A little bit of a morals question

[SeaCat]

Here's a question for all of you.

Is/would the cloning of human beings be morally acceptable? Why?

I have heard and read many arguments on both sides of this issue.

Some I agree with and some I don't. I'm interested in your thoughts on this. (No not just from idle curiosity but as part of research for a story I have started.)

What about those who are no longer purely human because of Gene Engineering? Those who are visibly mutated? Are they still "Man"? Why or why not?

Cat

 

[cloudy]

I think there's some uses for clones. Organ donation, for one. It would sure relieve the waiting lists for certain organs, and certainly save some lives.

But then....it's sort of a slippery slope, isn't it? I mean, aren't those clones fully human, as well? And as such, wouldn't they have autonomy just like the person they were cloned from?

I think the best of outcomes would be for research to provide a way to clone/grow the organs needed, without the entire person.

 

[rgraham666]

Full cloning? I don't see the need. And how would a full clone fit into society and/or a family? And we have far too many people on this planet already.

Being able to grow organs would be a great boon. However I regard cloning a whole person just too harvest their organs highly unethical.

 

[SeaCat]

I think there's some uses for clones. Organ donation, for one. It would sure relieve the waiting lists for certain organs, and certainly save some lives.

But then....it's sort of a slippery slope, isn't it? I mean, aren't those clones fully human, as well? And as such, wouldn't they have autonomy just like the person they were cloned from?

I think the best of outcomes would be for research to provide a way to clone/grow the organs needed, without the entire person.

I agree with you about the cloning for body parts, and they are in fact working on that now. (Not to mention making great strides in this area.)

My question though stems from the idea of cloning people, the entire person. What is the morality of this? What about the genetic Engineering of people to gain certain traits? Maybe the ability to withstand high radiation or the ability to breath underwater? Would these people still be human?

Cat

 

[rgraham666]

I agree with you about the cloning for body parts, and they are in fact working on that now. (Not to mention making great strides in this area.)

My question though stems from the idea of cloning people, the entire person. What is the morality of this? What about the genetic Engineering of people to gain certain traits? Maybe the ability to withstand high radiation or the ability to breath underwater? Would these people still be human?

Cat

I'd regard these people as human. I'll bet good money all kinds of people would not though.

In my opinion, those who want to use genetic engineering to 'improve' people are really looking to make supermen. These people are often stupid enough to think they can keep these supermen under control.

Like Khan in the first Star Trek series. Except this time we won't have scriptwriters to pull us 'normals' asses out of the fire.

 

[cloudy]

I agree with you about the cloning for body parts, and they are in fact working on that now. (Not to mention making great strides in this area.)

My question though stems from the idea of cloning people, the entire person. What is the morality of this? What about the genetic Engineering of people to gain certain traits? Maybe the ability to withstand high radiation or the ability to breath underwater? Would these people still be human?

Cat

I agree with Rob. The direction our society is heading now, there'd be all sorts of issues concerning "human" or "not human." After all, The chosen ones already feel that they're the only ones "worthy" of continuing the human race....I'd guaran-damn-tee you that they would have a witch hunt comparable to the Salem Witch Trials if genetic mutation were undertaken.

I can hear it now: "Spawn of sa-TAN!"



as an afterthought....I don't really like the idea of genetic engineering to bring out certain traits, suppress others, etc. I can see the uses in the cases of diseases, etc., but not to pick and choose what our children will be. It would certainly lead to a widening of the gap between the "haves" and the "have nots," to say the least. Plus, we're such a wonderfully diverse species - it's part of what makes us beautiful.

 

[cheerful_deviant]

Tricky issue Cat.

Is it moral? Well, I suppose that you'll find many different view points on this. Those with the church will tell you that any kind of cloning is immoral, regardless of it's purpose. Personally, I think that they are worried that once a whole person is cloned (you know it will happen soon) then they will have to deal with the "does a clone have an immortal soul?" question. If it does, how could a soul be made in a laboratory? So maybe it now shares it's soul with the original? What if the original is dead? How does that work? Did the soul come back?

And if it doesn't have a soul, what does it have? If it walks, talks, acts, thinks, crys, laughes, loves, hates, bleeds and dies like any other human... is it human? Can it be without a soul? Is our soul what makes us human? Or is it just out body that makes us human? If that's true, then is a short man less of a human than a tall man? That about a man who is in an accident and looses a leg? Is he now less human than another man?

Tricky questions for the church to answer.

