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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 Hardly a large demographic sample, and I don’t see the good old fashioned way of making kids being outdated anytime soon.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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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.