[_ Old Earth _] Cloning Ethics

[carbon]

http://www.livescience.com/animals/clon ... 41224.html

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news ... oning.html

I want your opinions. I'll state mine later. I think there needs to be a good discussion though.

 

[Blazin Bones]

I'm against cloning because I personally feel that God is better than man at making a life. I don't know enough to make too much of an informed opinion beyond that.

 

[carbon]

I'm against cloning because I personally feel that God is better than man at making a life.

:amen

That's basically my opinion.

Plus you get into things like people wanting their animals back because they died and they missed them. As cold as it sounds...they need to face reality. Plus the clone is different. It's not the same no matter what the people think.

And...

Then it could lead to human cloning which...

Would de-personalize and de-individualize people and even de-humanize them. Me no likey.

Plus into the wrong hands...they could build an army with them. eeeeek.

 

[lordkalvan]

A cloned human-being is still an individual human being. S/he would have to grow from an infant into an adult, passing through a variety of life experiences that would inevitably be significantly different from those of the individual they were cloned from, resulting in a distinctly different individual. The resulting individual would be distinct and different from the original 'model'. Are identical twins in any way dehumanized, depersonalized or de-individualized? From the genomics.energy.gov website:

Dolly or any other animal created using nuclear transfer technology is not truly an identical clone of the donor animal. Only the clone's chromosomal or nuclear DNA is the same as the donor. Some of the clone's genetic materials come from the mitochondria in the cytoplasm of the enucleated egg.

Source: http://www.ornl.gov/sci/techresources/Human_Genome/elsi/cloning.shtml

It is also the case that coning does not 'create' life as such and is much more expensive than creating an individual by the 'traditional' method. Most states are quite capable of creating more-or-less brainwashed legions to do their bidding without recourse to costly cloning technology.

 

[Blazin Bones]

I could make a smart remark about our newly elected president, but I'll refrain. So since you've given us some details, how do you feel about cloning kalvan?

 

[lordkalvan]

I think it all depends on what you mean by 'cloning'; it's not a simple yes/no, either/or question. I am not a supporter of cloning individual human beings in general (what's the point?), but I can conceive of benefits from the cloning of animals. I can also see benefits from the use of cloning techniques on humans in medical treatment, e.g. if it becomes possible to grow replacement organs from genetic material from the individual to be treated, then transplant rejection problems (and all the costs associated with treating rejection) would be pretty much solved.