I thought I'd just start a new thread about this because it's a bit of a controversy and I'd love to hear what people think about cloning, since it's a bit of a moral issue. There's the issue of experiments going wrong, I understand, but apart from that I still find that some people find perfect cloning of humans wrong. something about "God not wanting it" and "It's just not right." I think that unless humans are being mass-produced and shipped off to work in shoe factories cloning is perfectly OK. I know some of the more religious people might have something to say about this.
ANYWAY.
Cloning, right or wrong?

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SeatCase.

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i think, as with any ethical issue, the basic metric that you're gonna have to use to evaluate it is the degree to which any action causes or prevents suffering.

so using cloning to generate new organs for people, for example (since i think this is pretty much what science is aiming for), would obviously prevent a great deal of suffering and extend lives. but i wouldn't be comfortable with it if it also somehow involved causing an organism to feel physical or emotional pain.

i think that if we can do it without imparting any suffering, it would be the ethical thing to do in order to make people's lives better.

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www.soundcloud.com/dannybeats-1

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I like how in my tab it says "Cloning on Songmeanings"

And do we mean cloning as in, like animus said, making new organs and that for people, or making new people?

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oh yeah i didn't even think about entire people, well that would just be creepy and i can't think of a practical reason for it, so let's say none of that

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www.soundcloud.com/dannybeats-1

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There's a few weirdo, "rogue" scientists in that field who mostly do stuff for notoriety, so it might be worth explicitly banning that sort of cloning as it would seem to be a huge violation of the human rights of the child.

As for other sorts of cloning, i think animus has pretty much hit the nail on the head. To avoid research that could reduce hunger and improve healthcare for reasons of squeamishness would be the immoral choice.

This is a decent and quite short article about it:

scholar.valpo.edu/cgi/…

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SongMeanings Underling

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the only think i can think of that's worth cloning is currency. unfortunately the government frowns upon that. actually, it's not all that unfortunate since it would lead to the swift destruction of the planet.

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I don't think anything is wrong with cloning. It doesn't harm anyone and it benefits us. Cloning has boosted our scientific studies a lot.

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The movie "The Island" imparts a interesting, original and bombastic hollywood perspective to the idea of cloning. Seemed like most people thought the film was stupid but at the crossroads of science and humanity this film is good fun. In short we probably shouldn't harvest humans. But then again sometimes I think we're already cattle. Some cows passed me on the highway the other day and they were looking at me through the grates of the semi truck trailer and I thought what is the difference between me and them. They are passengers and are less burdened by the ability to operate machinery I guess. They seemed happy. That concerned me somehow.

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I think cloning has benefited us financially.

Cloning of modified insulin-producing bacteria, meant that pigs were no longer the sole resource of insulin for diabetics.
And cloning of genetically modified crops meant the farmers could receive a higher yield, thus benefiting the economy, also more food for the people.

But I guess we are playing God, because we're interfering with the process of natural selection i.e. not allowing for survival of fittest. Because if a new disease or pest were to invade the GM crops, it could wipe them out since they are all exact copies of each other, and may not carry any resistance genes.
The same thing could happen if we were to clone humans; if a pandemic were to spread, all the clones could possibly die.

Another issue that could arise from cloning, is who would be able access this sort of technology? If cloning was only available to rich people, then scientists may not see purpose in continuing this field of science, since their original goal was to benefit the whole of humanity.

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if we did clone people, they would come out not knowing anything because you cant clone emotions or knowledge that is stored in the brain or at least i dont think you can.

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I come here to chew bubble gum

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