December 27, 2002
From the desk of Jane Galt:Attack of the Clones
I'm too lazy to find out if I'm the eighth, or the eighty-millionth, to use that particular headline.
At any rate, it seems that a religious sect which believes all life on earth is descended from aliens who created it 25,000 years ago via genetic engineering, are claiming they've created and birthed the first human clone.
(And how few of you will appreciate the heroic effort it took me to write that sentence without once using the word "nutjob" anywhere. Greatness has its price.)
Here's the thing: I can't for the life of me figure out why I'm supposed to care. It's a baby. It's got the same genetic material as someone else, which is also true any time identical twins are born.
I mean, I can see problems with it. For one thing, they created and killed a lot of embryos to get one live baby; if you're pro-life, that's pretty disturbing. For another, our experience with animal clones seems to indicate that the child may well have premature aging or other genetic problems. It seems a lot of effort to go through to produce a sickly child, when you can get a (probably) healthy one with a lot less effort and a lot more fun. And this really seems to cross the line into human experimentation -- but is it really crossing a new line? The procedure is probably less intrusive and dangerous than what we did to get the first test tube babies, or for that matter, what goes on in your average fertility clinic today.
But my sister, the social conservative, seems to think that it's just a short step to Dr. Mengele's laboratory, and they've got talking heads on all the cable networks who seem genuinely convinced that we've just opened an era of human enslavement undreamt of outside of SF novels. Myself, I don't see it. The most frightening thing I can think of is that if it got safe and cheap, people who don't understand that their clone won't actually be them will deplete our genetic diversity by trying to convert the species to asexual reproduction.
But to be honest, I just don't think asexual reproduction's going to catch on any time soon.
Posted by Jane Galt at December 27, 2002 2:36 PM | TrackBack | Technorati inbound linksMy reaction this a.m. -- yawn. Inevitable. Not scary. Use for good, not evil. Next subject...
And re: the UFO stuff. Hey, if religionists believe that some sort of invisible, omnipotent being created "life" on earth, then the Raelians claim of "aliens" doing the same is just as credible. Heh.
The two most important issue are this:
1.) What are the legal obligations of those involved in the cloning? We have to establish a legal structure for protecting these cloned children. A gov't ban on cloning would surely complicate this vital need and risk the rights of those children cloned in the meantime, against the gov't wishes.
2) Answering the Nature/Nurture question...
I was not bored at all at this bit of news, I find it exciting to be witnessing a historical moment...assuming the Raelians aren't making up the whole thing of course.
It seems to be that cloning is just very old and borring in itself, it's like the flying cars that were on the Jetsons, not even really scary. The best hollywood fright-fest was a colony of clones being killed for spare parts. I recommend you see the MST3k version. "Did I mention that I host Biography?"
We have to establish a legal structure for protecting these cloned children.
Uh, from what? Existence?
I mean, sure, if the birth defect rate is super-high or something you get into child endangerment territory, but every compliant I've seen so far is evidenceless slippery-slope assertations (vat-grown slave babies, used for spare body parts are next!) or just religious objections.
Even if you are agnostic about potential moral problems with cloning, the RAEL group is alarming because of what they want to do with the clones: they want to 'upload' their memories into the clone, or transplant their brain into the clone. So THIS group, at least, wants to use the clones as human spare parts to achieve immortality.
The goal is most probably crazy, but how many people do they get to kill to prove it?
From a pro-life perspective, the existence of clones by themselves is no ethical dilemma. (The destruction of many embyros and such to create them might be.) They simply should have full rights as human beings. Rather, it's medical and therapeutic cloning, where replacement organs have actually been mentioned as a goal, rather than reproductive, that is worrisome from a pro-life perspective. So long as people do agree that clones have full human rights, there's no real problem.
What do clones need to be protected from?
Legally, they're children, and have the same protections as any other children, I imagine.
("No Special Rights For Clones!")
About the "conservatives" (what are they conserving *here*?) worrying about slave labour, I apply the same critique - it's not legal to have slaves even if they're clones. The law makes no "clone vs. not clone" distinction, so what's the issue? If yuou really care, pass a law or a constitutional amendment affirming the human status of clones, if you think it's necessary to prevent some nebulous future abuse.
I don't think that 'clones = children' is a foregone conclusion. From a genetic perspective, a clone, unlike one child of a multiple birth, is not a child (a mixture of the genes of two parents) but a twin. Combining that with the hoard of people who protest the extention of government funds for uninsured children to prenatal care, and carefully use terms like 'fetus' and 'embryo' in reference to unborn humans to decouple them from traditional arguments for the protection of children, and clones very quickly do not equal children.
The most frightening prospect is definitely not hordes of clones brought to full term. I agree with Megan that humans won't switch to asexual reproduction on a massive scale for any number of reasons. I think a more likely scenario is massive numbers of clones harvested (aborted) early in pregnancy for stem cells.
big downside: people freak out and ban therapuetic cloning too....
