[Maverick my ass.....Government's 'legitimizing' nuke weapons have no place determing the 'ethics' of cloning.] Ian Murray
Maverick scientists promise a human clone, Special report: the ethics of genetics. Julian Borger in Washington Wednesday August 8, 2001 The Guardian...
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I was just headed out to see Jurassic Park III after that prenatal post and had just turned off the news as it finished this report on human cloning. (Movie review: wait for the video)
Zavos and Antinori. Would you go to a clinic with those names on the door? Better yet, would you get in the stirrups for one of these guys to poke around? They are almost guaranteed to produce some twisted children for the first few rounds.
If I was a durable equipment dealer (Grimm Medical Equipment?), I would be sending out business cards to these fellows with full color brochures from Quickie, Invacare, and ASL. ASL makes head arrays for controlling power chairs---I think Steve Reeves uses one.
So, let's say after a few hundred jars with baby X's, it works and baby X(subscript n) arrives apparently perfect, that is normal, that is to say apparently ideal according to the current social constructions usually cited. Then what? I mean the possibilities for custody, health insurance, law suits, names, legal status, social standing, citizenship, have been enough to keep bad science fiction writers busy since the Forties. How about epitaphs for those family arguments? How does one clone insult another's family tree, by call them, Bud?
Let's say you're the clone and you want to go see your real? twin--that is your mother, I mean your egg-mother or the egg-Lady? This seems a little sexist. How about old Dad wiggly? Probably no visits for Dad. What exactly is this prime Other, relative to the clones?
So what about your real? twins. The temptation to mate clones with clones will be more than overwhelming---its guaranteed---as is cloning clones and cloned clones cloning themselves. Where is Bertrand Russell when we need him? Can clones marry clones? Can homosexual clones marry, or do they have to set-up some bogus domestic partner contract? Okay they can get married if they live in SF, but not in Mississippi? Can queer clones adopt or do they have to resort to cloning, or are they only allowed to adopt other clones? What about the family album: the same guy at different ages all in the same picture.
Let me put it this way. If I was a teenage clone, I know who my first date choice would be and I wouldn't need Dr Ugly to explain it. What is the child of two clones? Okay, let's say a clone couple has children, some cloned and some not, they earn lots of money and then die. What are the inheritance lines for property and taxes?
Which reminds me, do you think the alt.binaries.clone.sex news group would get many hits?
If we can figure out a way to artificially induce eggs to asexually reproduce, and I don't see any reason why that isn't possible in principle, since they do it already as oocytes, then we can really automate this scene. I think the numbers of primary oocytes is in the neighborhood of two million.
Will human clones dream of Molly? I mean the more I think on this, the more human clones sound like the ultimate commodity of all time. Sell the same people to themselves over and over.
Something tells me that Zavos and Antinori have not thought this business through.
Chuck Grimes