Human Cloning

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I am personally opposed to cloning people, but I'm open to hearing other viewpoints. What is your position on cloning? If the technology was available to you now, would you use it? If so, what for? What do you think cloning will be used for.

The aptly named http://www.humancloning.org/ makes the case for human cloning.
The site at this link http://www.wrtl.org/stemcell/cloning.aspx makes the case against human cloning. It's a pro-life site, but there are no gross pictures.

Why would i want to be cloned? Why would I want to be replaced by a young, inexperienced, snotty and diagreeable punk with the same genes and a 10th the personality?

And as for cloning As a source of spare parts - no thanks.

I would much prefer to clone individual organs rather than the whole body. Cloning a whole body raises some thorny ethical questions.

ruveyn

I don't know that I would want to meet a younger version of myself. On the one hand, I might sort of "get" the person, having the same genetic makeup, but on the other hand this person might be nothing like me because of her experiences.

I'm all for it. Clone families would be awesome.

Clone tag anyone? You are it.

Clones are basically artificial twins. If scientists were to create an entire human clone and let it grow into a sentient being, he or she would be a person who just happened to be conceived in an unusual way and thus would deserve to have the same rights as everyone else. I'm not sure if this type of cloning would be okay. Even if the clone were allowed to live a normal life, how would he or she be affected if he or she found out that he or she were a clone?

Cloning individual body parts, however, would be a great idea. Organ replacements would be so much easier to obtain. Instead of waiting for a heart and probably never getting one in time, a person could receive a cloned heart that didn't require anyone to die or donate it.

Body parts would be nice to clone. People.... I don't really care one way or another about that. I believe it is perfectly fine though. Unless EVERYBODY clones, or we are all clones of a single person, cloning one individual will not reduce genetic diversity much.

Isn't there an issue with cloning where the clone has the same issues of the age group? Say like if you clone a 60 year old, the infant will have 60 year old's problems with their body.

Not if the cloning is done from a stem cell.

ruveyn

If it was provenly safe and accessible to me and I could afford the money to raise the clone then I would 100% do it. It seems to be a great idea for allowing reproduction for single people that don't really have any outlook on stopping being single. I have always wanted children but not really a couple. And yeah I am crazy.

Last edited by Vexcalibur on 08 Dec 2010, 9:54 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Makes sense. Dolly was done with just a regular cell, right?

I pretty much agree with AG here - cloning individual organs would be invaluable and clonning whole people - who cares? I don't know why somebody would want a clone (except, perhaps, to truly gauge nature vs. nurture, but identical twins already help with that).

I don't really have an opinion regarding human cloning.

Would human clones be capable of reproducing?

Dolly did not go entirely to plan as she aged prematurely probably due to ret*d telomeres on her DNA so I definitely think we are nowhere near ready to clone humans

I forget if they allowed her to mate and produce regular offspring. Probably?

Descartes, why would you think they would be unable?

Body parts definitely. To anyone opposed to that I say "f**k off." Whole humans are trickier ethically, but I doubt it would be a serious issue anyways. The intersection of people who want to clone themselves (for whatever reason) and people who would be rich enough to buy their own clones is probably small enough that it would just be a couple eccentric celebrities and never make a serious impact on the overall human gene pool.