a thoughtful web.
Good ideas and conversation. No ads, no tracking.   Login or Take a Tour!
comment by mk
mk  ·  4837 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Cloning - Human cloning - why so taboo?
I want to think on this more and come back to it, but I have some initial thoughts:

My personal feeling of the 'wrongness' of human cloning comes from our lack of understanding of the cloning process, and our lack of understanding and experience regarding the health of the clone, and importantly, their progeny. A very very different standard needs to be met when cloning a human as opposed to cloning a bull for meat. For example, if we later find that offspring of these bulls are susceptible to dementia, it is not so important. If we find that they are particularly susceptible to foot and mouth disease, we can cull the herd. The pitfalls and ramifications that might follow human cloning, and the suffering of the human clones themselves (and their children) remain very big unknowns.

Aside from these major issues, I am pretty neutral on the topic. However, I work in cancer research, and cellular and molecular biology. I establish cellular clones, but not animals. I've done some work with genetically modified rodents. From my own personal experience, our unknowns regarding the cell are still greater than our knowns. My guess is that it will be 20-30 years before I am neutral to the idea of human cloning.