Cloning as a "Reproductive Right" Liberals?

[miko2d]

Originally posted by Eagler
Ego??

 Far from it. I can list just a few briefly:

 For a rational naturalist, a clone is the same as him/herself. So it is a way to achieve a personal immortality.

 Let's say you are satisfied with your physical and mental makeup. Then the process of rasing that baby is very different from rasing a baby who is a complete stranger. You know him/her as well as you know yourself - the temperament, the weaknesses, the strengths, the peculiarities. All your mistakes and your parents' mistakes and omissions in rasing you that you've realised when you grew up yourself you would be able to avoid repeating! There would be much more understanding, much better adjustment, much fuller realization of potential.
 The experience transfer from generation to generation would go much better - you would know where he is likely to need advice, what kind of situations he has problem with, how his mind works and how it learns, etc. That second 'you' will surely be more successfull in life with such an understanding parent and perfect rapport... That career you found  you should have chosen in your late age - he/you can start in it from birth!

 Imagine now that your wife is your ideal mate - not only  would she (knowing you) be able to better help rasing that child, her clone would most likely be even closer to perfect mate for him - being raised appropriately, etc. That is a side isuue but just one unexpected opportunity that is associated with knowlege of teh future - as much as knowing another person can be called that.

 Obviously I would never miss an opportunity to play the great genetic roulette and conceive babies in the normal way - with whatever help of genetic screening I deem reasonable. I would be more confident in them too - since all siblings are as genetically related to each other as a parent is to his/her child, my clone would have as much insentive to care for them and look over them as I do - and will be better prepared based on my experience than a random brother would.

 Of course that would only work for intelligent mentally-balanced parent(s) who care to invest time and effort in rasing his kids - some would just chop them up for organs, that's true. But why do would I care what some humans do to themselves? Hamsters eat their young and I live with that.

 miko

[Eagler]

"For a rational naturalist, a clone is the same as him/herself. So it is a way to achieve a personal immortality."

like I said EGO

WHat about the kid? You think you know best for him/her? You think he/she wants to go through life looking like you, no matter how "perfect" You think YOU are?

Selfish Ego

[Curval]

Well, what concerns me is having an evil alter-ego out there...

Don't you guys read Calvin and Hobbes?

[Charon]

Didn't the clone wars teach us anything?

Charon

[Sandman]

Originally posted by miko2d

 Far from it. I can list just a few briefly:

 For a rational naturalist, a clone is the same as him/herself. So it is a way to achieve a personal immortality.
 miko

That rational naturalist is fooling himself. We have clones already. They're called identical twins. As I understand it, they are exact duplicates in every biological way... BUT they are not the same person nor do the have the same personalities. A clone of me will not be me. It may look like me and talk like me, but it won't think like me.

[Creto]

Cloning humans for research? to benifit society?

Would this not be the same as creating and forcing a life into slavery or personal servitude?  To benefit our society so I don't have to go out into the heat of the day to pick dat cotton.  Ya lets get a whole army of'em dem cotton pickers.  Lets see if we can filter facial features and skin color to end racsism we get a whole army of a 'pure' race of beings.  Anyone disagreeing with new purity must sit in the back of the bus and use separate bathrooms.


AMENDMENT XIII
Passed by Congress January 31, 1865. Ratified December 6, 1865.

Note: A portion of Article IV, section 2, of the Constitution was superseded by the 13th amendment.

Section 1.
Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

Section 2.
Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

"If the Constitution is to be construed to mean what the majority at any given period in history wish the Constitution to mean, why a written Constitution?"--Frank J. Hogan, President, American Bar Assn. (1939)

[Sandman]

Originally posted by Fishu
Sandman has created a whole new meaning for "go diddly yourself"

Can't take credit for it... I believe it was Isaac Asimov.

[Nifty]

Identical only in DNA.  

If I was to have a clone baby right now...

