packed with Illegals, who work for chicken feed, but are afraid to complain because they’ll be deported. In Florida, the great Citrus industry as short a time ago as 5 or 6 years had a cute trick. They hired Mexican and Cuban and Haitian Illegals to pick fruit for below minimum wages. The work is hard, hot, dirty and nasty. Not to mention the huge grove spiders. Complain and you get fired. Raise a fuss and you get deported.
First, since most Illegals do not have banks, the grovers would pay them by check, then set up a table and cash their checks, for 5% of the total. From time to time, if a crew was a bit too surely, just before pay day, when the fruit was picked, a call to immigration got them all rounded up and deported – and they were not given their pay. So the grovers made a profit off of their misery.
Slum lording is illegal, but even here I can show you a couple of mobile homes, set illegally in some lots, that should be burned for public safety, where the owner rents them to Illegals at $450 a month. They often pack in 10 to 20 people in a small, two bedroom, single wide. There are holes in the floors, bugs infesting the places, and the place is a wreck. BTW - the landlord often will charge a fee by the person, say $75 a month, and for 10 Illegals, that’s a deal, and the landlord makes $750 bucks on a property that should be condemned.
So, laws can be circumvented, or changed at whim. Did you ever think the time would come when you could not even smack your own kid without going to jail?
The potential exists to have sentient clones regulated to subhuman status, being born not of woman, which can generate a form of potential abuse and discrimination.
Not that any of this might happen, but the potential is there.
Recently, I observed a report on a psychological study using a fake shock box. Basically, people were told that if an unseen person, wired up to the box, behind a wall, did not answer questions correctly, to shock them and the range of shocks went from very mild to electric chair style. Tape recordings gave the impression that people were grunting, groaning or screaming from the shocks and the box buzzed impressively.
When asked if the shocks hurt the unseen (and imaginary) subject, the people were told ‘no tissue damage is done.’
Teachers were among the testers, and supposedly, the unseen subjects were school kids. It varied from person to person. The results were that teachers electrocuted 65% of their students. The other results were that 95% of the people blindly followed instructions and over shocked the people, ignoring the screams, cries and whimpering coming from behind the wall.
It explained a whole lot about how Hitler controlled Germany. It also explained how good, honest, average people will almost mindlessly follow instructions, regardless of the consequences towards others.
The machine rests in the psych museum, at the University of Akron, in Akron, Ohio.
As to the OP, my posts disclose some of the fears people have concerning cloning.
Never, ever underestimate the stupidity of the average person. All it takes is one, powerful, persuasive speaker to start a movement in motion and laws change along with attitudes. Even Serial killers have fans and Manson proved that people can be talked into almost anything.
BTW, I have no real dispute with your thinking, but you seem to think the general public is infallible and businesses have morals. I beg to differ.
Spyder, your distinction between “true cloning” and what we can do today is false.
Dolly the sheep is a true clone, meaning that she was created using the somatic cells of an adult organism. What you are talking about is in vitro gestation, which is currently impossible. In vitro gestation wouldn’t require cloning anyway, if we could do it we would be able to use regular ferilized ova. But we can’t do it, we are nowhere even close to imagining doing it, we don’t even know where to begin.
But we could begin cloning humans tomorrow. True clones, meaning genetic duplicates of adult humans. Your idiolectic definition of cloning is not shared by anyone else in this discussion.
But the clones would always have legal parents, the people who caused the clone to be created. If those people are judged unsuitable, the baby can be adopted just like millions of other babies are adopted every year. Babies without parents aren’t enslaved in this country.
Yes, conditions akin to slavery still exist in the third world. We do not live in the third world. Yes, people will do some pretty horrible things. We have laws against those things.
Even if we change the discussion from cloning, which requires a surrogate mother to vat-grown babies, we still have to remember that what will come out of the vats will be babies, not adults…and that there is no reason to suppose that people will be any more or less likely to view those babies as human beings than any other human babies. Uterine replicator babies will be babies just like any other babies, either protected by the same protections that protect other babies, or enslaved by the same slavers that enslave other babies. The replicators will have nothing to do with it.