Any new research invites terror and widespread panic. When they first invented trains people were enraged claiming that people were just not designed to travel that fast (50mph). People were so afraid of the potential danger from cars that a man, with a red flag, had to walk infront of it.
Heart transplants were met with all kinds of moral objections and scaremongering.
Cloning whether it is a full human or stem cell will have its rocky beginings and there may even be abuse but it will happen for good and ill. There are more many benifits than drawbacks. Lets get over ouselves and go for it.
Myself, I can (barely) remember the huge societal upheaval over ... wait for it ... birth control pills. At the time, it was the Most! Important! Issue! Ever! Now, of course, it's such a soporific that people don't even argue about it.
I'm going to go way out on a limb here and predict that nuclear transfer will wind up in exactly the same state within 20 years. Maybe even 10.
I'm trying desperately not to respond to the comment about the "unborn human" label when attached to a zygote. Umm. Urg. Aw, hell ... it's not my day for self-restraint, I suppose.
Where did that come from? A child was born (supposedly) from what is very nearly a not-entirely-newsworthy fertility procedure (in vitro fertilization followed by implantation). Exactly what in this story suggests that there is a huge mass of people just waiting for the go-ahead from the Revered Leaders of the Glorious Conspiracy™ to whip up a bunch of proto-humans just for the thrill of murdering them and dancing about while covered in entrails? The number of people who would go along with such a program is vanishingly small, I opine, even if that were a legitimate concern (which I would claim it isn't).
If you have evidence that this is a a resonable concern because somebody is making public statements that they intend to do such a thing, or even a reasonable argument that it is likely that some group such as this exists, then let's have it.
I appreciate the clone story because it's almost the only fun on the news these days--the rest seems to be terrorism and imminant war. It's delightful to have something goofy, and it backs up my theory that religion may be a driver for other interesting technological accomplishments--I wouldn't be surprised if the first space habitations have a religious (not necessarily any of the standard relgions) motivation.
I agree with you that cloning is of no particular importance, generally speaking.
Clones have no special status under the law, therefore, a baby is a baby is a baby. So much for THAT.
As for the possible genetic defects, I have several myself, and there are others in my family. It is reasonable to assume that any child I have will also have genetic defects. These defects may significantly degrade the childs quality of life. Is then reasonable for me to have children, knowing that they are likely to be sickly and defective? If it is, then why is it more of a worry for me to have a clone than a child? (We can gaurantee that my clone willhave geneitic defects.)
As for cloning children as a source of organ transplants, we are already cloning ORGANS (Isreali scientists are growing new kidneys in mice in the lab, I'll dig up the link if anyone needs it). If you wanted to harvest a kidney from a baby/clone, you'd have to wait for many years to get that kidney to a usable size for an adult. A directly cloned kidney would be ready in months, rather than years. Which is more pratical?
The problem with cloning is that we are listening to people who think too much.
Thinking too much is bad.
Its only when someone starts talking about cloning that you start to realize how poor the state of science education is in the world today.
Has anyone considered the fact that the genetic age of the clone is based on the age of the host from which the genetic sample is based? So, if ( and in my mind its a BIG "If") RAEL created a clone based on the genetic material of a 40 year old woman, even though the clone is a baby, its genetic timing says its a 40 year old.
How nice these good folks are to screw up a life that way.
When "dolly the sheep" was cloned, they discovered this little problem with genetic age. Everyone ponders and wonders to the possibility of clones and cloning, but the reality of the actual science of cloning is something else all together.
Frank,
EIther you are completely wrong, or you have pointed out the key to eternal youth.
We have to establish a legal structure for protecting these cloned children.I think what Mike Van Winkle meant was that the legal obligations need to be fleshed out.
Uh, from what? Existence?
For example, who is legally responsible for this Raelian baby? Who is her gaurdian? Is it the woman who gave birth to her? Is it the person whose genetic material was used? How about the project manager who ran the experiment? Without good contracts, the answer isn't really clear.
Also, can I demand royalties on my genetic material from any clones I may have? (Or what about my parents, technically my genetic material is their creation. Do they own the rights to it?)
There's going to be a lot of work for the lawyers and judges to do if cloning becomes commonplace.
I don't think that 'clones = children' is a foregone conclusion.
If they're not citizens, they have to be property. Can you imagine a judge finding a way to declare a human child to be property?
Has anyone considered the fact that the genetic age of the clone is based on the age of the host from which the genetic sample is based?
Aging isn't genetic.
For example, who is legally responsible for this Raelian baby? Who is her gaurdian? Is it the woman who gave birth to her? Is it the person whose genetic material was used? How about the project manager who ran the experiment? Without good contracts, the answer isn't really clear.
The guardian is the child of person who's the source of the cell and nucleus. Why would there be any legal difference at all from surrogate mother contracts, where the people who are the "source" of the child (mother and father) aren't the people incubating or giving birth to the child (surrogate mother)?
