Human Cloning?

[cleopatra143]

How many of you agree or disagree? President Bush is pushing for NO on all counts. What do you think?

 

[EdwardTking]

Depends:

Britney Spears = Yes
Whitney Houston = Yes
7 of 9 = Yes
GW Bush = No

 

[Ohwell]

No, I oppose it. The only thing they can be used for is organs really, and breeding humans for organs is downright disgusting.

 

[ComradeDavo]

This cloning issue is always a problematic one.

I reckon that the cell research etc is just about ok, but any notion of 'designer babies' or indeed the complete cloning of a person is completely wrong.

 

[amadeus]

I don't like the idea of cloning and entire person. Perhaps just creating individual parts of the body -- kidneys, etc. to help the currently living live.

 

[Sparrowhawk]

Originally posted by rmsharpe
I don't like the idea of cloning and entire person. Perhaps just creating individual parts of the body -- kidneys, etc. to help the currently living live.

That's my vote too. If they want to clone individual organs independantly, then I'm all right with that. But no groups of organs and no whole people.

 

[Greadius]

Mass ignorance.

With current technology it is impossible to clone just organs; they would have to clone the entire human and harvest the organs.

Of course, you can't clone an entire human... only the genes are identical. All clones start off the same way all mammals do: zygotes. If anything, cloning will finally answer developmental psychologists questions about nature vs. nurture.

Personally, I don't think the government should play a role in this. I don't like religious people who feel the need to pass human laws because of God's failure in stopping us from doing things. Didn't God see this one coming?

 

[goodbye_mr_bond]

Originally posted by Greadius
I don't like religious people who feel the need to pass human laws because of God's failure in stopping us from doing things. Didn't God see this one coming?

This has got to be the strangest argument I've ever heard on the subjet. Yet, there is a grain or two of truth rattling around in it. It was very irresponsible of God to leave our secret blueprints lying around like that, in practically every single cell of our body.

Like he was expecting us to find them one day. And use them...

But I digress. I voted YES to all cloning, but only because that question comes closest to what I really believe. Which is this: All genetic research should be very closely monitored by the (a) government. All human gene research should proceed with utmost caution and very, very conservatively. But it should continue, and it should go all the way... SLOWLY.

Reason one: This cat ain't going back into the box. It just won't happen. So, why don't we domesticate it as much as possible and learn to live with it?

Reason two: I want to reap all potential benefits of genetic technology. If it eventually makes myself and my children healthier, smarter, stronger, faster, and increases our lifespan--maybe even forever--then it's good. Anyone who disagrees, feel free to die of old age.

What do you think 'designer babies' are? Everyone becoming blond and blue-eyed? I don't think so.
:mutant:

 

[Sparrowhawk]

Originally posted by Greadius
Mass ignorance.

With current technology it is impossible to clone just organs; they would have to clone the entire human and harvest the organs.

I'm sorry, maybe the word "clone" confused you. I should perhaps have said "grow new organs that are tailored to the individuals from which sample cells were taken". Which is possible.

http://www.discover.com/aug_99/parts.html

Please do your research before throwing the word "ignorant" around in future.

 

[History_Buff]

I personally think cloning is bad, but this does not mean I am against genetic research. Eventually, EVENTUALLY, we may be able to alter tiny parts of the human genome to allow arms and legs to be grown back completely over a period of weeks, or days for that matter.

But full cloning, bad, very bad.

 

[Reichsmarshal]

Originally posted by Greadius
Mass ignorance.

Personally, I don't think the government should play a role in this. I don't like religious people who feel the need to pass human laws because of God's failure in stopping us from doing things. Didn't God see this one coming?

So would it be better not to know anything about genes?

The myth that chemical reaction and electrical impluses results in human actions like developing and considering the morality of cloning is the source of these problems. Humans aren't the same as an inanimate computer. The cloning issue is quite similar to the abortion one. Do you value human life?

 

[Lt.Col. Kilgore]

I'm against ALL cloning except for organ/limb/body part replacement. The only gene tailoring I advocate is to do away with mental and physical abnoralities and NOT tailoring in order to make a race of superhumans. I also think that stem cell research should be pursued rabidly!

 

[Apollo]

Genetic research should be pursued with hopes of curing such things as cancer, Parkinson's, Multiple Sclerosis, Down Syndrome, physical and mental disablities, and many more. It should not, however, be used to create replicas of people, a superior race, customized children, or anything like that.

It should be used to cure, not to create.

 

[goodbye_mr_bond]

Originally posted by Lt.Col. Kilgore
The only gene tailoring I advocate is to do away with mental and physical abnoralities and NOT tailoring in order to make a race of superhumans.

But why?

Look around you. We're already superhuman by the standards of even 500 years ago (which is NOTHING in the grand scheme of things). We're taller, healthier, stronger, live longer lives and are more educated. We can reverse the natural effects of aging (plastic surgery, Viagra), attach artificial limbs to ourselves, communicate over incredible distances, examine parts of our galaxy which are too far away to fully comprehend. Hell, we can even fly, calculate the speed of light, and blow apart atoms.