But that has nothing to do with cloning.
your idea of “true” cloning is false. You are talking about growing people in vats, not cloning. Cloning is not in vitro gestation, it is the growth of
LEMUR, I disagree with your comments, though I admit I may be wrong about in-vetro (sp) cloning. Just because no one here agrees with my posts doesn’t mean others have not already thought about them.
Where do you think I got the concepts?
BTW, ‘slavery’ is not just in third world countries. You missed my comments about Illegals in the States? Previous comments about Illegals being vital to the States bordering Mexico? Sign up for the legal slave market in your city. It’s known as any daily work, daily pay place. Well, most of them.
There is still a battle going on between us and Big Business, which still tries to sell us dangerous and defective things faster than we can force recalls and slap lawsuits on them. Now days, in new cars with power everything, you are urged to carry a little device to shatter the windows with if you crash into water and sink because the electronics will probably fail, trapping you in the car. You buy your own device.
Only the VW bug of one year was designed to float if it went into the water right side up. No one has made any effort to include devices of any type to make a car sink slowly or assist you in exiting if all power fails.
Certain high end cars come with built in roll bars, but most here in the States don’t have them. Plus, the roofs on newer, compact cars smash flat much easier than those of around 20 years ago.
See what I mean? Major corporations will economize to maximize profits at no regard to lives. You do not count. You are expendable.
True cloning, as I knew it, was cultivating a whole person in an artificial womb, or persons. There has been speculation on growing clones minus parts of the brain which give us sentience, with just those parts that control the autonomic nervous systems, to be used as body parts.
Even now, with the current cloning techniques, there are problems. All animals currently cloned seem normal, but after a certain time, inexplicably start to pack on weight. They get fat. No one knows why.
Plus, a human is much more complex than an animal, especially in the brain. We do not yet know what type of brain would be produced from cloning. We have a lot left to find out, so cloning a full human now is not a good idea.
I’m all for cloning! Don’t get me wrong. I just know people real well. I mean, look at how a paper hanger committed one of the greatest genocidal acts in history and got nearly an entire small nation to take on the world, even to getting the children to turn in their own parents if they did not ‘think right.’ And this a nation proud of it’s rough, tough, Nordic individualistic heritage. In the end they followed Hitler like sheep.
Then examine how the gentle, generous, gracious, Americans turned a ship load of Jewish refugees fleeing death away from our shores, not caring if they lived or died.
I mean, folks of the Christian religion cannot even agree on how to worship the same God!! They’ll fight over keeping a proven defective two party political system!
How old are you? I’m in my late 40s. That means I’ve lived through the rise of rock and roll, the cold war, civil rights, a couple of nuclear standoffs, the rise and fall of Mao Tsung, wife beating becoming a crime, the beginning of segregation, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Cuba falling under Castro, the Bay of Pigs, the hippies, the dippies, the yuppies, Disco, the arise of coke, which turned into crack, saw the beginning of the war of drugs, the passing of consumer protection laws, patients rights, the greedy 80s, the selfish 90s, the rise and fall of several clothing styles and their return, and a whole lot more.
So, I’ve watched people change dramatically in just a few decades. I recall Governor Wallace and his determined stand to prevent desegrigation in his State. I recall the introduction of Playboy, Playgirl, Penthouse and Cosmopolitan. I bought one of the first issues of People Magazine, watched the decline of Mad Magazine, saw the honorable tradition of Hobo turn into dangerous transients and sympathy for the homeless turn into annoyance.
So, I’m aware of what people just might do. I understand what can be and am not usually surprised when some of it actually happens.
However, I am a great supporter of cloning but I think they should concentrate on developing organs first instead of whole humans.
Didjaknow that they’ve discovered that there is no immune reaction when an infants heart is transplanted into another infant? Now, if they can clone hearts with that same neutral action, transplant recipients would not need to stay on immune suppressants for the rest of their lives.
