Originally posted by razorace
...You first have to be able to clone a whole person before you can expect to be able to clone individual parts for medical purposes. As for failed attempts, they're more likely to simply result in a miscarriage or non-growth than some sort of birth defect mutant. These are all possibilities for normal human reproduction.
Okay, number 1, you don't have to do so. In reality, it's much easier to clone an organ that a whole organ! That's simply logical. Secondly, you're correct about those possibilities. Except for the important point that the probabilities are much higher in cloning situations than in normal pregancies.
Also, there is no way to "customize" a clone; it's not like buying a computer: it's actually an exact copy of a person, not customization. WE don't have the technology to do that kind of genetic manipulation yet. Hopefully we won't ever. Or if we do, we won't ever use it.
DNA doesn't work that way. Cloning the whole body is much easier since you don't have to know how to make the cloned cells be a certain body part OR figure out a way to make the cloned part grow into a whole organ OR keep it alive outside the body.
Cloning the whole body is much easier since you don't have to know how to make the cloned cells be a certain body part OR figure out a way to make the cloned part grow into a whole organ OR keep it alive outside the body.
:confused:
Actually, that's the whole point of stem cell research - to be able to grow cloned body parts without growing people at the same time. Since it's bad to kill them once they're out of the womb, but it's okay when they've not yet been born. Do you see the irony here?
If one cannot define an unborn "fetus" as a person, simply because it is reliant on it's mother for everything, then where does one draw the line? Using the same rationale, infanticide can be justified, since the baby is completely dependent on the mother for everything. Thus, if the mother doesn't want to have to continue to deal with the baby, or if she wants to have it killed for scientific research, isn't that her choice, at least if we follow that rationale?
One can thus see that without at least some[ moral restraints on cloning, there will be an endless loss of the value of human life. It is disturbing that some people will have conniptions over a tree being cut down, but fail to protect human life. Am I the only one that sees the idiocy inherent in this?
I agree there has to be some ethical/moral boundaries to the research.
However, I think you're assuming that all people value human life. They don't. I think our personal value for a person's life is based on our relationship to them, weither we deny it or not.
Razor, it's not assuming that they do have respect for human life, it's that they SHOULD, human life is a special thing, and it shouldn't be wasted, people should really think before they support things that do involve the use of human life as a scientific tool, and that if it is used before birth, that it's not dead, therefore it's "ok" to use it. They have been experimenting with genetic splicing, and recombinant DNA, though and someday we might be able to grow human organs inside of animals, and if we can eat them, why not use them as spare part-growers? That would be the best solution, because it wouldn't raise moral issues (except maybe among animal-rights activists) and we could use them without taking away human life.
Animal/human organs are good to a point. Since they don't have the same DNA as the patient, there's a risk of rejection AND the patient MUST take anti-rejection drugs for the rest of their lives. Cloned organs wouldn't have that problem.
And, what about all the lives that could be saved thru the benefits of cloning? Are the lives of a few unwanted fetuses worth more than the trillians of lives that could be saved thru cloneable organs in the future?
Life is special, but we have to put a value on human life to be able to function as a society. People die, society has to live with that.
Originally posted by teutonicknight
Acutally, in the future, I don't beleive that it would be insane.
I don't think that you have to worry about that... By the time we can accelerate human growth, we may just as well have remote-contolled robot soldiers... After all we already have remotecontrolled spy-planes.
Are the lives of a few unwanted fetuses worth more than the trillians of lives that could be saved thru cloneable organs in the future?
Number one, its a lot more than a few lives. It's millions. Next, it depends on what your perspective is. If you're saying that human life is valuable because society says it is, then you're missing the point that some primitive societies have no such taboos - and are thus inherently violent. If, as a society, we refuse to state that any kind of killing of innocents that is not unavoidable (i.e. casualties of war that cannot be prevented) is wrong, then we are necessarily barbaric and evil in our nature. That is the only true difference between advanced civilizations and barbaric tribes - our perspective on human life.
Millions of unwanted fetus? I don't think so. We're only using the fetuses for stem cell research. If and when stem cells are used for real medical application we're probably going to use stem cells from the patient's body to prevent risk of rejection. For people that can't do that, we're probably have grown cultures of stem cells like a blood bank.
Originally posted by Master_Keralys
Number one, its a lot more than a few lives. It's millions. Next, it depends on what your perspective is. If you're saying that human life is valuable because society says it is, then you're missing the point that some primitive societies have no such taboos - and are thus inherently violent. If, as a society, we refuse to state that any kind of killing of innocents that is not unavoidable (i.e. casualties of war that cannot be prevented) is wrong, then we are necessarily barbaric and evil in our nature. That is the only true difference between advanced civilizations and barbaric tribes - our perspective on human life.
