From: Eugene Leitl (eugene.leitl@lrz.uni-muenchen.de)
Date: Thu Sep 28 2000 - 22:57:59 PDT
cdale@silly.techmonkeys.net writes:
> But the objective is to create clones that will do useful things for us,
> right? And if they don't -want- to do these things? The biggest
Right, just like children. Because, um, reproductive cloning produces
normal children, born in the usual way. What do you do with children
who don't want to do useful things for us? You don't throw your
children into the incinerator when they misbehave, do you?
Nature does cloning, too, when sometimes early stage embryos
spontaneously fragment, and produce identical twins. If you would put
one of them on ice for a time before reimplanting it, you would have
essentially the same situation as when cloning an adult animal.
Things are different for clones raised for organ harvesting. For
obvious reasons, one would want to knock out genes coding for higher
cortical functions (we can't do that yet, so, oficially, there are no
such clones). If you don't do that, then, well, maybe you should be
the one to go into the incinerator, Dr. Mengele.
> stupidity factor about this is that, well, damn, don't we already have
> population problems as it is?
Huh? Industrialized countries' populations shrink, if it wasn't for
immigrants. Also, if a sterile couple really really wants a child and
pays for it all by themselves, who are you to forbid it? And if Eugene
wants a little Eugene steak... erm, let's skip that.
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