When Benjamin Franklin introduced the lightning rod, he allowed buildings to be struck by lightning and not get burnt to the ground in the process. Many at the time considered this to be Tampering in God’s Domain – partly because the Gothic churches of the time had very tall steeples and got hit by lightning more often than other buildings did (thus “proving” that the parishoners of that church weren’t as holy as the ones attending the churches that didn’t get hit by lightning).
Yes, I’m fully aware that currently cloning should not be considered safe to do on humans. Currently, it would be unethical to perform human cloning. The procedure should be perfected on other mammals first.
However, a human is NOT much more complex than an animal. We are exactly as complex as a cow or a sheep. How would you identify which organisms are more complex than others, anyway? Let’s say we decide that the number of genes is the measure of complexity. Well, humans have about the same numbers of genes that other mammals do. Humans are not more complex.
If you go back and read my earlier statements, you will see that I do not endorse human cloning AT THIS TIME, since it is still experimental…just like the first in vitro fertillizations were experimental. The technique was not applied to humans until it was perfected on animals. Cloning should be done the same way.
And I totally disagree with your charaterization of day labor as “slavery”. It is not. It is paying a person to work for you for one day. The people who do day labor still have all the civil rights of other people of the same status. The trouble is that many are not US citizens. That doesn’t make them slaves. If you think so, I suggest you crack open a history book and learn something about slavery.
Headless clone ranching is a non-issue. If we had the technology to grow clones whole except for the forebrain, then why not simply grow a single organ? Much easier and cheaper.
Even if a person created a clone for the purpose of organ transplantation, the clone child would have all the same protection that other children do when they are candidates for organ donation. Children sometimes donate organs to family members, so presumably cloned children would sometimes do so as well. But such donation would fall under the same ethical guidelines that are followed today. I mean, suppose you needed a bone marrow transplant. Even today, you could go out and have a child the old fashioned way and hope the child would be a bone marrow donor candidate for you. Good luck finding someone to have this child for you though, and good luck finding a hospital willing to perform the surgery.
And of course, no hospital is going to perform surgery that would unacceptably risk the health and safety of the child. So no, you would never have the right to harvest your clone child’s heart, any more than you have the right to harvest the organs of your other children. I don’t know why you think the public would stand for you killing your child simply because your child was your identical twin. Identical twins are not allowed to murder each other simply because they are genetic duplicates.
And don’t tell me that the public will support murdering babies because they want the organs too. Are you allowed to murder your children today? Think about it…if people were as depraved as you believe, why is child abuse illegal? Why is it against the law to harm your child? According to you, people should be voting to get rid of child abuse laws. It will always be against the law to enslave and murder children.
Your points about “big business” not providing floating cars or roll bars is irrellevant. What does that have to do with cloning? You may think you are providing evidence that big business is amoral. Wow, huge revelation there. But there is a big difference between providing cheap cars and paying low wages on one hand, and slavery and murder on the other. Can corporations own slaves today? No, they cannot. Can corporations remove people’s organs without consent today? No, they cannot. Why would cloning those things more likely. The answer is that cloning would NOT make corporate crime either more or less likely. So please, stop with the examples of corporate crime. They are irrelevant to the discussion of cloning.
Why are clones more likely to be exploited than other people?
This is the core of your whole arguement and you seem to be avoiding it by falling back on more and more examples of man’s inhumanity to man. This isn’t the “Some people are right bastards” thread, though you are more than welsomce to start such a thread if you think you will get any real arguement. This is the “Why are people upset about cloning?” thread, with emphasis on the cloning. It’s not enough to say “Well, it could be used as an excuse” because ANYTHING could be used as an excuse for inhumanity.
I want to repeat, too, that vat-grown babies are so far away as to be unimaginable at this stage in time. Furthermore, they having nothing to do with cloning pre se: as was alluded to, it would be a lot cheaper to buy sperm and egg, shake, and put the resulting mix in your Black and Decker Home Womb. The two things are completly different.
