Cloning Humans

[Serever]

pretty much everyone over here pronounces it "ter-mart-o" doesnt matter. they tast like shit anyway.

[Terminator]

Rustvaar:

So much for ethics class.

If you make an exact genetic copy of someone, it is technically a whole different person. How can you call this person a piece of property or a guinea pig for tests? If it is a copy, and it is allowed to mature much beyond a fetus, it will begin to mature just like any other human child. Since it cannot possibly grow up in an identical environment, even its personality will be different from the original host.

Except for the technicality of the manor of conception, this is an entirely seperate being; a human being.

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You have to remember the way clones are made. It is not like in Hollywood films, where the end product is exactly the same as the original, mind and body. It is not a "photocopy", as you put it.

You insert the nucleus from a donor's cell into an unfertilized egg which has had its own nucleus removed. The egg begins to divide exactly like a brand new enbryo, and needs a surrogate mother. It is only slightly different from in-vitro fertilization, and the embryo grows into a fetus and into a baby just like any other human would. It will develop into a totally different person with a different mind.

It will not be some mindless hunk of flesh that you can run tests on, unless of course you genetically manipulate it for exactly that purpose. Would you consent to chopping up normal babies for spare parts and subjecting them to drug tests? Because saying you accept that on clones is the same thing.

Consciousness is a biological development, not a gift from "God". After the average age of about 4 years, the brain is capable of asking such questions as "Why am I here?", meaning the child is self-aware. An exact clone will undergo this too...

Put yourself in the position of the clone, and think about whether you would like what you are proposing or not...

[dragonfliet]

If you make an exact genetic copy of someone, it is technically a whole different person. How can you call this person a piece of property or a guinea pig for tests? If it is a copy, and it is allowed to mature much beyond a fetus, it will begin to mature just like any other human child. Since it cannot possibly grow up in an identical environment, even its personality will be different from the original host.

Hear hear.

Cloning individual organs is something that most rational adults will support, but cloning human beings raises the stakes considerably. Just because they're a genetic copy of you doesn't make them your property. I don't know if you've seen The Island, but it's exactly what you're proposing, I kid you not. Watch it, it's a pretty good flick; and by no means is it an ethics study, it touches on the reasons why you just can't do that.

Where we come froom doesn't matter, we all begin forming our own distinct personaly very shortly after the beginning.

~Jason

[Rustvaar]

Terminator!


Your ethics are not my ethics, remember that.

[YokaI]

Rustvaar:

So much for ethics class.

If you make an exact genetic copy of someone, it is technically a whole different person. How can you call this person a piece of property or a guinea pig for tests? If it is a copy, and it is allowed to mature much beyond a fetus, it will begin to mature just like any other human child. Since it cannot possibly grow up in an identical environment, even its personality will be different from the original host.

Its personality may be different, however making copies of people who have the same dna too many times may fuck up our Reprudution and our society might have to live by cloning alone.

[Spartan]

Its personality may be different, however making copies of people who have the same dna too many times may fuck up our Reprudution and our society might have to live by cloning alone.

That's a very good point that I completely forgot to mention.

[Terminator]

Anyone who watches Stargate SG-1 knows that that is why the Asgard civilization was reduced to a tiny fraction of what it once was.

Obviously, cloning will deplete the gene pool. Plus you begin to accumulate errors in the DNA every time it is copied, and unless you solve that problem, eventually clones will simply die from critical genetic malfunctions and mutations. It is the same kind of effect as you get when you start copying tapes on a VCR, then make copies of the copies. Every time you throw away the older generation, you are lest with worse and worse quality copies. Eventually, all you get is static.

It also means that human biological evolution will stop, and humanity as a species will be stuck right where it is...


Plus, nobody mentioned the little problem they have with aging DNA. When they cloned Dolly, it turned out that while she looked like a baby sheep, all her cells were in fact the same age as the original donor. (Ex: clone a 40-year old man, and the DNA of the clone will have 40 years of accumulated errors from day one, meaning the original and the clone will die of old age at roughly the same time, even though the clone will appear much younger.) Unless the DNA can be restored and the age problem can be reversed before cloning begins, the results if you try are not going to be what you expect. It is a serious problem.

