Cloning

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Here's a nice, debatable topic. What do you think about cloning? Is it ethical? Is it right? Is it good? You get the general idea. This could probably lead into some long replies, and if you'd believe it, I searched AoDA for the words "clone" and "cloning," and there were only about ten things!

 

It really depends. Are you talking about cloning humans or cloning in general? Personally I don't see the point in cloning humans it would be like pulling the handbrake on evolution and that's not a good thing, but with plants and animals I think it's quite ok as long as the risks in the process are properly researched.

 

Clone away, what man can do it should atleast try to do. There is no knowledge that is of ill, there is only less than good uses.

 

Cloning is good. We need cloning. It's important that we develop and research cloning.

But we've got to work on our societies. You make it so your entire society respects the benefits of cloning, but doesn't abuse them. And you have to change a whole *bunch* of things, just to make room for cloning.

 

Clone away, what man can do it should atleast try to do. There is no knowledge that is of ill, there is only less than good uses.

 

1. What the hell's going on here? 'I joacqin' and 'joaqin'? And the same posts?

2. On topic: The problem IMO is where to stop. If for medical reasons, then I don't necessarilly have a problem. If it leads to "genetic cleansing", then I definitely have a problem. There needs to be some serious mononitoring and regulation here.

 

Joacqin summed up my views very well.

Ditto.

 

Splunge, I'm assuming I joacqin is just making a bad joke about cloning.

 

I would have thought that, of all people, I would have got that joke.

 

I've got no problem with cloning. (I write this as a card-carrying member of the dread Religious Right.) There's nothing intrinsically wrong about replicating a genetic code. Twins have the same genetic code, after all, but are individually distinct souls.

What I would find ethically unacceptable would be dispensing with flawed clones. If you want to clone a kid, great, more power to you. But if you have to abort nine test-tube failures to get that one perfect clone, then that's morally untenable.

Same with genetic engineering. If they let me upgrade my kids' stats before they're born, wonderful - they'll all have an Intelligence of 25! - unless the process requires sacrificing fetuses.

There are safety issues - for example, if we clone only one kind of corn, then there are risks that a single disease attuned to that specific genetic pattern could wipe out a global crop. But those issues are practical, not ethical.

 

Same with me, I'm sure there is not too much wrong with cloning in itself, you can't really make a new person exactly like the old one, it doesn't work like that.

So if we remove this, we don't have much left. As GM and Morgoroth said, it works against evolution to be doing this, and could lead to all sorts of problems, within food crops or animals or even people.

I also agree that it would be wrong for many fetuses to be killed to gain one that is wanted, and I apply this to medical research as well. It is bad enough they grow ears on rats, and harvest pigs for organs, let's not start doing the same with humans, fetus or otherwise.

It also encourages carelessness in my opinion, to have organs waiting on standby.

The other medical application is stem-cell research they say, well, if someone really feels the need to do that, it can be gotton, that is, willingly donanted, from adults, despite what some scientists would have you beleive, but there isn't really any need to do so.

Making a new drug or bio-engineering some sort of transmitter block that makes you ignore the diseases doesn't solve the problem of why they were there in the first place, people would do better monitoring the way they live.

Why bother with clones is what I ask? We don't have the need to do so, it is just laziness I think, looking for a quick-fix, to patch the problem instead of trying to understand the cause.

 

Knowledge of how to do it would be good, and having tested to see whether it would work, but actually cloning people and whatnot else regularly is probably not the best of ideas.
Natural selection is a wonderful thing, when people are going to die, then they should die. Plus the world has a high enough population than it really needs to.

But knowledge in itself is never a bad thing.

 

I personally see nothing wrong with researching cloning, and even applying it when the research has been done long enaugh for it to be feasible.

Like it's been said, knowledge isn't evil.

"With great power comes great responsibility"

 

Aye, Amen to that.

My sight is set upon many aims. One I think is particularly pertinent here.

The Power for Anything, the Will to do Nothing.

We cannot be crusaders, that is not our lot. The more wrongs we seek to right, often the more wrongs that are caused, damage that we have done. One must be a bastion, a light guiding others, a stature of hope, that they may seek you out and with your hand uplifted, help themselves.

Responsibilty does not mean we are obliged to force others into our own perception of perfection, it means that we must act in a manner according our own abilities.

As much as I would, a vigilante does not possess this. He must be tempered.

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.

 

Drink deep from the fountain of knowledge or drink not at all.

 

I will be the first to admit I am not well versed on the complications and effects of cloning. While I would be all for someone cloning a kidney to save someones life, I fail to understand the Need to clone human beings. Are there not enough unwanted children on our planet already? I'm sure the number is in the millions, if not hundreds of thousands of homeless, starving, unwanted children. What valid reason would there be to clone a person other then "I wanted to see if I could do it"

To me that is not a vaild reason and with our already overwhelming problems of over population why should we help it along?

 

Kitty, I dont think it would really matter as terms of overpopulation as cloning human beings would be very expensive.

I say clone away too! At least for the stem cells (I think, not sure on the english name). I find cloning humans.. rather useless, but that's up to the individual, as long as I'm not paying for that.

 

Well how would you feel about some crazed old billionair scientist creating his own clone army of superhumans? Quite the twist if I do say so myself...

And Lokken, you're right, it is stem cells in english.

 

Cloning has nothing to do with superhumans. As for the army, I dunno, it's not that relevant to me. If that was the case, I'm sure he could do it whether it was legal or not.