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I was researching cloning the other day, and read about all the controversy that came with the theory of human cloning. The former pope said it was "A tragic attempt by man to imitate God's unique life-giving powers." When Dolly the cloned sheep was announced in 1997, Bill Clinton's cabinet said that human cloning would be immoral.

What do you guys think? I think it could be taken in moderation for, say, cloning skin cells to heal a burn victim. It shouldn't be used for selfish reasons like parents wanting to bring back dead children however (They would just be identical people anyway, you can't clone memories)
Reproduction of life via cloning is only immoral if someone assigns immorality to the act.

Further, what difference is their in recreating life with the intent to heal physical damage, and recreating life with the intent to heal possible mental damage? Is physical damage inherently more devastating than mental? How? These are all questions that one needs to answer when asserting the supposed immorality of certain facets of cloning.

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Kiraden
I was researching cloning the other day, and read about all the controversy that came with the theory of human cloning. The former pope said it was "A tragic attempt by man to imitate God's unique life-giving powers." When Dolly the cloned sheep was announced in 1997, Bill Clinton's cabinet said that human cloning would be immoral.

That just doesn't make sense. It's like saying if someone has twins, we should kill one of them. In cloning, though, it's a copy of someone, rather than a division of a person. Afterall, with things like fashion trends, sports jerseys, school uniforms, and hair dye, we kinda have enough things that signify that people are the same.
The "popular" issue with cloning was that the clone "wouldn't have a soul" and thus "wouldn't be human". If you don't believe in souls, etc then the entire arguement is void. There's also an issue with the process behind it, much like stem cells.
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What do you guys think? I think it could be taken in moderation for, say, cloning skin cells to heal a burn victim.

That's not the same. I know, since I did a project about that. Besides, that's just a cell dividing (I find skin cells to be rather lack-lustre; nerves and macrophages are cooler) , as opposed to with cloning which is the whole sperm+egg routine.
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It shouldn't be used for selfish reasons like parents wanting to bring back dead children however (They would just be identical people anyway, you can't clone memories)

Hey, some people will give an arm and a leg to get someone they love back. gold star for whoever gets the reference.

Witty Phantom

If you have that technology then why not try it out? :/

In my opinion, god gave us technology and intelligence for a reason. We should be able to use it to the best of our ability.


Golden Dysprosium
Hey, some people will give an arm and a leg to get someone they love back.


That doesn't necessarily make it right though.

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wolfves tears
Golden Dysprosium
Hey, some people will give an arm and a leg to get someone they love back.

That doesn't necessarily make it right though.

In what sense? Besides, you said:
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In my opinion, god gave us technology and intelligence for a reason. We should be able to use it to the best of our ability.

And what if it isn't for "the right reasons"?

Both parts contradict each other. xp
Cloning human organs or stuff like that is fine, but a full grow human is wrong. Not because the church said so, because it is a danger to society
I don't see a reason to object to it.
Bringing loved ones back, there goes the gene pool D:

Short term i see no problem, however after about 2 generations everything goes down hill. Such as stopping evolution on the genetic scale, however environmental factors could play a minor role as they do now.
I think cloning and related subjects such as stem cell research, should be free for scientists to practice. Without other people imposing their false moral obligations upon them.
Kiraden
I was researching cloning the other day, and read about all the controversy that came with the theory of human cloning. The former pope said it was "A tragic attempt by man to imitate God's unique life-giving powers." When Dolly the cloned sheep was announced in 1997, Bill Clinton's cabinet said that human cloning would be immoral.

What do you guys think? I think it could be taken in moderation for, say, cloning skin cells to heal a burn victim. It shouldn't be used for selfish reasons like parents wanting to bring back dead children however (They would just be identical people anyway, you can't clone memories)



Technically speaking identical twins (or other identical multiple births) are essentially 'clones' of each other, which is amusing to know after listening people who claim they are 100% against clones or cloning. XD

Stem cells are somewhat different from actual cloning as you are taking cells that already exist and assigning them a 'task' where as most 'cloning' is viewed as creating a creature from scratch. Considering that most stem cells are found in placenta that is often thrown away after birth, why the heck not? If anything we can consider it one of the more beneficial forms of recycling.

Though as far as engineering entire human beings I'm not supportive of it right now. Taking aside the ethics of it I don't believe that we are truly ready to starting cloning something as complex as a human being. The process has not been development properly and the mortality rate of cloned specimens is very high. Hell, we've only just recently been able to clone animals properly, only a handful of which have survived into adulthood, (Dolly the sheep being the more 'well known' of these) and are not ready to go into cloning human beings.

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Yeah, we should keep working on smaller mammals before we try humans. I mean, Dolly took 277 tries to get right, so we won't have a sizable minority of clones for years (if we ever do).

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The thing with cloning humans is that it's impractical, especially at this point. If we use the same technology to "clone" organs, we'd be making better use of it.
Then again, there are some transplant recipients that go back to doing what fried their organs in the first place. xp

Invisible Phantom

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I don't particularly see much of a problem.... although for so many reasons it's just another thing for humans to hate each other for, and frankly I think there are enough people on this planet as it is. Although it would be a good ideas to clone organs, stem cells...ect stare
I'm pretty much against human cloning in any instance. Yes, I'm a Christian (for the most part) and believe imitating God in regards to generating living things is immoral. However, consider what would happen if entire human beings could be cloned or artificially generated. "Designer babies" are pretty much an inevitability in that scenario, as well as the "resurrection" of dead people, as previously said here. It's impossibly naive not to believe that these technologies won't rapidly fall into catastrophic abuse.

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Broadside
I'm pretty much against human cloning in any instance. Yes, I'm a Christian (for the most part) and believe imitating God in regards to generating living things is immoral.

How is it "immoral"? That's what I don't get. "OMG! We made a copy of something! We're violating the laws of the universe!" I still dont' understand why we're using a 2,000yr old storybook compilation, written by a bunch of highly opinionated (and often drugged up) desert folk, written at a time when it was thought bits of rotting meat turned into flies to guide modern society. xp
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"Designer babies" are pretty much an inevitability in that scenario,

"Designer babies" (ugly title, in my opinion) came from the paranoia crowd after someone purposed (and eventually developed a way to) change certain traits in children so that they wouldn't be born with certain genetic defects. It came from the idea that if we can alter the genes which would increase the odds of someone getting, say, osteoperosis, why can't we change other things? We could then market it. Hence, "designer babies".
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It's impossibly naive not to believe that these technologies won't rapidly fall into catastrophic abuse.

Everything does. Telemarketing, e-mail spam, hedge funds...it all depends on who's using it. Typically, the developers have a more innocuous use for their creations.

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