As for the genetic engineering, I believe that it has it's place but can and most likely will be pushed to far. Engineering out birth defects and hereditary diseases is all well and good but as for making a race of supermen, that's going to far I believe. Would a superman still be human? I suppose it would depend on how far the 'improvements' went. Strictly speaking, the person would probablly be still human but technically regarded as a new sub species of some kind.

 

[Roxanne Appleby]

I don't really mean to be difficult, but what is the standard by which you judge whether this (or anything else) is "morally acceptable?" Without specifying that, the question is really impossible to answer, and all you get are opinions based on God knows what.

Here's my opinion, and it's based on what is good for me and doesn't hurt any other human: I would love to have a full grown clone, created with no brain, grown and kept alive in a spooky test tube with tubes going in and out and bubbles rising and stuff, like in a wierd sci-fi movie. Any time I need a new organ - snip, slice, plop - out it comes and in it goes. I would actually need a string of such clones, so that none were more than around 35 years old. Say, plant a new one every 20 years, and when they hit 35, recycle 'em.

Obviously I'm defining as "not human" a body created with no brain, grown and kept alive through artificial means. I'm pretty that sure no such thing will be possible in the lifetime of anyone here, but something like this probably will be possible some day. (Of course by then other advances will probably make my grotesque fantasy unnecessary, but hey, that's less fun to talk about. )

 

[cheerful_deviant]

I would love to have a full grown clone, created with no brain, grown and kept alive in a spooky test tube with tubes going in and out and bubbles rising and stuff, like in a wierd sci-fi movie.

I want mine laying down in a big glass box so I can use it as a coffee table. Talk about a conversation starter!

 

[rgraham666]

As a firm humanist, it isn't genetics or provenance that makes a human being, but actions.

If anything a superman should be held to a higher standard as they have more power.

 

[Roxanne Appleby]

I want mine laying down in a big glass box so I can use it as a coffee table. Talk about a conversation starter!

Oh yeah! I still want bubbles and tubes and stuff. And I want that incredibly spooky dead, blank face that is me and yet not me facing up, so I can set my cappucino grande right above its nose.

 

[AngelofDarkLust]

I do not feel it is immoral. There are very few things I think of as inherently immoral or evil (sex with children - or the child like, murder for profit, those types of things).

It does however, bring up the issue of is it "wise" to allow cloning in an over populated world where we are seeing the strains of resource depletion. Of course people will do what they can manage to do. Human beings are horrid planers if not bad problem solvers. So then does it become illegal to clone? and what happens to the "illegal" being?

 

[Jenny_Jackson]

This is the problem I have. You need the DNA to begin your cloning from someplace. So, you get it from (a) a donar (live or otherwise) or (b) you construct the DNA for fragments of dogs, cat, frogs, etc.

In the first case you have a duplicate person or, a constructed person who has died (Can someone say, Penis with a man attached?). This constitues an entirely new individual because this person, although he carries all the genetic traits of the donar, does not have the personality, memories or whatever that made the donar the person he was. Is this new person, in fact, a person? The best answer is "Maybe". At least this new person is entirely human, even though he would not be the person from whom the donated DNA was collected.

The idea in the back of one's head would be to get, say, Einstein's DNA and produce a new Einstein so he could finish his work. The chances are, you could physically duplicate him, but he would not be the same person and most likely would not be able to do anything like the original. Why? Because part of who you are is built from your experiences, your memories, your upbringing, your schooling and so on.

From a MORAL stand point, I would not have a problem with this NEW person. From a technical stand point, I cannot see it being done for a very long time, certainly not in my lifetime.

As far as the second case, would have even have a new person? Provisionally, the answer is yes. The difference between your DNA and that of a Frog is only about 10%. I see a problem from this stand point that others may not see.

In the first case, you are simply reproducting someone who exists or had existed in the past. In this case you are producing an entirely new individual. That's the problem. If you could gather DNA from whatever source, manipulate it and produce a human, why not manipulate it a little more and make a "PERFECT" person who is totally resistant to desease, weather, intellect and so on. Now you have produced what amounts to a Frankenstein Monster. Could this Perfect Person replace us? I don't know. Would it try? Maybe. Should we take the moral chance of producing this thing and introducing into our gene pool?

Maybe that's the biggest question of all. Natural Selection (which we really don't entirely understand) has been working for millions of years to produce us. In a Laboratory we could produce this "person" in a few months. I don't think it's such a good idea.

 

[AngelofDarkLust]

And look at the cloned beings so far. Most have not lived long nor happy lives (and we're not just talking about being lab animals). They were sick. Something doesn't "work" right. It gets all screwed up in the translation.

