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Posted: Sun Apr 06, 2003 11:04 pm
by Skylimit
Fons wrote:They mustn't cole kids,
If I was cloned, I won't like it
If you were cloned, I wouldn't like it either 8)
(just kiddin')

Posted: Sun Apr 06, 2003 11:07 pm
by Skylimit
Olivier wrote: Imagine the insults on the schoolgrounds... "you, CLONE!!" :lol:
Beloved brothers & sisters .... would suddenly have almost a metaphysical meaning :wink:
micro wrote:Maybe in rare cases, when parents lost their child in a car accident, they would "order a clone"?
What a sick thouht

Posted: Sun Apr 06, 2003 11:41 pm
by K3lvin
Skylimit wrote:Gattica
Gattaca? Great movie btw.
micro wrote:Star Wars?
Yup, the newest movie.

Posted: Sun Apr 06, 2003 11:42 pm
by Olivier
Skylimit wrote: What a sick thouht
It can go very fast..

- I would like to buy a clone of Marilyn Monroe...
- I need a clone in case I have an accident, to give me some organs...
- Clones could do all the works people don't want to do...

Sounds like a science fiction? Not much...

After all, in the past, women had no soul... then coloured people didn't neither... I am sure someone could say in our XXIth century that a clone is just copy, but is not a human.

-> We need a worldwilde reflexion on all this. It's a very important subject.

Posted: Mon Apr 07, 2003 12:08 am
by micro
With all new technologies there's much phantasy and little knowledge at first: Remember old SF movies and the hassle they celebrated around spacecraft and computers. In the 1970s it was almost common thought that around the year 2000 we would either live in a paradise and make our vacations on Mars or the whole humankind would be under control of super-computers. Nothing like that happened. Right now we are sitting in front of our extremely powerful PCs which are nonetheless extremely stupid and crash occasionally as we play games with them.

I'm sure we will also get used to cloning. There will be occasional clones but no one will know except their closest friends. But if they know no one will really bother. Same as with in-vitro fertilization today.

But it's another technology which will be misused when it gets into the wrong hands - e.g. of a Saddam or Osama.

Posted: Mon Apr 07, 2003 12:39 am
by codi
Do you know Darwin's theory of evolution?
In that theory the difference is the key of success, the survival of a specie depends of its variations.
So, clonage don't seem a good choice...
I think it may be useful in certain circunstances but not a good way to reproduce humans.

Posted: Mon Apr 07, 2003 12:45 am
by Olivier
I can't imagine a clone of me... I am UNIQUE! 8O :wink: :)

Posted: Mon Apr 07, 2003 1:16 pm
by Skylimit
codi wrote:difference is the key of success, the survival of a specie depends of its variations.
I agree... It is not the strongest and smartest who survive, but the best adapted ... and environmental conditions change all the time ...

4 billion clones would make us weaker

Posted: Mon Apr 07, 2003 2:31 pm
by Antti
Fons wrote:Clones aren't from the same age (or are they...?)
Well, partly yes and partly not. A newborn clone is of course a baby and young, but its cells are already old. So if someone made a clone of a 40-year-old person the clone would be like a 40-year-old baby, if you understand my point, like it has already been a baby for 40 years, but starts growing only now. I'm not exactly sure of this myself, but that's how I think it goes, at least I read somewhere thet the problem with clones is their cells are already old
Olivier wrote: - I would like to buy a clone of Marilyn Monroe...
- I need a clone in case I have an accident, to give me some organs...
- Clones could do all the works people don't want to do...
I'm arguing with you in this. Taking organs off your clone for you? Why not the opposite, would you be ready to give your organs to someone else just because you two are identical?
Doing all the works people don't want to do? Hello, clones are people, ordinary human beings who dont want to do those jobs either. If a clone walked to you on the street you wouldn't know (s)he is a clone, because there simply is no difference