Why shouldn't we be able to continue to improve ourselves? Why do we need to stop with simply regrowing a lost limb? Why can't we grow a limb that is 10 or 100 times stronger? Why is it okay to regenerate the memory of an Alzheimer's patient but not to give ourselves perfect recall?

This "we shouldn't mess with our humanity" argument holds very little water for me. We shouldn't mess with what we don't fully understand, YES. That is why we should continue to try to understand everything. We don't need to clone babies *just because we can*. I fully support this perspective. That Italian doctor needs to get his licence revoked, and perhaps get violated in a dark alley. Absolutely.

But my body is my own, and if I choose to grow wings, and if this doesn't interfere with your right not to, why shouldn't I?

 

[Greadius]

Originally posted by Sparrowhawk
Please do your research before throwing the word "ignorant" around in future.

Okay, okay, they're further than I thought.
But I did say current. They can't do it yet
But they can harvest human organs from undeveloped clones.

 

[MrPresident]

What is the big deal with cloning another human being. They would not be the same person. Sure they would have the same DNA and everything that would come this that. However they would still experience the world differently, there memory would be different, there personality would be different, even there physical appearance could be different (depending on injuries, scars, diet etc). It all depends on how important genes are in making up who a person is. Are genes more important than environmental factors?

 

[polymath]

I don't know how I feel about it, so I put 'not sure'. But I do have some views which I'd like to air. I don't have any religious perspective, so I don't absolutely hold to the 'life is sacred' argument - but what if?
What if there is lots of life in the universe. What if intelligence has arisen many times? What if this is a commonplace occurrence? If life is a standard consequence of the universe we live in? What if it just happens, the same way chemicals can form salts, acids, compound metals, and so on.
What if it is really no different than growing crystals, and we're just giving nature a helping hand? I mean, steel for example is a useful metal. But wouldn't you rather add some more chemicals to it and get 'stainless steel'?
So, why don't we just get on with it and make 'stainless humans'? We're just made of chemicals and that's it, IMO. Any morals we have are just subjective, they don't tell us anything about the universe.

On the other hand, what if life is confined to Earth? Isn't it then our duty to find out everything about it? If that were the case, life would be such a precious jewel in the cosmos, it should be investigated to the fullest.

Or, if you believe the religions are right, if there is a God, if religious mores are prescribed by the creator of the universe and every life is sacred, then it's wrong to do it.

The answer to the questions depends entirely upon what life is. And we don't know what life is, if it was created, if it has value, or if it is common and cheap. I suspect it has no intrinsic value - but I strongly believe you should treat people the way you would like to be treated yourself.

So, I am confused about the issue, and voted 'I'm not sure'.

 

[LordAzreal]

Cloning at this stage is bad.

Mainly because it is such a recent thing that we haven't yet got it right. Even Dolly the sheep suffers problems from being a clone. And that is just a sheep. What about human beings? The human anatomy is far more sophisticated (especially in the brain). I shudder at the though of the many possible deformities a human clone could possess. Then what are they going to do with these defective clones? If they let them live, it is immoral because life of suffering while stuck in a glass tube, being probed by scientists is their probable fate. Killing them off is also immoral because life is sacred, and they didn't commit any crime that warrants their death.

However, if human cloning could be perfected, many possibilities would emerge. We'd eventually find out how to simply clone individual organs, clone remarkable people who make an impact on society so that they may continue their great contribution and just around the corner, we could iron out defective genes in the human genome.

I have mixed emotions in this delicate matter. On one hand, I'm against because of the imperfection of the technique. On the other, I believe that if we don't step up research into this area we miss many possibilities for our species. And we won't get past this period of imperfect technique. So I just don't know what to think.

 

[ApocalypseKurtz]

It sounds like a lot of people have been brainwashed by sci-fi movies or other media depicting a future society in which cloning devastates the world, such as Gattaca, the 6th Day, etc.

But the truth is that stem cell research and cloning organs can cure many diseases that are currently fatal as well as replacing damaged organs and possibly curing paralysis.

Those religious freaks who claim that any kind of stem cell research or cloning is blasphemy are just claiming in an effort to save their religion. As our technology advances and we are able to cure more and more sicknesses and solve more of the world's problems, people will not have any need for the church anymore. The church is against many of these scientific advances so that people will turn to the church for answers and comfort. The church is scared of science and technology because it can solve these problems and disease more effectively than it.

After all, why would God give us the ability to cure disease through stem cell research but not want us to do the research? For some reason religious fanatics claim the genetic code to be "sacred" and "untouchable" to science. I will never understand this. If we can uncover the secrets of the human chemical processess and code, we should most definitely do so!

And besides all this, religion should play no part whatsoever in the politics deciding what is done with regards to cloning or ANY government decision for that matter, but George W still refuses to observe the Constitutional separation of Church and State.

 

[dannyevilcat]

I am all for any sort of cloning (except for organ harvesting), including the sci-fi image of the clone.
Beside the point, I emphatically endorse genetic engineering.