Do we have the right to condem a thinking being who would be capable of understanding what happened to them to the hell of I have been born just to die (okay... not being philosophical. We all bite it someday we just don't know whether it will be the car accident, stroke or old age that gets us) while we try and figure the whole process out, how many would die?

 

[Jenny_Jackson]

And look at the cloned beings so far. Most have not lived long nor happy lives (and we're not just talking about being lab animals). They were sick. Something doesn't "work" right. It gets all screwed up in the translation.

Do we have the right to condem a thinking being who would be capable of understanding what happened to them to the hell of I have been born just to die (okay... not being philosophical. We all bite it someday we just don't know whether it will be the car accident, stroke or old age that gets us) while we try and figure the whole process out, how many would die?

Now you get into the same argument that goes on continuously in Medicine. If I can create a procedure that works, I can save the lives of millions of sufferers. Along the way a few on whom I experiment may die, but for the greater good. On the other hand, some of those may live and this is their only chance of survival.

Kind of a sucky argument, but accurate.

 

[3113]

Dude...it's a twin.

Point (1): Cloning for Organs:

It's aburd to argue immorality of cloning for body parts because it's a HIGHLY unlikely senario--(and if it were likely we'd all pretty much agree that it was immoral). You have kidney failure. You clone yourself. You wait, what? 12 years for this kid to get old enough to harvest a kidney? And that's if the cloning works (i.e., you can get the clone implanted in a womb to take and come to term). You're likely to die first.

We have this sort of thing NOW, by the way, with parents who have a second child in hopes of getting a bone marrow match for a sick, elder sibling. That's happening right now. We might as well argue the morality of that, because that's more likely to happen than cloning for organs. Why?

If we're speculating such scientific advancements, then it's FAR more likely that cloning the KIDNEY is going to happen first. We are, in fact, very, very, VERY close to cloning organs. Why should anyone bother cloning a person in order to get a kidney when they could just grow a new kidney--faster, easier, etc.

Point (2): Cloning to get back a person:

This is the Boys from Brazil senario. You want to get back Hitler or some dead genius and so you clone them. You want your dead husband back, or you want to re-create yourself. Whoop-de-fucking do morality-wise. Why? Wellll...the fact is, we already have some idea of how this is going to turn out. We know because there ARE clones in the world. (glancing around, whispering) they're called....twins!

Yep. Twins. You clone anyone and you get their twin. Ever met a pair of twins? How exactly is one like the other? They're close, but not exact even though they share, cell for cell, the same DNA. Cloning can give you Hitler DNA-wise, but if you want Hitler the dictator you need to raise him right and give him a similar world situation including a country like Germany in the 1930's--otherwise he'll end up in art school as a painter or maybe doing computer graphics.

Point (3) What will the Neighbors Think?:

Or religious leaders or anyone else who might be appalled by such an unnatural thing...let's be clear again. Human cloning isn't a matter of "if" but "when." But even "when" doesn't mean it will ever be a common thing. Because it's just not going to be easy or cheap.

When it happens, it will, like the first test tube baby, be fraught with arguments and appalled people discussing morality and the rest. But in the end, a clone will exist and it will be a human being. The clone will not be a monster or some strange, inhuman creature, they will not be an exact duplicate (personality wise) of their gene parent. They will just be a twin. The morality of creating such a child is as vague as creating any child--even a child the the parents may have engendered naturally for the "wrong" reasons (re: bone marrow match for a sibling).

The best sci-fi book I know on exploring cloning, by the way, and trying to recreate a person as exactly as possible is C.J. Cherryh's Cyteen. Not an easy read for most, but brilliant science fiction.

 

[Stella_Omega]

The best sci-fi book I know on exploring cloning, by the way, and trying to recreate a person as exactly as possible is C.J. Cherryh's Cyteen. Not an easy read for most, but brilliant science fiction.

John Varley wrote an excellent sci-fi/stage actor adventure called "Golden Globe" with a cloning plot twist.

Legally, if there were a killing between a clone and its original- would that be murder, Or suicide?

 

[Roxanne Appleby]

If we're speculating such scientific advancements, then it's FAR more likely that cloning the KIDNEY is going to happen first. We are, in fact, very, very, VERY close to cloning organs. Why should anyone bother cloning a person in order to get a kidney when they could just grow a new kidney--faster, easier, etc.

Excellent round-up and summation.

I'm sure you're right about cloning organs being the thing - as I said about my grotesque fantasy, "by then other advances will probably make this unnecessary."