Finally, I will say what has been said a hundred different times in a slightly different way:
Clones are people with genes from one other person instead of two other people.
That’s it, cloning is no more and no less than that, and cloning is what we are discussing.
Most people don’t drive their cars into water. Can you demonstrate that this is a valid concern?
[quote]
Certain high end cars come with built in roll bars, but most here in the States don’t have them.
[quote]
I believe this is incorrect. Can you support it with fact?
[quote]
Plus, the roofs on newer, compact cars smash flat much easier than those of around 20 years ago.
[quote]
I believe this is incorrect. Can you support it with fact?
But, as you have been corrected, you now know that you were mistaken, right? Or at least that you are using definitions that the rest of the world does not share?
I believe this is incorrect. Can you support it with fact?
Geez-louise, why in Kdapt’s name didn’t you just say this to begin with? Of course, that’s not really what you’re saying, near as I can tell. You’re saying that cloning humans at all is not a good idea–not now, not ever. If I have misinterpreted, please let me know.
True. How is this relevant?
You’re in your 40s. Good for you. I think you might have a slightly rose-tinged view of life way back when you were a kid. Near as I can tell, being a “hobo” was never honourable outside of the dime novel, and the homeless were never coddled. (I’m all with you on the decline of MAD, though. Bill Gaines must be rolling in his grave.)
Coulda fooled me.
Abso-freakin-lutely. So why destroy that learning process? Or are we just going to learn by osmosis?
Most people don’t drive their cars into water. Can you demonstrate that this is a valid concern?
[quote]
Certain high end cars come with built in roll bars, but most here in the States don’t have them.
[quote]
I believe this is incorrect. Can you support it with fact?
[quote]
Plus, the roofs on newer, compact cars smash flat much easier than those of around 20 years ago.
[quote]
I believe this is incorrect. Can you support it with fact?
But, as you have been corrected, you now know that you were mistaken, right? Or at least that you are using definitions that the rest of the world does not share?
I believe this is incorrect. Can you support it with fact?
Geez-louise, why in Kdapt’s name didn’t you just say this to begin with? Of course, that’s not really what you’re saying, near as I can tell. You’re saying that cloning humans at all is not a good idea–not now, not ever. If I have misinterpreted, please let me know.
True. How is this relevant?
You’re in your 40s. Good for you. I think you might have a slightly rose-tinged view of life way back when you were a kid. Near as I can tell, being a “hobo” was never honourable outside of the diem novel, and the homeless were never coddled. (I’m all with you on the decline of MAD, though. Bill Gaines must be rolling in his grave.)
Coulda fooled me.
Abso-freakin-lutely. So why destroy that learning process? Or are we just going to learn by osmosis?
A simple question: If I can be cloned, am I, the original me, expendable, and be subject to the whims of the powers that be, who can kill me as many times as they feel like, thinking, “We can clone him again”?
Remember, “you” can’t be cloned. That is, the things that make you you–your memories, your personality, your mind–will not be replicated by cloning. All that will happen is that someone who looks strikingly like you did at that age, and who will likely turn out to have a personality that’s very much like yours in many ways, will be born. But they won’t be you.
Now, Star Trek-style transporter/replicator technology would raise some very interesting questions about personal identity. But that’s not even on the horizon yet, technologically speaking, and may well be forever impossible.
quote from way back in the beginning o’ the thread:
"You will need to grab a bible thumper for the specifics but I vaguely recall something about religion having a problem with “man creates man” under his own control. "
And just what do you consider the act of sex then? It’s for makin’ babies y’know…the only difference in cloning is that is a baby in which the original genetic code used is the copy of one already created. No different than a twin, and the last time I checked the Catholic Church ruled that twins do indeed possess individual souls (if you should have religious concerns in the matter).
