Human Cloning: Why not?

[»D1st0rt]

Kind of what Dav brought up, the original Dolly clone didn't live very long and had a slew of health issues because it was basically born with its DNA pre-frayed or however it degrades throughout the course of your life. Really the only way I can think of to counter this (unless we find a way to repair DNA) is to take the DNA of whoever you want to clone from them when they are themselves an embryo. This makes cloning current humans somewhat difficult.

[FMBI]

the clones would be the new aristocracy of the future world

I don't think this would happen. Why would a clone get more rights than a child of a super-rich person, for example? I'm also not sure what the problem was with clones traveling to space... how does this negatively affect me/future generations?

 

What the fuck does your life matter if your "parents" decided what you would look like, what basic characteristics you would have, and so forth

Well right now what you look like is essentially a random combination of your parents. Is your life meaningless because your characteristics are based on luck? Your parents already decide several factors that have large influences on your life (where you live, what sort of primary school you go to, your diet). Meaning in my life doesn't come from genetics, but instead from experiences and accomplishments, which genetic clones do not inherit.

 

Because the super-rich could create very close copies of themselves through cloning which would, at least in theory, give them a great amount of control over their children's lives, and ensure that they didn't get a deadbeat kid who threw all their cash away. Also, my point with the planetary comment was that they could just get away from any problems, and not be forced to account for anything they did. The combination of nonhumanity due to their clone origins, and the distance from Earth, would likely result in an almost total lack of empathy with everyone else.

 

As far as luck vs choice - I'm pretty much what I am because of luck and things I've done, that's true. And the things I've done are more important than luck, as well. But if you clone someone, and eliminate that luck, then they can't say "I'm different from my parents, and I can accomplish anything" - instead they will, in all likelihood, live merely as an extension of their ancestor's life. Free will would be diminished by the very nature of the people who would clone themselves in the first place - arrogant and determined to live on in some fashion or another.

 

I suppose you could disagree with this, but I'm trying to think of the long-term sociological implications.

 

 

 

Also, I realize I'm not addressing the possibility of cloning even being successful, but that's because biotechnology and nanotechnology have been advancing at such an exponential rate that there's no reason to believe it won't be both possible and perfected within 75-100 years.

[Dr Brain]

Besides, there's really no good reason *for* cloning.

 

One thing we could do is clone top scientists in the hopes that genetics played some part in their accomplishments (which I think is quite likely), which would in turn benefit everyone by accelerating discovery.

 

Additionally, real experiments could be done to determine how much genetics determine a person's future and how much of it is from environmental factors (and therefore influence policy for everyone's benefit). This doesn't need to be done unethically; for example we could create 100 clones and raise 50 in a city and 50 in a town and observe the differences years later. Right now all we have is identical twins separated at birth for these things, and 2 is a small sample size (using various pairs of identical twins helps, but introduces more variables from variations present among twin pairs).

 

Plus, we don't outlaw things because there's no reason for it, we outlaw things because they're harmful. There's no reason to hop around on one foot around my apartment building, but we're not outlawing that.

 

Or forever stagnate discovery, which seems more likely. Certain problems take a different way of looking at things than other problems. By your reasoning, cloned scientists would behave as the original, and you'd always be applying the same old reasoning to every problem. Newton and Einstein are notable in history because they *didn't* follow the norm, and great things happened. The same reasoning applies to immortality (which I am very much against): it would stagnate discovery.

 

There *are* harmful outcomes, but no good reasons (cloning scientists isn't a good reason, it's a bad one).

[Bak]

There *are* harmful outcomes

List some of these off please.

 

Or forever stagnate discovery, which seems more likely.

This would never happen, because if cloned scientists didn't produce novel results, research institutions would stop using them. The free market could handle the right balance of cloned and non-cloned scientists to maximize discovery. What you're claiming is that, in one lifetime, one style of reasoning discovers everything possible with that reasoning style, which is not true. Top scientists publish discoveries until they retire, which shows that they are limited by their lifetime, not their ideas. Eventually one line of clones may stop getting new ideas, and then we could stop creating those clones. No one is trying to replace traditional reproduction with a clone-only society. If cloning even a few scientists generates additional discovery, it is worth it to society and beneficial.

 

If you take a random child and give them the best education ever, there's no guarantee they'll become a good scientist because they might not be genetically predisposed to such a career. If you clone a top scientist, however, you know that they have the potential to achieve great discoveries. Are you claiming that intelligence is not a genetic trait?

 

Imagine you were trying to train Olympic swimmers. Would you be more successful training a random child, or a clone of Michael Phelps who you know is going to grow up to be 6"4 with ridiculously long arms?

[»Lynx]

Who's to say that the clones of the Scientists would actually like Science? You're not a born artist, or a born Scientist - you may be right or left brained but I'm pretty sure it's more environmental differences which determines how good a Scientist is.

 

-Lynx

[PaRa$iTe]

Am I the only one who thinks it could be ethically questionable to clone human beings to be used as tools of science rather than to be human?

 

Even if there wouldn't be any real reasons NOT to clone, I honestly wonder if you can come up with good enough reasons for it. I suspect that in order to perfect human cloning, you'd need a lot of money, plus the work of half of the world's most proficient researchers during decades. If the whole thing would be in order to make more of these said scientists, whose lives would be wasted on finding out how to do it... sounds pointless, huh? Even if it actually worked, we wouldn't get ahead in a few centuries, which seems like a pretty long-time investment considering the tendency of the human race to eliminate other countries and their scientific work in wars and suchlike.

 

On a side note, for example Einstein didn't make many important discoveries after publishing his General Theory of Relativity. So maybe Dr Brain's argument isn't all that flawed.

 

On the whole, I don't think it'd be worth the trouble. As for the problems with cloning in order to get organs - giving new organs to people wouldn't be ethically troublesome as such, but what people generally mean with this is that raising clones in order to kill them and steal their vital organs could be considered unfair.

[Dr Brain]

Are you claiming that intelligence is not a genetic trait?

 

Yes. Oh, I'm sure genetics factors into it, but upbringing seems to be more important.

 

I did list a harmful outcome. The old stogy cloned scientists would never relinquish their hold, and shun people who don't think like they do. It's happened a million times throughout scientific history, all one has to do is look.

[»Ducky]

Para, people waste their lives doing less. For many scientists, breakthroughs are what drive them into the field in the first place.

[Dav]

we also have to add in this that the environmental affect on development is highly significant and would lead to major differences between clones.

 

Identical twins are a great example of this, over their lifetime they will become visibly different. Studies of the gene expression levels also reveal that significant differences have developed.

 

This means that your clone will not be a perfect copy, but a very close replica bringing into further question the usefulness of actually doing it.