Posted: Mon Apr 07, 2003 5:24 pm
by K3lvin
codi wrote:Do you know Darwin's theory of evolution?
In that theory the difference is the key of success, the survival of a specie depends of its variations.
So, clonage don't seem a good choice...
I think it may be useful in certain circunstances but not a good way to reproduce humans.
Good point.
Antti wrote: I'm arguing with you in this. Taking organs off your clone for you? Why not the opposite, would you be ready to give your organs to someone else just because you two are identical?
Doing all the works people don't want to do? Hello, clones are people, ordinary human beings who dont want to do those jobs either. If a clone walked to you on the street you wouldn't know (s)he is a clone, because there simply is no difference
It would be great if organs could be grown separately. I'm not sure, but I think I read somewhere that scientist have been able to grow a separate human ear in a mouse using gene therapy.

EDIT: I found that article about the mouse with human ear on it. Now the same scientist group is trying to grow a liver. BTW the mouse looks gross :x
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/1949073.stm

Posted: Mon Apr 07, 2003 6:47 pm
by micro
Olivier wrote:-> We need a worldwilde reflexion on all this. It's a very important subject.
Yes, that's true. Some reflection is going on already.

Posted: Mon Apr 07, 2003 6:50 pm
by micro
Antti wrote:A newborn clone is of course a baby and young, but its cells are already old.
Sorry, but I don't think this is correct.

Posted: Mon Apr 07, 2003 6:54 pm
by micro
codi wrote:Do you know Darwin's theory of evolution?
In that theory the difference is the key of success, the survival of a specie depends of its variations.
So, clonage don't seem a good choice...
I think it may be useful in certain circunstances but not a good way to reproduce humans.
I think we messed up evolution already with our powerful medicine. But it's certainly not a good way to reproduce as it messes up natural evolution even more. So I'm sure cloning will never be massively applied. It should only be tolerated in exceptional cases.

Posted: Tue Apr 08, 2003 12:01 am
by emmem
After reading all this my opinion on cloning hasn?t changed much. Cloning is a way to reproduce humans. With the exception of the The Voluntary Human Extinction Movement is seen as a good thing. Given you don't reproduce to much, because otherwise you get overpopulated. So I think cloning within certain quantity limits is a good thing.

But the percentage of cloning has to be low to maintain genetic diversity. Because the real danger of cloning lies in the drastic reduction of the genetic diversity of humans.

Most people see cloning as making an identical copy of the original. But the current cloning trough DNA is far from creating an identical copy. It's only creating somebody with identical DNA.

The DNA is just the recipe of how a human has to be cooked together. It doesn't state what type of oven should be used, and if the human was a cake, how the cake has to be eaten.

DNA might play a role in the fact that a person is evil or not, but I think the education and the environment play a bigger role in getting someone to be evil or not. The fact that Sadam is who he is, is mainly due to the nasty things that happened to him in his childhood.

Posted: Tue Apr 08, 2003 1:35 am
by Olivier
Antti wrote:
Olivier wrote: - I would like to buy a clone of Marilyn Monroe...
- I need a clone in case I have an accident, to give me some organs...
- Clones could do all the works people don't want to do...
I'm arguing with you in this. Taking organs off your clone for you? Why not the opposite, would you be ready to give your organs to someone else just because you two are identical?
Doing all the works people don't want to do? Hello, clones are people, ordinary human beings who dont want to do those jobs either. If a clone walked to you on the street you wouldn't know (s)he is a clone, because there simply is no difference
Giving my organs for a clone? Why? A clone is only a copy, so let's have another clone... :twisted:
Clones could be useful to walk in the fields of mines, in Irak...
No more problems of hunger in the world, with the new meat of clone... :twisted:

-> all this was in a very good book I read in the early 90s. It was called "Reproduction interdite", ("no copy allowed"?) by Jean-Michel Truong.
The society was based on the principle that clones are not human, but only a copy of a human. The difference was weak, of course, but in the past, slavery was common.

I just mean with all this that it's a very sensitive problems.
What is being a human? When starts life?

It's true that a clone of a 40 old aged man is a baby aged 40. But if we clone a baby before his/her birth... Could it be possible to have technicly 40 identic babies?

It's science fiction... but it is questionning ethical question very deeply.