From: Eugene Leitl (eugene.leitl@lrz.uni-muenchen.de)
Date: Wed Sep 27 2000 - 22:44:42 PDT
Jim Whitehead writes:
>
> Well, with so many people on this planet unable to real their full potential
> due to lack of access to resources, it seems like a bad idea to start
> blowing $100-$200k per cloned baby. These resources seem like they would be
> better spent on, say, educating the people already alive.
Sure, let's confiscate the money, and let a charity fund decide. Just
put me at the head of the confiscation authority. What, you don't
trust me to decide of which part of your money you shall let go? <pout>
> In a world where resources weren't an issue (as an academic I'm allowed to
We *live* in a world where resources are not an issue. Insufficient
resources are a problem of insufficient technology. As long as the
Solar system has not been yet turned into Suburbia, talking about
limited resources is disingenious.
> say this), cloning in and of itself doesn't seem like a bad idea, so long as
> sufficient genetic diversity were maintained in the overall population (and
> assuming that it wasn't possible to create such diversity on demand through
> gene manipulation techniques).
Which, of course, would be feasible in principle.
> I personally would like to see a human being created through the assembly of
> individual molecules, and thus get at the heart of this whole divine
By the time you can do that, there would be no point in assembling
people molecule by molecule.
> creation of life argument. Thus cloning people for research is OK, but
> performing it wholesale is a poor resource allocation.
Of course it is, but we haven't found a less sucky resource allocation
algorithm than markets yet.
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