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davywavyJust been thinking about cloning, and the objections to it. Thoughts, really, not much more...
Religious objections to cloning seem to me to be fairly pointless; we aren’t playing God, as theology claims that the thing God cares about is the soul, not the body, and as we aren’t recreating souls, then nothing has been done against any Holy law.
Nobody is claiming that cloned kids are any more than identical duplicates; as are identical twins, and nobody frets about whether they have souls. Basically, if God wants them to have a soul, then they will, and if he doesn't then there's not much we can do about it.
The human moral objections are more of a grey area, but still less pressing. There’s evidence that clones suffer degenerative disorders for no readily explained reason, and so deliberately creating a child that’s likely susceptible to such things is probably morally wrong – certainly it’s higher on the ‘wrong’ list than deliberately aborting a normally conceived child that is susceptible. In addition, cloned kids, especially at this stage, are likely to grow up completely fucked in the head. Growing up knowing that you’re completely different – and also all the other kids at school will be merciless (kids are like that) to someone different – will lead to cloned kids growing up into yet more emotional Michael Jacksons. It’s morally wrong for parents to deliberately inflict that on their kids as well.
On a social basis, I can’t see a problem. Cloning is expensive and unreliable at best, and as such it will remain the preserve of religious whackos, gullible rich folks who have been convinced that it will bring back little Billy who was hit by a tram in an identical format, and radical feminists who can’t handle the thought of a man being involved in the reproductive process at all. Hardly a large demographic sample, and I don’t see the good old fashioned way of making kids being outdated anytime soon.
Religious objections to cloning seem to me to be fairly pointless; we aren’t playing God, as theology claims that the thing God cares about is the soul, not the body, and as we aren’t recreating souls, then nothing has been done against any Holy law.
Nobody is claiming that cloned kids are any more than identical duplicates; as are identical twins, and nobody frets about whether they have souls. Basically, if God wants them to have a soul, then they will, and if he doesn't then there's not much we can do about it.
The human moral objections are more of a grey area, but still less pressing. There’s evidence that clones suffer degenerative disorders for no readily explained reason, and so deliberately creating a child that’s likely susceptible to such things is probably morally wrong – certainly it’s higher on the ‘wrong’ list than deliberately aborting a normally conceived child that is susceptible. In addition, cloned kids, especially at this stage, are likely to grow up completely fucked in the head. Growing up knowing that you’re completely different – and also all the other kids at school will be merciless (kids are like that) to someone different – will lead to cloned kids growing up into yet more emotional Michael Jacksons. It’s morally wrong for parents to deliberately inflict that on their kids as well.
On a social basis, I can’t see a problem. Cloning is expensive and unreliable at best, and as such it will remain the preserve of religious whackos, gullible rich folks who have been convinced that it will bring back little Billy who was hit by a tram in an identical format, and radical feminists who can’t handle the thought of a man being involved in the reproductive process at all. Hardly a large demographic sample, and I don’t see the good old fashioned way of making kids being outdated anytime soon.
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no subject
Date: 2003-01-09 06:55 am (UTC)erm... there are reasons, something to do with the age of the DNA and the reproduction of the information. Isi can explain them.
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Date: 2003-01-09 06:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-01-09 07:17 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-01-09 07:06 am (UTC)I think, anyway...
no subject
Date: 2003-01-09 06:57 am (UTC)actually its sorta easily explainable, just not totally understood mechanically.
Basically your chromosomes have these things called telomeres at the ends which gradually decrease in size with each cell division, and help protect your useful DNA from being chomped to bits by stuff, but they are only so long hence each cell has a preprogrammed life span so to speak. These things are only naturally elongated during the normal reproductive process or in some cases cancer, hence if you start with the cells of say a 30 year old woman thats 30 years of cell divisions your knocking off all the baby's cells.
Add to that the other little glitches that happen to DNA that aren't repaired during normal cell division (as they don't interfere with cell function) and you get a few potential problems for any kid made by this method.
But thats animals for you, plants are much more pliant to cloning techniques.. but I won't bore you with my pet subject.
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Date: 2003-01-09 06:59 am (UTC)If this is the case, then how come DNA just doesn't break down? After all the genome has been about for a long time - does the combination during sexual reproduction result in the DNA returning (effectively) to step 1?
I'm ignorant of such matters, y'see.
no subject
Date: 2003-01-09 07:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-01-09 07:13 am (UTC)Are you about tonight? Need to chat re: camstuff.
no subject
Date: 2003-01-09 07:18 am (UTC)Re:
Date: 2003-01-09 07:26 am (UTC)Has it changed since last i sued it?
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Date: 2003-01-09 07:50 am (UTC)Re:
Date: 2003-01-09 07:55 am (UTC)Re:
Date: 2003-01-09 08:00 am (UTC)Kinda...
