General News Human cloning now possible, but publics will resist

Why do people dislike this?

 

Because most people think it's highly unlikely that clones would be treated as human beings. It's argued that they would probably be used for experimentation or even slavery. I can't say for sure because people are much more sensitive to discrimination and what not now, but I would say it's certainly a possibility.

 

I don't think it has to do with the idea they would be treated like slaves, the big critique seems always to be that we will end up with a situation like in the movie Gattaca.

People worry we could end up in a situation where cloning and DNA modification in essence creates two separate humanities, one who are perfected in a test tube to combine superior everything (looks, intelligence, athletics, health) and those who are created "naturally". Such a situation could have many moral and ethical issues arising from it that make people uncomfortable with the idea.

Then of course there is the whole "we shouldn't be playing god" and "don't mess with the sanctity of life" crowds who have objections stemming from religious or other cultural ideals.

 

I suppose it could come in handy for a few select purposes, such as treatment development for those with rare deadly diseases, but, the ethical kinks and clauses would have to be isolated and worked out before even deciding what to do regarding that.

 

Oh, okay. This isn't a topic that comes up much so I've really only heard one argument as to why it's wrong. Honestly though, aren't clones usually inferior to the original anyway? Like, when they clone a sheep or something doesn't isn't it usually deformed and doesn't it die really fast?

 

Many reasons make this process unethical. One reason is that clones will live to be a person's life expectancy minus the age at which they were cloned. Let's say, you were to live to be about 75 and you get cloned at the age of 30. Your clone will only live to be 45. The clone will mature at the same rate, but the cells will die sooner because you took the DNA from a 30 year old cell, so the clone thinks it's 75 by the time the clone 45 years old.

I honestly don't see why we should put any human through something like this...

 

I think it would tip the balance on earth n when it reaches a point where it gets to survival of the fittest , the cloned humanity would survive!

 

I think present technology is such that cloning isn't in the position to create "perfect people" but great strides have been made in improving the health and lifespan of clones so that they live just as long as their non-cloned counterparts. It probably wouldn't be unreasonable to expect the technology to continue to improve and with further improvements in genetic engineering that one could create cloned animals with longer lifespans then their non-cloned counterparts.

In terms of the ethical debate though, the timeline isn't so important as the ideas themselves. I mean people were worried about computers going skynet on us and machines like the terminator wholesale slaughtering mankind back in the 1980s when computers were hardly capable of doing more than rudimentary tasks. People naturally are not fond of the unknown and rapidly advancing technologies always evoke a lot of doomsday scenarios in the popular imagination.

 

Unless you genetically modify them, the clones would only be as strong as you.

---------- Post added 28th Dec 2015 at 09:48 PM ----------

But what benefits do we get from cloning? I understand the technology argument, but what about cloning? Right now, the fact that clones die much faster, seems like a good reason not to do it at this time. Let's say we get passed that, what then? I think it's just too early to go through with such a process unless we know what our goal is and what type of repercussions we can expect.

Let me reiterate that these are people we're dealing with. Not robots. We're creating people. We don't want to rush into something and be held responsible for the very lives of soon-to-be humans if we're to mess up something.

 

Right now, sure we can't clone and create super people but there is no reason to think that eventually technology won't get to the point where we are capable of creating clones with superior qualities to the original. As for benefits, think of parents wanting the best for their child, if a parent could ensure their child would be smarter, healthier and better than it's peers in any way conceivable, why wouldn't they try and give their kids that advantage. Especially if they know other parents are having their children modified in just such a way they would fear their child may be left behind, unable to get the best jobs, get into the best schools, et cetera. Sure we are a ways off any of that now, I give you that 100%, we are also a ways off creating true artificial intelligence, but there have been debates about machine intelligence and its implications for decades. It's probably not unreasonable of you to think we are too far off and don't have enough of a solid idea about what will actually be happening to try and figure out what we should be thinking of the topic. However that won't stop people worrying about what human cloning could entail for society in the future, even if it is a far off future.

 

I understand wanting the best for your kids, but what kind of society would we create if we engineer babies to have the best of traits? Your post reminded me of the movie Gattaca, which really touches upon this kind of subject in a very nice way. I don't agree with the bioethics of such a procedure, but I won't argue with you at the moment either. I really don't want to be the kind of person who's scared of the unknown, but this is because I feel like there's more downsides than upsides from something like this. I just think we need to be careful with what we do. Unlike technology which we can mess with in a controlled environment that doesn't endanger lives, we should take a more cautious approach to the creation/modification of human life.



On a side note, I do highly recommend the movie, Gattaca, because it relates completely to this topic (assuming you haven't watched it) and really details the possible downsides of bioengineering babies to possess superior traits. If you're interested in bioethics and science fiction, then you'd really like it.

 

Hahaha, if you do a ctrl-f on this thread and look for Gattaca you will find the first reference to it in this thread is in fact by me. I am not trying to argue with you to say that its what we should want, I was simply responding initially to a post in the thread of why people don't want human cloning.

 

Ah, I understand. Thank you. I completely missed your first post. My bad. :redface:

 

I'm gonna agree with the public here and say it's wrong... the world is overpopulated anyways. We don't need anymore people.

 

Apart from the potential medical implications for a clone, it would be difficult to abandon the absolute individuality of humans we have experienced throughout our history.

I also don't think anyone could put forward a reason as to why we would actually need clones.

 

Perhaps too many are denying the sheer complexity of what goes into building an identity. Someone may be genetically exactly the same as another, but their different upbringing means they will be very much their own person, with their own perception of the world completely separate from their natural counterpart. I believe the only ethical problem of creating human clones is what was said already, their DNA starts out somewhat degraded so they will have a lot of age-related problems a lot sooner than normal.

 

Organ transplants. That's one of the biggest going reasons at the moment.

 

If someone's child needed a kidney transplant, but their mother wasn't a match, their clone would be genetically identical so it wouldn't make any difference - and if someone was a match, a clone wouldn't be necessary. The only thing it would do is increase the number of potential donors a little bit - and I guess if a person needed two new kidneys.

Plus, I think cloning a human for the sole purpose of extracting their organs is a bit.. unfair, and there's no saying a clone would agree to that anyway.

 

Yeah, that's inhumane to the point where I can't imagine it would be legal in the first place.