Cloning

[Oniya]

All right then - I was trying to simplify things, but the question remains:  How can slowing evolution to a crawl be good for a species' survival?

[Chevalier des Poissons]

Is cloning, to you, morally/ethnically right? Would you consider it? What would you do with it?

Very much. I see nothing wrong with the idea of cloning, on the moral point of view.

I would consider it and would use the cloning to give disabled people a fully-functional body. That and/or the case where someone lost a member or something.

But don't the clones age faster than usual? I mean, it is not like having the body all over again, I believe. Otherwise it would be easy to achieve immortality.

[Oniya]

But don't the clones age faster than usual? I mean, it is not like having the body all over again, I believe. Otherwise it would be easy to achieve immortality.

You're probably thinking of the telomeres.  Telomeres are end-pieces of the chromosome that gradually get eroded away during cell division.  This is one of the reasons that cells eventually stop dividing and die off.  In theory, if you clone an individual, that would include the length of the parent organism's telomeres.

[DarklingAlice]

The telomere issue could be fixed by temporary re-activation of telomerase. Regardless, while telomere shortening has been implicated in a number of diseases of old age, no causal connection has been formed between telomere length and aging. Indeed, some creatures (mice come to mind) have absurdly long telomeres and do not reach the limit of their telomeres within their normal life-span. So for now, even with constitutively active telomerase, we have to assume we would still age and die. Either way, it is unlikely to be a great impediment to cloning.

All right then - I was trying to simplify things, but the question remains:  How can slowing evolution to a crawl be good for a species' survival?

I see no particular benefit to a slow pace of evolution, but neither do I see a benefit to a fast one. As K selectors we have we have already evolved to evolve more slowly (and generally the slower a population reproduces and evolves as approaching resource limits the less likely it is to suffer dieback). Evolution is not a linear path in a positive direction and a high speed of evolution is not necessarily good, especially after a certain population/biodiversity level. Further it would always possible to amp up the evolution rate of clones by inducing mutagen stresses.

Again, not saying that it is a good idea. I am just saying that I am not sure this particular argument against it is that compelling.

[itsbeenfun2000]

Interesting subject on a whole. I do have one question how would a person become immortal. sooner or later the brain gives out and if you replace the brain you have a new person.

On the other hand do you want to be immortal? Things get done because we only have so many days. If we lived forever we would more then likely become procrastinators knowing we can do it in the future.

I love the idea of helping endangered species, however, do you want to bring back ones that are allready extinct? They may be extinct for a reason. Would we be having this conversation if the dinosaurs hadn't died out? When they left it gave mammals a chance to evolve out of burrows.

[Asuras]

An identical twin is a clone. We have many of them and I don't think anyone really disputes their rights as individuals.

If I had the ability to create an identical twin of myself, it would have no fewer rights than an infant twin of myself, as it would be.

So I fail to understand the question of rights, and the notion that I can freely harvest a reservoir of organs. I couldn't any more than I could my twin brother (if I had one). So it's simple.

[Florence]

An identical twin is a clone. We have many of them and I don't think anyone really disputes their rights as individuals.

If I had the ability to create an identical twin of myself, it would have no fewer rights than an infant twin of myself, as it would be.

So I fail to understand the question of rights, and the notion that I can freely harvest a reservoir of organs. I couldn't any more than I could my twin brother (if I had one). So it's simple.

The problem is you're thinking rationally and logically, most politicians... nay... most PEOPLE wouldn't be xP

[cassia]

But if your identical twin failed to develop correctly and ended up as nothing but a functioning lung - pretend this is possible - and you were born with two bad ones, then it's difficult to make an argument against using the good lung to replace one of yours. Cloning human parts wouldn't make us immortal and wouldn't increase the upper bounds of our lifespan very much. It would give us another way to avoid early death or loss of quality of life from organ loss and malfunction: the next step in transplants which are already common, with much lower chance of organ rejection and no need for immunosuppressant drugs.

The effect on evolution wouldn't be very much if cloning was restricted to specific organs and tissues. If you were born with a genetic illness, your cloned organ would have the same genes. These transplants would be ideal for treating injuries and acquired illness.

[Hunter]

The problem is you're thinking rationally and logically, most politicians... nay... most PEOPLE wouldn't be xP

+1

[Florence]

But if your identical twin failed to develop correctly and ended up as nothing but a functioning lung - pretend this is possible - and you were born with two bad ones, then it's difficult to make an argument against using the good lung to replace one of yours. Cloning human parts wouldn't make us immortal and wouldn't increase the upper bounds of our lifespan very much. It would give us another way to avoid early death or loss of quality of life from organ loss and malfunction: the next step in transplants which are already common, with much lower chance of organ rejection and no need for immunosuppressant drugs.

The effect on evolution wouldn't be very much if cloning was restricted to specific organs and tissues. If you were born with a genetic illness, your cloned organ would have the same genes. These transplants would be ideal for treating injuries and acquired illness.

There's a difference between a person and a functioning lung. A cloned human would be another person, a cloned organ would not. Well... theoretically, I suppose a cloned brain would sort of be a person... but other organs definitely not.

[Asuras]

But if your identical twin failed to develop correctly and ended up as nothing but a functioning lung - pretend this is possible - and you were born with two bad ones, then it's difficult to make an argument against using the good lung to replace one of yours.

I think we must be clear in what we mean by "an identical twin which ends up as nothing but a functioning lung."

If we could grow a lung by itself, that obviously doesn't constitute a human being. That's just tissue.

On the other hand "an identical twin which failed to develop correctly" is harder to define. I'd be quite curious to know what deficits are necessary to say "This infant is nothing but a functioning lung."

[Oniya]

I'd say that an anencephalic individual with no cerebral cortex other than the brain stem would be about as close as you could get to being 'only' a functioning organ.