From: JTS - MCDLXXXVI (jts7@duke.edu)
Date: Thu Sep 28 2000 - 11:51:39 PDT
Sentience of Clones:
Answer 1: well, if it's a question, I guess we'll just have to clone a
few and find out. My money says that they'll be like twins several
minutes apart.
Answer 2: It depends on how you define sentience. And *we* define
sentience. If there is any advantage to declaring clones to be
"non-sentient", we'll probably try to do that. And then we will have
PETC running around saying "clones are people too", and hollywood stars
wil join the popular cause, and the radicals will throw dishes of agar
onto politicians. Or something.
> The idea of cloning MeatFarms is somethign thats been kicked around SF
> for a while now. You clone the flesh and the lower brain functions but
> chpo off anything that would make a "person"
> That line is going to be fought over almost as much as the line of when a
> "person" beings in the womb.
Yadda yadda, btdt. Clones are going to be VERY expensive toys. All the
costs of raising an ACTUAL child, along with the cloning costs to startup
which are usually covered by a bottle of wine, a cheap candle, or at
most, some jewelry.
If you want a developed clone that will be "interactive" you have to
raise it. If you want a fully formed, yet "meatbag" clone with no higher
order functions then you have to pay for the raising of a brain-damaged
child, which is far more expensive. If you want replacement parts, maybe
you could grow them in tubes and then keep them in a zoo, wild, like
apes. Ignore the raising costs, just feed them regularly and then when
you want a matching blood type, marrow, or liver... trank a few and
select your donor. That would be a touch cheaper, and definitely more
efficient.
...unless you have a cheaper way of raising children, in which case we
may have bigger issus than clones to wory about.
Besides, these clones are going to be poked and prodded. Before we get
any of these issues of mass use, there will be all kinds of "medical
testing" issues to deal with. You thought the nazi experiments on twins
were bad, wait till we can grow 40 of them and just keep repeating the
test series over and over... heh.
I think it's probably more likely that spontaneous human luddite response
will destroy and ban the technology before we get to making the real hard
choices.
JTS
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