The ethical danger in cloning that I see is if somehow the rights of the clonee as a free individual are possibly usurped by the cloner (ie the gov’t owning the rights to its private clone creations). As long as the “all men are created equal” right applies, I see no moral dilemma.
Ah, but sex for reproduction is within God’s plan. If a baby comes of it, it’s God’s will, and by his grace. It should not be up to man to create life outside of the natural, Godly way.
Well, andros is right, that’s the Catholic church’s view. That’s why they’re against in vitro fertilization, birth control, non-procreative sex, etc, etc.
I imagine any religion that has a problem with IVF would have problem with cloning. After all, cloning would also be IVF as well. But most protestant religions aren’t against IVF.
Capacitor: No, cloning won’t make the “original” more expendible. My sisters are clones. Does that make one more expendable than the other? Remember, all cloning does is create a human baby who is the identical twin of another human being. It does not create a duplicate of the person. Clones can’t be grown in tanks, they would be babies, not adults, they don’t share memories, etc.
This is why I argue that cloning presents no new ethical problems. It is simply the combination of in vitro fertillization with identical twinning. If you have no moral objection to IVF or identical twins, there is no logical moral objection to cloning, assuming it is safe and effective.
If you DO have an objection to IVF, like the catholic church does, then yes, you’d be against cloning. Or, if you felt that identical twins were soul-less replacable automatons, then you’d be against cloning.
Once again, cloning would create a human baby who is the identical twin of another person. Is there anything immoral about that?
Lemur, as I understand it the Catholic church’s objection to IVF is not that it is “unnatural” but rather that many more eggs are fertilized than implanted: if you take the stance that life begins at conception, then discarding half a dozen lives in order to create one or two is unacceptable. Of course, the same objection would exisit to cloning: unless they got very wery good at it, most attempts would result in ‘discards.’
The Catholic church also has no real probem with non-reproductive sex-rythem method is ok-it just dosen’t want you to put any chemical or physical barriers up that might thwart Gods plan.
Note tbat I am not advocating the Catholic Church’s views on birth control, just trying to keep the facts straight.
I agree that the Catholics have a problem with IVF because not all the embryos created are implanted. But even if this weren’t the case, the Catholics would be against it…after all, they are opposed to birth control, even between married couples, because it interferes with God’s plan for sex.
Remember, the ban on birth control even applies to methods where the sperm and egg never meet and there is no problematic prevention of implantation. Opposition to IUDs could logically be because they prevent the zygote from implantation, even birth control pills, but condoms?
I honestly have no idea how the Catholic church would feel about cloning if 100% sucuess rates could be established. Remember, the rhythem method of birth control is ok. Near as I can understand, the idea is that you shouldn’t try to thwart what God wanted to be with chemical or physical barriers (somehow God is assumed to have less trouble getting around the rhythem method). However, there is a difference between stopping conception and encouraging it–the Catholic Church has no objection to other fertility treatments, such as drugs to encourage ovulation.
If you think real organlegging can’t be possible, just wait. I’m probably older than you and I’ve discovered a whole lot of things possible that I never figured would
happen.
[/QUOTE]
What does age have to do with seeing things or understanding anything? What have you seen that you wouldn’t have figured happening? The moon landing? Vietnam? The mapping of the human chromosones?
[/QUOTE]
As for surgeons risking their careers, we already have disbarred doctors illegally practicing medicine, some have been caught doing surgery
[/QUOTE]
Cite please
[/QUOTE]
in fact, several ‘doctors’ of Hispanic origin were arrested recently in Florida for practicing medicine without a license in a Hispanic community. Reasons? Their own licenses were no good here, plus the Hispanics found it cheaper to go to these guys instead of expensive, regular doctors.
[/QUOTE]
…You guessed it. Cite please.
I could go on… but Im not going to. I’m not sure about everone else here, but I would like some confirmation on some of these “claims” you make. I certainly do not take somebodies word for something they say, and what you are saying is a bit of a strech, so make sure they aren’t sites with some vague, tenuous reference to the subject. Thanks