The point is, a fetus is far from a human life. Yes, it might denvelop into it, but caring so much about fetuses is just the same as crying over all the billions of egg and sperm cells that are wasted each day, because they could be used to create new life.
The point is, a fetus is far from a human life. Yes, it might denvelop into it, but caring so much about fetuses is just the same as crying over all the billions of egg and sperm cells that are wasted each day, because they could be used to create new life.
Actually, there's quite a difference between the two. Genetically speaking, since that seems to be the theme of the day, a fetus is completely human. Egg and sperm cells are not; they only carry half the DNA necessary, so they would never develop into humans, not given a million years. But given four weeks, there will be a heart beating, and not much longer before brains signals are detected. Regardless of the level of development of those brain waves, they're human brain waves all the same. Just because a person with Down's syndrome doesn't think at the same level as you or I does not mean that they're not human, does it?
We're only using the fetuses for stem cell research. If and when stem cells are used for real medical application we're probably going to use stem cells from the patient's body to prevent risk of rejection. For people that can't do that, we're probably have grown cultures of stem cells like a blood bank.
If that's the case, then why not use them from grown adults in the first place?. And don't tell me it won't take millions of fetuses. It took over two hundred attempts to clone the first mammal successfully, and if that's the case, then it will be over two hundred attempts to just get the stem cells growing right. For actual research - it would take an exponentially increasing number of fetuses for each different experiment/research!
i am for human cloning. but only if a person wants to be cloned, or have permission to clone from that person. i believe we need to master as much science we can for our species to evolve into more intelligent beings.
Originally posted by Master_Keralys
If that's the case, then why not use them from grown adults in the first place?. And don't tell me it won't take millions of fetuses. It took over two hundred attempts to clone the first mammal successfully, and if that's the case, then it will be over two hundred attempts to just get the stem cells growing right. For actual research - it would take an exponentially increasing number of fetuses for each different experiment/research!
:rolleyes: Check your facts please. We already know how to grow limited cultures of stem cells. And we can't just use one batch for a number of reasons, mainly for the same reason you can't just test a drug on a single person. The scientist aren't KILLING fetuses for their stem cells. These are fetuses that are going to be aborted anyway.
Ladies and Gentleman we have now entered the Earth Clone Wars heh sorry
**usless post**
Originally posted by ninja
i am for human cloning. but only if a person wants to be cloned, or have permission to clone from that person. i believe we need to master as much science we can for our species to evolve into more intelligent beings.
Hell ya! The Human Species has so much potential, we have to unlock it!
Originally posted by Pnut_Master
Hell ya! The Human Species has so much potential, we have to unlock it!
If there's a even a slight possibility that it might save lives, then yes.
razorace - you're right about that - and we're back to abortion. When does it have a right to live?
And while we know how to grow them in cultures, we don't yet know how to grow specific organs, do we?:p It's one thing to use them from adults, where no one is going to be harmed. But if you give that "fetus" a chance, it's going to be fully human within 6 months (which is I think the earliest a premature baby has survived - so by any definition, it's alive by then). Why is acceptable early but not late? There's little difference as far as it goes, except cost. Which is really the defining issue here, I think. It's cheaper to get it from fetuses than from adults. So we're down to a politic based entirely on expense. In which case we should get rid of all Alzheimers patients, MS, cancer, etc - just kill em and save us the expense. But we don't - because they are - or in some cases were people capable of determining their own fate. So we keep them alive after they've lost the ability to think rationally, but not before? Why?
That's why we need cloning tech. We could just clone the organ or stem cells needed for treatment. Like I said before, you gotta be able to clone the whole package perfectly before you can figure out how to clone individual parts.
Keralys: Given the amount of time you appearantly spend on posting to this tread I find it amazing that you don't seem to care for the simplest of the biology governing the processes herein described:
1) The moment you take a useful (ie: totipotent) stem cell and put it into a petri dish and feed it, you essentially have a clone of the host. Distinguishing between the two makes just as much sense as distinguishing between methane made by cracking oil and methane made by hewing pig-dung into a tank and waiting. In short: If you assume that an embryo has rights then you must, logically, also assume that the "embryos" that the body (maybe - they weren't confirmed last time I checked (not the useful (totipotent) ones)) contains have the same rights. After all, if you stick them into a woman's uterus then they will develop as if they were a normal foetus.
2) Growing organs is vastly more complicated than growing a full body. You need grafts, you need to know how the cells communicate, ect.
Two of me??
Scary thougt...:D, however if it only was used for treatment, I'm not against....It can be misused though....
:duel: