Alright, I thought I'd start this up. But just before I post this, I want to remind all that this is a debate and I'm doing this to poll the general human population on their views on cloning for a project I am currently undertaking. Please remember that this is not a place to flame or attack others and respect others opinions. (Mods, I hope this is an ok topic)

Alright, now that that's out of the way, what are your views on human/organ and/or animal cloning happening in today?

Honestly we'd rather not have topics like this discussed on what is, at the end of the day, a forum for questions about computers. however it is technically acceptable in this forum. this will be closed though if it gets nasty.

I can see a lot of potential benefit to cloning human organs, however, some evil genuis will use it for the wrong reasons and make it something potentially dangerous.

Thank you very much. And I accept your terms.

I don't see anything inherently wrong with cloning, in much the same way that i see nothing inherently wrong with manufacturing drugs. Both serve a beneficial purpose, and both can be destructive. The problem is in determining what is beneficial and what is malevolent, and how to prevent the latter.

What I find is hilarious is the people who refuse to eat Biologically enhanced foods and yet they will eat foods which are smeared with insecticides and other such crap.

Cloning is not bad for organs and whatnot, but I am so-so on the changing babys before they are born in order to prevent them from ahving a disease. This may lead to people crating super beings which I do not agree with, there are allready too many juicers now, let alone when you can make it genetically.

One of the things I've learned from my job is that we know absolutely SQUAT about how the human body works. Sure, genomics has greatly increased our understanding of some disease, but for the vast majority of disease, we really know nothing. And as for creating a super-human, or even a marginally enhanced one, forget it. Pure unadulterated science fiction. We simply don't know which genes to alter in what ways.

I guess my point is that the fear of cloning is so much greater than the facts of cloning, it isn't funny. I'm sure that some twit will manage to clone a person in the next decade or so, but I'm also pretty sure that other than the initial furor, nothing much will come of it.

Hangdog42: who said anything on altering genes, we do know there our certain genes for certain things, we can then transplant them, its been done in lab animals if i remember right.., but any at most it will just give the best known genes to people, some of which can be good, altho risky as we don't know the long term effects

as for cloning.... i see nothing wrong with it,.. as far as i see it, babies made thru sex and babies made thru cloning are the same thing., clones wont have the same memory or personality as you, most of that is how you grow up and hasn't much to do with genes (altho maybe a bit).. , heck the clone might not even look like you!, the only difference i see in clones and regular babies are that clones are genetic copies, while regular babies are just mixed-gene'ed thru sex.

While you're largely right, there are a couple of important shortcomings to clones. Probably the most important is aging. Some recent work has shown that as you get older, the ends of your chromosomes get shorter. So one of the concerns about cloning is that you are creating a being who's biological clock is already well advanced for their age. In other words, clones may have significantly shortened lives.

My experience is that conversations about cloning invariably end up focusing on genetic issues like "designer babies". People definitely associate basic cloning with attempts to create super humans. I've worked in a lab that created transgenic mice (mice with either missing or extra genes) and creating these mice is a real crap shoot. Most of the time you either get mice that don't live to birth or mice that show absolutely no effect from what you've done. And that is why I believe that the fear of cloning is greatly exaggerated given the facts of cloning.

Hi,

I think cloning can be good, at least from the point of view of transplants... just imagine a situation where no organ rejection occurs, just due to the fact genotype of that created orgen is exactly the same as the person we've extracted a sample to create the organ from...

And with the possibility of creating a super human... well... if we had the knowledge to do it correctly... why not? why having to live only less than 100 years? why not having the chance to live 1000 years? i don't see anything wrong about it... or having stronger defenses against viruses or... well.. the options for this are very wide, but i think it's good, well.. it's my oppinion, after all... i don't intend this to be a flame war

Julio

the problem with living 1000 years is like what Hangdog42 said about clones having shortened life spans.... each time the chromosomes divide, a bit is lost, eventually this might cut into needed genes, and cells will go haywire, but as far as living past 100 years, why not?, people live past that with no "modern" health centers in the middle of no where, studies suggest its because they have a HUGE calcium supply in there bodies, way more then anyone living in the "modern" world. living long is less creating super humans, and more taking care of yourself, .. drink milk, exercise, get the needed minerals, and more if its safe, etc .... just posted this as an info post, nothing more

Cloning is just another reproduction technology...

Nothing more, nothing less.

A person is a person, no matter how they are created. They are all entitled to the same legal rights. So, if you clone yourself, you are not entitled to take the clone's organs to prolong your life... The clone is a child, just like if you had a child the traditional (and particularly more fun) way.

We already have natural clones. They are called identical twins. The only difference is that with clones, the twin will be removed from the donor by a much longer period of time.

The only risk of cloning is to the clone's health, that is... if the cloning process is not perfected, chromosonal abnormalities can pop up, including reproducing a person from cells with a damaged DNA strand, problems with the telomeres, etc.

If Dolly, the sheep, could be successfully cloned, there is no reason why a person could not be as well. Dolly died of a respritory infection that is common to sheep. Otherwise, she lived a healthy and happy sheep life.

Using technology is not playing God. We were given intellect by God to attempt to make our survival more successful. You can use that techology for good or evil. I would say that cloning a man so that his wife, who is a carrier for a horrible genetic disease, can have his child, would be a good thing... that's just one example of the beneficial uses of this technology.

Just want to make a distinction that reproductive and therapeutic cloning are two very different technologies that are often lumped together under the general umbrella of "cloning".

There also is a wider issue with reproductive cloning (making cloned offspring) that affects the human population as a whole that most people don't appreciate. If reproductive cloning becomes common-place and having yourself cloned becomes popular and having true offspring becomes less common, we are actually reducing the amount of genetic variation in the human gene-pool. That may sound pretty meaningless to most people, but that can have major affect on how common rare diseases are. For example if you look at genetically inbred populations (like certain Menonite and Jewish populations) you see strikingly high level of strange diseases (Tay-Sachs, Hemophilia, etc) that are virtually absent from more genetically heterogenous (mixed) populations. It also makes a species less adaptable to changes in the environment around them. On our timescale (a lifetime) that doesn't mean much, but it really is an important thing to consider. Another big isssue is the potential for abuse, what if Bill Gates decides he wants to spend his fortune and make 100,000 clones of himself. Should he be allowed to do that? So there are some really fundamental issues that need to be addressed before reproductive cloning is common-place.