Also, can I demand royalties on my genetic material from any clones I may have? (Or what about my parents, technically my genetic material is their creation. Do they own the rights to it?)
As you can't legally demand any royalties from regular children, who are 50% yours, no.
Really, everyone's been watching too much science fiction: cloned children are legally the same as any child.
Aging isn't genetic.
Look up "telomere shortening" at a Google near you. It *is* a serious ethical problem with cloning humans, at the current stage of knowledge.
Can you imagine a judge finding a way to declare a human child to be property?
I can imagine it easily enough, as long as there were some way of differentiating that child from other, non-property children. We've got judges who think a gestating baby - even at full term - is effectively property; anything's possible. (Especially since the apparent general perception that clones are somehow dangerous makes it easier to see them as non-human. Anything "unnatural" is easy to demonize.)
I have asked InstaProf about this and he declined, so I am sure there is some reason why this case is not precedent [except maybe very narrowly]. Diamond v. Chakrabarty, 447 US 303 (1980) seems to make a genetically engineered life form a patentable piece of property.
I am going to sit back and screen Blade Runner.
Science has again outsripped the law and some serious questions about life, death and the law remain.
Since the third rail is abortion, this train will not leave the station any time soon.
-Dan
RE: Clones inherit the age of the host genetic material:
http://www.cnn.com/NATURE/9905/26/dolly.clone.02/
http://www.wellesley.edu/Chemistry/chem227/nucleicfunction/cancer/sci-clone-aging.html
http://www.lifesite.net/interim/2002/feb/01dollythesheep.html
To quote tennyson( on the hazards of eternal youth):
" The woods decay, the woods decay and fall,
The vapours weep their burthen to the ground,
Man comes and tills the field and lies beneath,
And after many a summer dies the swan. Me only cruel immortality Consumes; I wither slowly in thine arms,And beat me down and marr'd and wasted me, And tho' they could not end me, left me maim'd To dwell in presence of immortal youth, Immortal age beside immortal youth,
And all I was, in ashes."
The only thing I'm really sure of is that RAEL didnt create a clone.
Jason:
What I hear is that cloned animals display a number of abnormalities that start to manifest in mid-life, including premature aging, grand mal seizures, and an extremely high risk of cancer. This seems to have something to do with the genetic material taken from the adult cell, whether because of telomere shortening, or because of damage to the cells from which the material was taken. So it's not like making a normal baby; it's making a baby who is probably going to have a hell of a lot of health problems. Also, it's not clear whether in humans, with their much longer lifespan, these problems will manifest within the 2-5 year time frame seen in animals, or in the middle of the normal human lifespan. It's pretty troubling.
>>"What I hear is that cloned animals display a number of abnormalities that start to manifest in mid-life, including premature aging, grand mal seizures, and an extremely high risk of cancer. "
The problem with this is that we really don't have a large enough sample of clones to say whether this is an inherent problem with cloning, or simply a side effect of the current process, or, for that matter, just bad luck.
The only thing we know for SURE about cloning is that we don't know enough.
I stand corrected on genetic transmission of aging in clones. I rather doubt it's an inevitable consequence, though, as regular kids manage to get born without it.
So it's not like making a normal baby; it's making a baby who is probably going to have a hell of a lot of health problems.
We let cousins, the mentally disabled, and people with genetic diseases have kids. I don't see how it's much of a difference.
I can imagine it easily enough, as long as there were some way of differentiating that child from other, non-property children. We've got judges who think a gestating baby - even at full term - is effectively property; anything's possible.
Ok, now I understand where the worries are coming from: a misunderstanding of the legal treatment of abortion.
Abortion is legal because the line between 1 person and 2 is pretty fuzzy until the kid is born. That's it. There's some unpleasant consequences no matter where you draw the line (forbidding aborting a zygote is pretty silly, as is not forbidding third-trimester abortions), but that's what's going on. A month-old child, or a twenty year old (probably required for the brain swap) are quite clearly legal individuals (them plus the mother is 2, not 1), and the worries are moot.
There's some icky possibilites no one has mentioned yet (making kids without brains, keeping them on lifesupport to maturity, and then harvesting their organs or transplanting a brain into them), but the technical requirements are so outlandishly high that I can't imagine they'll ever be used (if you can actually modify a zygote to grow without a brain, you can probably get what you're looking for in a much less icky fashion).
Jason, I think you'll find you're mistaken. Embryos are legally property in the United States.
The term "nutjobs" is far too kind for the Rael cult. The chances that they have actually achieved a scientific breakthrough are, happily, close to zero. If a clone baby really had been born, that would mean a human being growing up without a mother and a father. It stuns me that people would voluntarily do this to another human being, and it stuns me that nobody on this thread seems to think that this is even worth mentioning.
When your life has a test tube start,
Where you going to send your heart,
on Mother's day?
Jason, I think you'll find you're mistaken. Embryos are legally property in the United States.
Come again? I'm not following how I'm mistaken.
To DavidMSC:
Haven't you ever considered that God (elohiym) is an alien.
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