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Date: 2003-01-09 08:18 am (UTC)Re:
Date: 2003-01-09 08:24 am (UTC)Basically, when you go through sexual cell division to form your gametes (egg and sperm for the lay reader) your telomeres reset and stuff, yeah return to step one during sexual reproduction.
Also fertilisation of the egg relies on a sorta survival of the fittest principle, this should weed out the crapper sperm from the decent ones, as if they are crap genetically this is likely to show up in the sperm as a less fit sperm.
As you age the motility and fitness of your sperm degrades as your cells accrue defects (partly due to incorrect cell divisions, but also due to environmental factors, random mutations etc)
Thus increasing the chances that one of the less than top grade sperm will fertilise the egg.
I'm unsure on the female side of things I think that all egg cells are laid down fairly early on and they just get released gradually (if so less likely to gain cell division defects, but can still gain random mutations etc.) but to be frank I'm unsure on that as its been a while since I've needed to know it.
Hence you can get more potential DNA screw ups the older you get, I'm sure there are other factors that come into it but what they are god knows, cos I don't I gave up on animals at degree level as plants are so much easier.
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Date: 2003-01-09 08:30 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-01-09 07:21 am (UTC)Re:
Date: 2003-01-09 07:31 am (UTC)Cloning (for the moment) isn't a large demographic slice and so isn't going to impact upon evolution in that way (and that problem could be dealt with as it is in Joe Haldemans 'Forever War' books).
We aren't perfect, but we are very adapted to our niche; a better way of putting your idea of stymieing 'improvements (improvements by what measure?) is that cloning assumes that our niche won't change, necessitising evolutionary changes as a result.
Well...
Date: 2003-01-09 07:39 am (UTC)Then again, one could argue that given that we currently pretty much create our environment, why would we need to keep the genome up to scratch?
With you all the way on over-sanitisation and antibiotics, though. Your immune system needs to see a wide variety of germs when it's young in order to become properly effective.
Since reading many books on antibiotic resistance (hurrah, MDR yersinia pestis) I've been very careful about not going to the doctor for, well, pretty much anything unless it's a major problem (and I'd argue that your throat swelling up so much your breathing is affected is a major problem...).
We're all screwed in the end, though.
Err... what was my point, again?
Re: Well...
Date: 2003-01-09 07:48 am (UTC)Re: Well...
Date: 2003-01-09 07:52 am (UTC)Re: Well...
Date: 2003-01-09 08:22 am (UTC)Re:
Date: 2003-01-09 07:56 am (UTC)I'd argue we're really not very well adapted to our niche, hence all the stresses and strains and RSIs and craziness that modern life causes us. It'll take us many a generation before we're used to that, by which time all will (probably) have changed again. We're quite well adapted to small hunter-gatherer communities though...
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Date: 2003-01-09 07:58 am (UTC)Re:
Date: 2003-01-09 08:00 am (UTC)Re:
Date: 2003-01-09 08:13 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-01-09 07:45 am (UTC)Course, that doesn't address the absolute "is it morally wrong?" question, but it does reduce the chance of large scale booboos in the future.
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Date: 2003-01-09 07:55 am (UTC)Economically then we're dong it right too, because if the kids of people rich enough to afford this die horribly, their money goes back into the economy.
Yes, but
Re: Yes, but
Date: 2003-01-09 12:31 pm (UTC)Re: Yes, but
Date: 2003-01-09 04:28 pm (UTC)At that scale of wealth, there's little a government can do, since they'll have their wealth well distributed across the vast cubicles of the global banking realm.
The US is particularly generous on that count anyway (for all the complaints of inheritance taxes in the US by the wealthy here...it is substantively less taxing than many European regimes).
Also, in the very worst scenario that rich family Z is completely without progeny from *any* of its family branches, there is always the great escape by Foundation...assuming it doesn't eventually succeed in cloning healthy cyber-Billy version X.Y instead of writing off all its investments as a failure.
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Incidentally, one may not need be *that* rich to escape the taxmen by sending funds abroad ... hell, even I have an 'offshore account' due to my studentdays Barclays account in the UK...and Inland Revenue is *much* better than the IRS. And then, if I chose to put my account in Jersey, IR would be even less of a monetary threat.
no subject
Date: 2003-01-09 07:50 am (UTC)Hmm, I don't think that is necessarily the case... I'd like to see how the first "test tube babies" fared - did they all grow up fucked in the head? Kids will take the piss for any reason - for being fat, for wearing glasses, for having a different skin colour, whatever. I don't think being cloned is really going to be that much different in that respect.
I don't know whether I would say it's morally wrong, but I'm guessing that reducing the gene pool isn't exactly a great idea, so cloning on a large scale would just be akin to interbreeding, right?
Alex Kells might've beaten me to the punch, but...
Date: 2003-01-09 08:38 am (UTC)I dunno about that. In the case of that first test-tube baby girl, there was a bit of a press play some years back when she turned 20-something ... she's turned out no better or worse than any the rest of us, medically, psychologically, and all the rest of it. Be interesting though to see how her kids turn out (physiologically speaking) though.
Whatever social terrorising that child may receive in their early years could be matched by the opposite extreme of pioneer 'clone chic' in later years. Sure that might fuck 'em up, but I think more is owed to how the parent(s) raise their clone.
> On a social basis, I can't see a problem. Cloning is expensive and unreliable at best, and as such it will remain the preserve of religious whackos, gullible rich folks who have been convinced that it will bring back little Billy who was hit by a tram in an identical format, and radical feminists who can't handle the thought of a man being involved in the reproductive process at all. Hardly a large demographic sample, and I don't see the good old fashioned way of making kids being outdated anytime soon.
Fair enough, but the niche increasingly has a way of catapulting itself into the mainstream ... especially when it rides the winds of fashion. How else does one explain the highly popular enterprise of self-mutiliation known as implant 'plastic' surgery? The safety & reliability issues do need to be worked out, but I think that's just a matter of R&D. Better then that such R&D is conducted in publically-funded and openly visible institutions rather than dodgy cults like the Raelians (though who can honestly disagree with their libertine philosophy? *grin*)
Ultimately, it'd be damn cool to be able to grow cloned tissue of patients to replace damaged tissue - totally eliminating the chance of rejection and once and for all sorting out the organ shortage crisis.
Of course, by that point, it's just as likely that people will have faddish genetic manipulation ... naturally green hair, feline eyes, irradescent insect-chitinous fingernails ... well those with enough money & idiocy anyway. :-)
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Thoughts on breast, etc. implantation surgery
Date: 2003-01-09 08:49 am (UTC)Serious problems with the technology have been discovered over this period, but that hasn't been enough to really make much of a dent in its popularity (though one can argue the demand has plateued).
At a guess, I'd say a maximum of 15-20% of the US female population has used this technology at some point in their lives. Rising to the 50th percentile for image-concious societies as in Los Angeles.
And yes, we'll ignore the 'trannies' for now. :-)
This, at least, is the case for the US.
This kind of adoption pattern for a new medical technology can apply to cloning I think ... so long as it becomes affordable and reliable enough
Incidentally ... cloning enterprises are well underway
Date: 2003-01-09 08:51 am (UTC)Re: Incidentally ... cloning enterprises are well underway
Date: 2003-01-10 07:09 am (UTC)Re: Incidentally ... cloning enterprises are well underway
Date: 2003-01-10 08:09 am (UTC)----
Re: Incidentally ... cloning enterprises are well underway
Date: 2003-01-10 08:15 am (UTC)Re: Incidentally ... cloning enterprises are well underway
Date: 2003-01-10 08:22 am (UTC)---
Incidentally, since I can't post directly to the other thread, I'll add it here:
'Forever Free' wasn't all *that* bad. Sure some bits were silly, but I rather enjoyed Haldeman's expression of current DARPA concepts ... and the mind-machine link for a teletrooper seems a very reasonable interface. Moreover, given America's history with its Latin(o) neighbours, the 'pedro' concept need not be that far off either. :-)
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Re: Incidentally ... cloning enterprises are well underway
Date: 2003-01-10 08:27 am (UTC)Forever Free is unforgivable crap. It's rare that a book makes me so cross - I even reviewed it for amazon saying just that :)
Re: Incidentally ... cloning enterprises are well underway
Date: 2003-01-10 08:39 am (UTC)Incidentally, 'Hemingway Hoax' is a lot of fun.
:-)
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Re: Incidentally ... cloning enterprises are well underway
Date: 2003-01-10 08:43 am (UTC)Oh, and re: your previous comment (LJ won't let me reply on the site): I'll accept that animals have the same rights as people just as soon as they agree to have the same responsibilities.
Re: Incidentally ... cloning enterprises are well underway
Date: 2003-01-10 09:06 am (UTC)---
re: animal rights
Ha, you and your silly utilitarian arguments. It goes both ways you know, let's see you saddle up or hitch yourself to the plow. :-)
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Re: Incidentally ... cloning enterprises are well underway
Date: 2003-01-13 01:19 am (UTC)Cloning assumes we 'know everything'
Date: 2003-01-09 09:55 am (UTC)It seems to me that these are hugely complex systems, and thus that the implications of any sort of messing will be huge and unpredictable. It seems grossly irresponsible to apply that to a new human life.
Re: Cloning assumes we 'know everything'
Date: 2003-01-09 12:13 pm (UTC)For the record, incidentally, I don't believe for one second that the bunch of French cultists have cloned anything.
oh, and please would you sign yourself when you post? I do like to know who I'm talking to...