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Cloning


fafalone

How do you feel about cloning?  

2 members have voted

  1. 1. How do you feel about cloning?

    • All cloning is acceptable
      25
    • Only therapeutic cloning
      20
    • All cloning is wrong
      5


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I have no problem with it. I suppose some Christians may have problems because we are "playing God". Some people don't think that clones will have a soul. Matter of opinion I guess, since thats not testable.

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I'd have to say that I am Catholic, and I honestly have no problems with cloning. I'd also have to say that I am not a practicing Catholic, and dislike the riches and corruptiveness found in the Chuch. Pro-Cloning, I am. ;)

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I 'm Gods gift to women, (in my own mind). intelligent and handsome, (My mom says), and big, and strong, (the truth).

I don't mind if they clone my parts but I worry they won't be used ethically. I've carried 100lbs over and over for ten hour days and been saved by my reflexes. I wouldn't want a bunch of me "slaves" made for toil or servicing rich women,(in my own mind). As long as the parts made the world better I'm OK with it.

This was a fun question besides important. Hope you'll indulge my playing with it besides answering it.

Just aman

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  • 2 weeks later...

Completely acceptable. It would be nice to have a replacement part whenever I needed it with little change of rejection. The only problem I would have with it would be if the clone had an actual life. I wouldnt want my clone to have the ability to know what a good life is. I would want it to have lived. Remove parts of the brain? I am not to up to date on ways to keep the clone alive but not 'living.'

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If the scientists clone body parts I think the brain should be off limits. Anything else is just meat. I wouldn't mind having a spare heart and knees sitting in a jar. They could wait until I needed them. If I had a spare brain I'd probably have to raise it like a handicapped child.

Just aman

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  • 2 weeks later...

Making body parts is a wonderful prospect for medicine, and I don't see any ethical problems there (or perhaps I'm just short-sighted).

 

As for full human beings, I don't know. The religious view that a clone wouldn't have a soul doesn't seem logical to me, assuming we even all have souls in the first place. A cloned human would be just another person developed in a womb and growing on this world. The fact that it would share DNA sequences with another person shouldn't preclude its possession of a soul. Aside from that, I see no real problems with cloned humans, as long as we remember to place more emphasis on the "human" part of that than the "clone" part. However, human beings do tend to value their individuality (this even includes those who spend their lives trying to imitate and impress other people), so I suppose that could pose a problem.

 

Humans tend to fear the unknown, and that's even true with new technology. Cloning is a pretty famous process now, but the idea of using that ability on ourselves still falls into the realm of enigma, so it tends to alarm and frighten most of us. If it comes into being, and human cloning becomes an everyday process, I'm sure we'll all grow used to it in a few years, and look back, laughing, at our concern over the ethical issues.

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  • 5 months later...

Sounds great to me. Why should we have to have more faults than we can avoid? Just because nature says so? I find it quite hypocritical for people to be OK with doing everything else that makes up a society in opposition to nature, but when it comes to altering the genetic makeup of our body, it's a huge ethics issue.

 

Furthermore, all the people who support altering the gene to cure an illness but are ethically against enhancements should be smacked. Same for people who support in vitro fertilization but thinking cloning is the greatest moral offense ever.

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quite hypocritical for people to be OK with doing everything else that makes up a society in opposition to nature, but when it comes to altering the genetic makeup of our body, it's a huge ethics issue.

 

I believe the criticism of cloning comes because we do not fully understand the processes with which we are dealing. Many of our cloned animals are turning out to have serious problems, why risk this with a human life?

 

Furthermore, all the people who support altering the gene to cure an illness but are ethically against enhancements should be smacked.

 

It may not sound that bad, but it could be horrific. Once we start enhancing people, we divide the race into genetic classes. Those who are enhanced, and those who are not. Hitler had this idea as well.

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1. We don't fully understand it YET. We will. Once we get it done with higher primates, we will move on to humans and it will be perfectly safe. Unhealthy clones is related to imperfections in technique that lead to DNA damage; we will develop better methods too.

 

 

2. We already divide the population by race, income, ethnicity, etc; why would genetic alterations be any more severe?

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Originally posted by fafalone

2. We already divide the population by race, income, ethnicity, etc; why would genetic alterations be any more severe?

It's not a matter of creating divisions - you can't make everybody identical - but perpetuating a division for 'unfair' reasons. Sci-fi tends to forsee speciation (The Time Machine), or something like the X-men with obvious persecution. If you look at class divisions in the western world now, it's evidently much subtler than that.

 

We don't yet know with the damage to clones is due to an imperfect technique or the nature of the technique itself. This full understanding may be decades away (if only because we may want to watch cloned primates grow up), rather than years or even here, now.

 

That said, when people are going ahead and doing it anyway, it makes more sense to licence and regulate it than drive it underground.

 

(PS. Arch(?)angel for me)

 

The poll should make it clear whether it means now or ever, can that be changed? I assumed ever.

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I think in most cases, it is not the act which is the crime, rather, it is the intent. Why do we want to clone? Whilst cloning body parts would certainly ease the problem of the shortage of donor organs, and therefore have medical application in an already ethically acceptable realm (organ transplant), what would be the intent behind cloning human beings? What purpose would it serve? If, for example, a family lost a child, and had their dead child cloned what purpose would be served? Do you think the clone would be the same person? A new individual created to replace a lost loved one would most likely be forced to live their formative years in the shadow of the original child, driven to behave in certain ways by the expectancies of the parents. Nonetheless, this would be a completely different person (appearance aside). Perhaps not the best upbringing; to be valued for who you look like and not who you are.

 

As to genetic enhancement, this smells strongly of eugenics. Moreover, in my humble opinion, I don't think we are sufficiently qualified to make valid decisions concerning what constitues an 'enhancement'. Big muscles? Blonde hair? blue eyes?...what exactly? And Who decides?

 

I do agree with the point above. Genetic enhancement would, by definition be devisive. Aren't there sufficient bases for developing in-group/out-group mentalities? Colour, religion, nationality, political affilliation and now genetic modification? Maybe we should try to deal with what we are, before thinking about making radical changes.

 

Just a thought.

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But why not ameliorate ourselves? If you find it acceptable to eliminate disease through gene manipulation, then what about altering other genes that make us prone to conditions like alcohol or obesity? What if one of the disease causing genes is part of a polygenic trait that results in a cosmetic change? Then is it wrong?

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i think that it will be a question better answered in the future when we actually know how to control genes and alter them.

 

Its a perfect means of living with our enviroment. cause all our exsistance is to alter our enviroment to better suit ourselves. but with this we can change ourselves to suit our enviroment. this is much more easier and more efficient.

 

but it could also as said before cause some antimosity towards those who have these new gene enhancements. what would be even better would be biomechanical suits that did that for us. as in give us more strength or what ever

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