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[FONT="]I think one of the biggest concerns is that with the state of technology now is that they come out somewhat broken. Dolly the sheep is apparently physically much older than she is actually, and they don't really understand why. Until we know what the heck we're doing I think it would be wrong to go about producing broken humans. Long term I think cloning is fine, as long the clones come with the basic human rights everyone else gets. It probably wouldn't be a bad idea to find a way to definitively distinguish a clone from its "parent" either, for legal reasons.There's a creepy scenario of having a fully developed clone specifically to harvest its organs, or otherwise use it as a "backup", I think that’s pretty flatly wrong. The more grey area is around things like stem cells where you’re taking cells/parts/etc from a partially developed fetus. You could imagine where those might need to come from a clone for genetic matching reasons. That's definitely distasteful in my mind, but if you can abort a fetus why couldn’t you "harvest" it to save your life? (especially since there’s no second parent involved in the decision)In any case I think the big issues are around clone rights from conception to death, and a more general sense of identity that freaks people out. "If he's me, then who am I? What if he turns out bad and commits crimes, does that mean I could have been a bad person? Could they confuse me for him?" At least that’s what I get from all the pop movies about it in the last decade. There are probably a bunch of religions that are opposed to it from a "you're playing god" standpoint, but thats true of just about every new technology these days so its probably not worth arguing about. [/FONT]
[FONT="]I think one of the biggest concerns is that with the state of technology now is that they come out somewhat broken. Dolly the sheep is apparently physically much older than she is actually, and they don't really understand why. Until we know what the heck we're doing I think it would be wrong to go about producing broken humans. Long term I think cloning is fine, as long the clones come with the basic human rights everyone else gets. It probably wouldn't be a bad idea to find a way to definitively distinguish a clone from its "parent" either, for legal reasons.
There's a creepy scenario of having a fully developed clone specifically to harvest its organs, or otherwise use it as a "backup", I think that’s pretty flatly wrong. The more grey area is around things like stem cells where you’re taking cells/parts/etc from a partially developed fetus. You could imagine where those might need to come from a clone for genetic matching reasons. That's definitely distasteful in my mind, but if you can abort a fetus why couldn’t you "harvest" it to save your life? (especially since there’s no second parent involved in the decision)
In any case I think the big issues are around clone rights from conception to death, and a more general sense of identity that freaks people out. "If he's me, then who am I? What if he turns out bad and commits crimes, does that mean I could have been a bad person? Could they confuse me for him?" At least that’s what I get from all the pop movies about it in the last decade. There are probably a bunch of religions that are opposed to it from a "you're playing god" standpoint, but thats true of just about every new technology these days so its probably not worth arguing about.
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