I will regret not having that creepy coffee table, though, and I'm sure I speak for CD in that too.

 

[Carnevil9]

There Are Easier Ways to Make a Baby

3113 said most of what I was going to add, especially the twins analogy. Cloning, if it is ever developed to the point where it works at all, is just an EXPENSIVE, DIFFICULT, and OVERLY COMPLEX method of making a baby. The old-fashioned method of making babies works just fine, and only sets you back the price of a bottle of cheap wine (if that).

Unless you clone someone who was very recently born, the clone will grow up in a different environment, and will likely turn out with a very different personality. Twins by genetics, but a generation apart by experience. What's the problem?

The only ethical issues I can see is if the clone is created for the sole purpose of organ harvesting, but as pointed out already, that issue is nothing new......Carney

 

[Jenny_Jackson]

As far as I can remember, 3113, every Sci-Fi book with the cloning topic I've read skips the mechanics entirely. Think of Heinlein's Time Enough for Love. Lazerus Long's clone simply appears and the reader is informed that this is his clone-daughter. It always happens like that.

The entire discussion is mute since we will never see a total artificially cloned human either for techological or ethical reasons.

I do, however, question your thought that a twin is, in fact a clone, purely on semantic grounds. To me a "clone" would require some artificial intervention rather than a natural process.

 

[Roxanne Appleby]

John Varley wrote an excellent sci-fi/stage actor adventure called "Golden Globe" with a cloning plot twist.

Legally, if there were a killing between a clone and its original- would that be murder, Or suicide?

Interestingly, my grotesque fantasy above was inspired by another Varley work, the short story "Air Raid," later made into a decent B-movie called "Millennium," and a longer novel of the same name (see below). In the original the passengers are replaced by creatures called "dummies," that I recall as being similar to the my bizarre vision above, althoug he didn't to into how they were created.



from wiki:
Millennium is a 1983 science fiction novel by John Varley, featuring a civilization from a far-future Earth using time travel to rescue passengers from airplanes destined to crash. The Earth is heavily polluted in the far future, and humanity's gene pool irreparably damaged; the doomed passengers were being rescued to serve as colonists who would rebuild civilization on a fresh planet once enough had been collected.

The time travellers can only take people destined to die in airplane crashes because otherwise they would be changing the past, which is an enormous problem. Therefore, they sneak onto the planes, remove the living but soon-to-die passengers, and replace them with convincing corpses they have manufactured in the future.

The novel deals with several of the raids, their inevitable discovery in the present day, and the fallout that results from changes to the present day reverberating into the future.

The novel and the 1989 movie Millennium were based on Varley's short story "Air Raid".

 

[glynndah]

I would also recommend Joshua, Son of None by Nancy Mars Freedman. It was written in 1974 and tells the story of the cloning of JFK. The book deals with the nature/nurture concept and tries to replicate as much of his childhood as possible in order to end up with another presidential hopeful.

 

[Trombonus]

One issue I would consider is what rights would cloned people have. My thoughts are that they would not have many. I'm reminded of a story I'vce been following. Forgive me for referring to a video game, but it does bring up some very interesting issues, and is more of an interactive movie than anything. In the series Xenosaga, there are characters known as Realians. They are artificially created humans, created for military purposes mostly. They do not have the same rights as regular humans, and are considered property. It is my belief that cloned human beings would be subject to the same type of discrimination. That's my concern.

 

[glynndah]

How would "they" know which people are clones? Do they get genetic markers at conception, tattoos at birth, bar codes, etc.? Would they be kept on clone ranches? If they are really clones, they are as human as the base material used. I remember a great deal of speculation about the first test-tube babies as being somehow more or less than human and now it's pretty common. Wouldn't the whole issue of cloning go through the same sort of process? Abomination, freak of nature, scandalous, interesting, normal, ho-hum...

 

[Jenny_Jackson]

How would "they" know which people are clones? Do they get genetic markers at conception, tattoos at birth, bar codes, etc.? Would they be kept on clone ranches? If they are really clones, they are as human as the base material used. I remember a great deal of speculation about the first test-tube babies as being somehow more or less than human and now it's pretty common. Wouldn't the whole issue of cloning go through the same sort of process? Abomination, freak of nature, scandalous, interesting, normal, ho-hum...

As I recall in PK Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep the constructed animals and humans had engineer's markers on their DNA. Someone could say, these were androids and not clones, but they were genetically engineered animals without the metal endo or exo-skeleton one associates with robots.