I'd be 28 when it was born.  By the time the clone was 28 years old, it could be exactly like me, but it could be nothing like me!  Physical and mental attributes as determined by our DNA are not all that define us as human beings.  Life experience plays a significant part in the development of our personalities. I grew up in the 80's.  A clone of mine born today would grow up in the late 00's and early 10's.  Vastly different times, which could result in vastly different personalities for me at 28 and my clone at 28.

[midnight Target]

Originally posted by Sandman_SBM


That rational naturalist is fooling himself. We have clones already. They're called identical twins. As I understand it, they are exact duplicates in every biological way... BUT they are not the same person nor do the have the same personalities. A clone of me will not be me. It may look like me and talk like me, but it won't think like me.

Actually sandman, modern biological theories look at the gene as the ultimate survivor in the "survival of the fittest" game. The reproduction/survival of the gene is what seems to be of utmost importance. Cloning oneself would be (biologically speaking) twice as good as natural reproduction in terms of passing on ones genes (although less than half as fun). Yes the clone would not BE you, but it would have 100% of your genetic code. You have just hit the biological jackpot in passing on YOUR genetic makeup to the next generation.

OTOH a species thrives through genetic diversity (I know this flies in the face of the above). Rampant cloning would by definition reduce the diversity of the gene pool and harm the species over the long run. Think how well a cow would do in the wild.

[miko2d]

Originally posted by Eagler
"For a rational naturalist, a clone is the same as him/herself. So it is a way to achieve a personal immortality."
like I said EGO

 Whatever. Will to live is an instinct determined by my biology. You can hyppocritically say whatever you want but I would never believe that life and death are equally attractive to you. If they were, you would have been dead already.
 As for ego - I at least I am not running around believeing that a superhuman Creator of Universe is listening to my every whine like some butler.

WHat about the kid? You think you know best for him/her?
 Your statements are either opposite or have nothing to do with what I said.
 Of course I "know best" for him. The moral/legal part of that does not change whether the child is a clone, natural or adopted - the parent is the one who always "knows best". But the technical part is slightly different - I more accurately "know best" because I have extra knowlege.

You think he/she wants to go through life looking like you
 The child will be looking like himself. If it's a clone, he will be looking like me, of course. His wish is irrelevant - before cloning there is no one to wish, after birth, every child wants to look like, say, Arnold Schwartzsenegger - but woudl hardly agree on terminating his existance so that his parents could raise A.S. clone instead.

no matter how "perfect" You think YOU are?
 Whatever made you think I consider myself "perfect"? Or even believe that I attribute any meaning to that silly word you people use in such abundance? In fact, I learned to think in Russian - and we do not have that idiotic word that americans have stuck in their brains. We do have a word we use in similar situations - "sovershenny'i" - literally that means "accomplished" or "finalised". I can tell you what "accomplished" is - quite reasonably and in simple practical terms that do mean something. The word "perfect" did originate from latin phrase meaning "thoroughly made" - but how many english-speakers use it that way? That is quite a far stretch from current idealistic meaning  not applicable to anything in nature - perfect: being entirely without flaw and meeting supreme standards of excellence

 That definition cannot be appied by a human to himself by any stretch of imagination. If I consider some flaw in myself (as opposite to some minor part, like chipped tooth) - if that flaw were corrected, that would not be me, would it? I can only be "perfect" by someone else's judgement - which I care about only to a certain degree.

I am what I am. I am reasonably content with myself - genetically at least. I learned enough about myself in the course of my life to raise a child clone of myself more content with himself accomplishment-wise than I am - meaning more fully realising his potential, etc. I am sure that human being would be far from "perfect" by other people standards. So what? Ny one of my children would.
 If I am good enough for myself (don't really care much about someone else's opinion) to live today and a year from now, why am I not good enough to live a hundred years from now through my clone? It's my money...

