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What is it? |
- Biological copy on the genetic level
- Different on the consciousness level
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Why clone? |
- Simply because it is technically available
- Technological challenge: scientists
- Profits: business people
- Agriculture: maintain a strong species or variant / improve harvests (temporarily)
- Strategic: political issue, national competitive advantage, technological colonization, profitability, jobs
- Social: the deciding aspect in debate
- Sterile / infertile reproduction (have-nots)
- Meets the medical needs of the living (organ, tissue, marrow transports)
- Retain the biological portion of the dead or dying (dead/dying loved ones, pets, leaders or self)
- More control of parents (heterosexual or homosexual) over offspring (clone themselves, others they desire, incorporate genetic traits)
- Egoism for being the first, status, history, revenge for ostracizing
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Cloning process |
- Dolly, the sheep (died at age 6 in Feb 2003 due to respiratory complications) process
- Harvest eggs from donors or any species
- Nucleus of each egg is carefully removed with a fine needle
- Cells (DNA) from organism to be cloned (Dolly's living original age 6)
- Fuse both the DNA-free eggs with donor cells together using electricity (!)
- Rebuilt eggs may further develop into embryos
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How reliable is cloning? |
- The technology is premature, not to mention the social impact
- At all the 5 stages, massive (98% per stage) failures have been encountered and not investigated for solutions yet
- Even if embryos do develop, the surrogate mothers may fail to conceive, miscarriages or with abnormal fetus
- The few actually born may have premature organs, aging signs (due to age of donor cells) and die with suffering
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The cloning issue |
- The technology is simply crude (Dolly needs 277 tries)
- Massive losses of lives and resources are the norm for just one perfect living: is this "sacrificial killing"?
- Even Ian Wilmut, the scientist who cloned Dolly to farmers produce genetically improved stock, is against human cloning
- Do those people know what they are getting into?: as a researcher myself, the one issue concerning whether to do a research topic is the belief in its usefulness. It really makes me wonder what sort of a belief the advocates and the against have.
- How "immoral", "scary", "absurd" is it?: In the not-so-distant past, people considered organ transplant and brain surgery as madness or simply murder. Then are we facing the same issue now as in the past or are we taking a step further in that direction?
- Is there such a Himalayan need to get this cloning stuff going? I understand that people often weigh pro's & con's, but can they stop for a moment to probe what all this means?
- What about the legal, social issues arising?:
- What if one parent wants to clone a dead child while the other is against? Who owns the right to the dead's DNA?
- What if people don't want to be cloned after they die? Can they insert a do-not-clone clause in their will? How we enforce such a wish or clause?
- What if it becomes acceptable to clone person once, ten times, hundred times?
- What if cloning supplants natural selection & skews the course of human evolution? Is the human species evolving anyway (For the last hundred years, evolution is more intellectual rather than biological)?
- What if a clone develops unforeseen abnormalities? Could he sue his parents or cloners for wrongful birth?
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Final word |
- I have a feeling that people are doing all this for meeting emotional, personal and conscious needs
- Cloning, as it presently is, can at best reproduce a temporary copy
- "nothing" can be used as a substitute for the original
- Everything is "unique" in time, space and dimensions, like the clouds in the sky
- "Clinging" to these needs (e.g. seeing the same cloud everyday) and "reacting" to them would simply be exhausting
- Rest, Release and Reside with dignity
- Take life as an experience, get into it and leave without making a mark on yourself or others (just like the clouds)
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