[dragonfliet]

Anyone who watches Stargate SG-1 knows that that is why the Asgard civilization was reduced to a tiny fraction of what it once was.

Seriously, you need to add a "haha" at the end or preface it with: "this is a stupid example but..." because I totally just had a flashback of watching the movie Trekkies.

Obviously, cloning will deplete the gene pool. Plus you begin to accumulate errors in the DNA every time it is copied, and unless you solve that problem, eventually clones will simply die from critical genetic malfunctions and mutations. It is the same kind of effect as you get when you start copying tapes on a VCR, then make copies of the copies. Every time you throw away the older generation, you are lest with worse and worse quality copies. Eventually, all you get is static.

This reasoning is flawed, as you wouldn't need to clone the clone of a clone in most likely hood, you'd probably have access to the original DNA, and making copies of a master doesn't degrade quality at all. That said, with newer formats, you can copy a copy of a copy as much as you want without any degredation (as a digital file doesn't degrade like magnetic tape does).

As for the Dolly effect, that's most definately a factor there. Of course, these are all very side arguments, seeing, as you pointed out Terminator (and I'm sure this has been mentioned countless times in this tread) that the big issue isn't with the quality of clones of clones, but the ethics of creating a clone and enslaving them to your will because they're not regarded as human.

~Jason

[Terminator]

I would say it should be based off of the genetics. A clone's DNA is definitely human, of that there can be no doubts, so they should be afforded all the usual rights that society grants those who were concieved by natural means.

If you are going to say that clones are the property of those who made them, then what about in-vitro fertilization? Are the people created by that process also to be considered the property of the company that made them? I think not. It is blurring that fine line...

If we leave these kinds of questions to be answered by politicians, you can bet they will side with the money and probably create a paradox like I mention above...

[zombie@computer]

I would say it should be based off of the genetics. A clone's DNA is definitely human, of that there can be no doubts, so they should be afforded all the usual rights that society grants those who were concieved by natural means.

If you are going to say that clones are the property of those who made them, then what about in-vitro fertilization? Are the people created by that process also to be considered the property of the company that made them? I think not. It is blurring that fine line...

If we leave these kinds of questions to be answered by politicians, you can bet they will side with the money and probably create a paradox like I mention above...

By law, the "owner" of a creature is the organism who gave birth to it. Therefor, by law, the "owner" of a child, whether or not the babies egg is from person x and the sperm from person y, is still the person who shat out the foetus.

[Dead-Inside]

By law, the "owner" of a creature is the organism who gave birth to it. Therefor, by law, the "owner" of a child, whether or not the babies egg is from person x and the sperm from person y, is still the person who shat out the foetus.

Soooo if you were to artificially provide the environment that would basically mean that you (Who own the machine) would "own" the baby?

Sounds good, I'll get cranking on it right now.

[Persol]

By law, the "owner" of a creature is the organism who gave birth to it.

No. By law, the 'parent' of a creature is the organism who gave birth to it. I can decide to never put fuel in my car. I can't decide to never feed my kid.

Children are only 'owned' in our society because otherwise they'd end up dead (for young children) or because society wants to shelter them for some other reason (no sustainable income).

A clone would initially be a child. The same laws apply as they would for any other child. Being the result of sexual reproduction doesn't somehow make you worth more than a clone.

The clone was never truly human, merely a recreation of a human, like photocopying an image on a more grand scale.

Let me put this another way. You have a genetic heart disease that will kill you around age 40. You have a child for the sole purpose of taking their heart at age 20 to give yourself another 20 years. Further, there are genetic clones that occur in nature and in humans.

Tying someone's rights as a person to how they were born is idiotic. You were born to a black woman... you don't matter. Your parents are such and such religion, you don't matter. You are the result of asexual reproduction. You don't matter.

Cloning for the sake of war, or to have some underclass to do the jobs we don't like would be wrong.

Um, this is moot argument. Nobody is going to clone for cheap labor. Why, because raising a person isn't cheap. As it is right now companies don't need to pay for the first 18 years of life... that's what parents/self-sustainabiliy is for. There's no benefit to this that you couldn't get cheaper.

Moreover, your reasoning is flawed. Your 'the ends justify the means' argument can also be used for slavery, killing the homeless, and you giving me all your money. Unless you can show that a clone is somehow less human, you can't assume you have any rights that it shouldn't.

Seeing as how your taking ethics now, you're probably learning about benefit calculations and all that. Unforntunately that is a VERY dumbed down version of ethics. What you need to do is say 'if we assume A, B and C... then following such and such logic... this is the conclusion'. Right now you are basing your 'ethics' on sci-fi.

Your ethics are not my ethics, remember that.

Ethics are ethics.

Your morality may be different.... but ethics are ethics. You think about, discuss and revise ethics according to your knowledge. Your morality is what's constant (even when it's wrong).

Obviously, cloning will deplete the gene pool.

No, it won't.

Think of the reasons for cloning:
1) medical care - very little reason to clone a whole person, and unlikely to happen do to the ethical issues of killing a person for a body part. No change in gene pool
2) for asexual reproduction - people have a genetic drive to spread THEIR DNA. The mother will most likely have her own (or someone close) DNA used. No shrinking in the gene pool.
3) for improvement of the race - as above, improvements are likely to happen on a per person basis. IE: take your DNA, improve a little, and you give birth. MORE diversity in the gene pool.
4) clone army - a waste of money. It's cheaper to only take care of the person for the year they are fighting for you, rather then the 18 years until you send them to battle.

It is the same kind of effect as you get when you start copying tapes on a VCR, then make copies of the copies.

No, it's not. DNA is self repairing. You have billions of copies of it. Cells that mutate in a negative way either kill the cell or kill the person... either way it doesn't end up in the next generation. Even more importantly, YOU HAVE GENETIC ENGINEERING at this point. If you can engineer the change in, you can engineer it back out.

It also means that human biological evolution will stop, and humanity as a species will be stuck right where it is...

No, it doesn't. If anything evolution would speed up as you now have control over the changes and don't need to wait for dumb luck.

Further, our evolution (in the developed world) has effectively stopped anyway. Anything you do after you reproduce doesn't affect evolution. It you die at 60 from a genetic failure, it doesn't matter. It isn't going to stop you from having kids.

lus, nobody mentioned the little problem they have with aging DNA. When they cloned Dolly, it turned out that while she looked like a baby sheep, all her cells were in fact the same age as the original donor. (Ex: clone a 40-year old man, and the DNA of the clone will have 40 years of accumulated errors from day one, meaning the original and the clone will die of old age at roughly the same time, even though the clone will appear much younger.)

It's not '40 years of errors'. Think of your DNA as being a zipper at the ends. You zip it up after being copied, but the teeth don't overlap. This isn't an age thing... it's random variation. Even in 80 year old adults there are cells with full telomerase. In babies there are cells with very little.

Further, it isn't as big a problem as the media made it seem. Culturing the cells first will allow the DNA to repair itself, and any damaged cells to suicide.

[thoth]

clone people bad...

[zombie@computer]

No. By law, the 'parent' of a creature is the organism who gave birth to it.

hence the quotes around owner

[Persol]

No. By law, the 'parent' of a creature is the organism who gave birth to it.

hence the quotes around owner

Well, I was trying to make several points compressed:
1) The person who gives birth isn't necessarily the guardian.
2) You dog has a puppy, the dog doesn't own the puppy. Since they are not human we do not attribute them any rights.
3) Using the word 'owner' confuses the issue when talking about human children, since humans (in most civilised countries) don't have owners. The closest thing to an 'owner' is collective law.