 P.S. I am arguing that I am not driven by "Ego", whatever it means, just as a matter of truth in the current situation. It is none of your business if "Ego" were involved in any of my motivations - as long as I am not asking you to foot the bill. What's wrong with people having ego? You seem to treat it as a dirty word.

 miko

[Ripsnort]

Originally posted by 10Bears


If part of reproduction rights mean you can clone an army of supermen, I’m all for it!. It can only benefit society to have healthier smarter people.

Interesting!  Gobbels and Hitler would have agreed with you 100%

[milnko]

How about cloning a copy of yourself so as ya age ya got a ready supply of "spare parts"?

I smoke cigarettes, it'd be kinda nice to have a spare set of lungs handy.

Wonder how long before science gets around to brain transplants?

Or backing up your thoughts, memories to hard disk, so your clone can be imprinted, making your death insignificant.

[miko2d]

Originally posted by Sandman_SBM
BUT they are not the same person nor do the have the same personalities. A clone of me will not be me. It may look like me and talk like me, but it won't think like me.

 First, the twins even reared apart think in substantially similar way.

 Second, the miko five years ago or ten years ago was not the same as one twenty years ago or myself now. All thinking a bit differently bacause of different life experience. Still, I know those personalities' ways of thinking much better than I could ever know anyone else's - other than my clone, of course...

 Third, your clone will have children "exactly" like you would - being genetically identical. Once a person is dead, what difference does it make what slightly different way he could have thought? Or wether if he/she was a clone, rather than "original"?

 And what is that "We have clones already. They're called identical twins"? I do not have one. And nobody has one he/she could reasonally pass experience to at a young enough age to matter.

Creto: Would this not be the same as creating and forcing a life into slavery or personal servitude?
 Most people would clone themselves a child to love and cherish, but if you think in such dirty ways, what's to prevent you from forcing your regular children into "Would this not be the same as creating and forcing a life into slavery or personal servitude?" Same laws would protect the clones, I imagine.
 There were no clones in 1800 and slavery prospered - so it is a legal issue rather than a biological one.

 Lets see if we can filter facial features and skin color to end racsism we get a whole army of a 'pure' race of beings.
 That's not cloning - it is artificial reproduction and genetic screening. Those have been going on for years by hunderds of thousands.
 During in-vitro fertilisation a trained embriologist examines the embrios and selects the best one for transfer. In some cases a sell from an embrio (when it only gas 8 cells) is snipped out and examined - for sex where legal and genetic defects - before the embrio is transfered or discareded in favor of another one. I bet people would screen for health and intelligence if only they knew what genes to look for - and they will shortly.
 Also, many women perform amniosynthesis at about 16th week of pregnancy - mostly to screen for chromosomal abnormalities.

midnight Target: OTOH a species thrives through genetic diversity (I know this flies in the face of the above). Rampant cloning would by definition reduce the diversity of the gene pool and harm the species over the long run.
 True, but benefit of species has no bearing on gene selection in nature. For our species, we can see advantage in having diverse healthy gene species pool for our progeny to mate with - but we do not need to rely on nature to take care of that - being sentient species and all...

 miko

[Sandman]

Originally posted by midnight Target


Actually sandman, modern biological theories look at the gene as the ultimate survivor in the "survival of the fittest" game. The reproduction/survival of the gene is what seems to be of utmost importance. Cloning oneself would be (biologically speaking) twice as good as natural reproduction in terms of passing on ones genes (although less than half as fun). Yes the clone would not BE you, but it would have 100% of your genetic code. You have just hit the biological jackpot in passing on YOUR genetic makeup to the next generation.
 

Exactly... but there's no immortalitiy in it for me.

[myelo]

Originally posted by GRUNHERZ
In a few years when the whacko leftist femininsts who often set the liberal agenda on such things begin demanding cloning as a "Reproductive Right", and we all know they will, will you liberals support the idea?

Here's a better question: Will the right-wing “pro-life” group support it? Cloning as a reproductive procedure would provide a means for otherwise infertile people to have children. What could be more “pro-life” than that?