2000 AD Online Forum

We all know now that a cult in Canada have claimed to be the first to produce a human cloned baby. I would like to hear your opinions on this.
Do you think that they are speaking the truth?
Could it be a hoax?
What is your feelings on cloning humans anyway? Good/Bad/Evil/messing with nature/?

Tell me what you think.

Link: The A-Z of Cal-Hab

would need to see all the news myself, probably a hoax, if not completely rank & out of order & messed up.

disaproving Bou'

Having heard of that Movement in the past  I would sugget it's probably a hoax/wishful thinking, however if they have got a lot of money to throw around and the technology is cheap who knows?
 Thank god it wasn't the scientologists I don't think we're ready for an army of mini L Rons just yet.

Being a person who has trained as a Scientist there are some things we really shouldnt mess with too much, I tend to think that its not a case of if we should do it, but rather SHOULD we do it.  I tend to think that given our arrogance and our warlike nature, we shouldnt.  Itll only be used for ill.  Maybe one day when we can live our lives in peace.

yer Slippo

Didnt some scientist come on tv years ago and say that if they made clone soldiers theyd have blue-ish skin and went on to reference Rogue Trooper?.. or did I dream that?

Given the history of recent sf films, the clone will be quite hard to detect, looking nothing like any of his clone brothers or sisters...

I'm no expert on the science but I say there's  children constantly being born into starvation because of causes as unexciting as the labelling of baby milk by Nestle, to which there's far less hysteria.

Not that I endorse cloning, I just think it's easy to label things as evil when they're a bit Mary Shelly, while corporate greed gets off scot free, after all, starvation isn't dabbling with nature, right?

ADE

As Adrian's clone I would just like to echo the sentiments above.

ADE

sad but true,
science fiction has become science fact.again.
they highly likely have not created a clone. though more chilling really is the fact some one likely has, but has not gone on the world stage to say so.its only a matter of time before cloning is common place.like anything
if you have the money. someone will sell you their resource.

but this has great potential.
someone gets a sample of  MR wagner. we have dredd forever.
see there is a very postive side to this.

I'm astounded at the coverage these loonballs are getting for making an unsubstantiated claim.

slow news week i would bet.

they are not getting much milage out here in asia i must say though. just a couple of paragraphs in the local rag and 10 seconds on the end of the news.

course great marketing oppurtunity missed by pepsi coke and nike,. bet they wish they had thought of this one.

I'm also amazed that so many world leaders and religious leaders have been hooked by it and, as ever when politicians are hooked by a stupid media fad ill-informed legislation may be the result.

If they have created a human clone, which seems unlikely but could be within their technological reach, it would be incredibly stupid and immoral, but not for any reasons that stupid politicians are concerned about: clones currently have a tendency to live very short lives filled with illness and then eventually die of massive cancer.

And as a result of these stupid fuckwits real and important medical research into therapeutic cloning is receding further and further into the future.

Probably not true but BAD BAD BAD...
How wrong could this go in just a few generations?
Equally though it seems completely unstoppable, kind of like nuclear weapons.  Seemed like a good idea to some at the time, now we're all stuck with 'em.
Not like there's a shortage of people, is there?
Mark my words, it'll end in tears...
Old Mother Zeep

Oh, and as far as "moral outrage", it's just fear of the unknown brought on by ignorance. Sure cloning would be "weird" and "unnatural", but its no more weird and unnatural than, say, IVF. If these people really want to live in the dark ages they should piss off to Afghanistan and throw rocks at anyone who flies a kite(*).

And yes, there's arguments against letting just about anyone bring kids into the world but, hey, guess what, they already can and by a much cheaper method.

Dont know if it's a hoax or not but I suppose it was inevitably going to happen sooner or later.

yeah yeah go boys go boys..right on to all of above.
i mean mebbe if the human race was on its last leggs fair enough.. and yes one mustn't stop ignorance from driving science forwards, but when the only science that is allowed to forge ahead is that which benefits the greed perpetuating destructive selfish ignorant all-consuming capitalist corperate fat cat scumbags
....pause to relieve steam build up.....
when over half the world is in nightmarish poverty & dark ages, due to stupidity of the rich bit, when women are stoned to death for being shagged in one country & get injected with toxins to make their gobs look bigger in another
......fume....when useful sustainable low-maintenance poverty reducing technolegy is bought & shelved by the polluting corperate giants........
( this goes on for some time, it mentions personal responsibility, self determination as a western luxury, global human rights when seen in comparison to the nanny state farce of health & saftey legistlation, genocide , zenophobia, nazism, eugenics and so forth.....but was cut short as Boudicca leapt upon her big high horse to go fight an eco-war & rescue babies)

Can't reproduce ?

Get cloned and find your offspring cant either, then again they may be luckier.

Its medling with nature but so is medicine which leads to overpopulation which leads to other problems....

Exactly where do you draw the line ?

Good point made there, it is a very tricky one isn't it.

Without that life saving technology neither my wife (cancer) or my son (born 8 weeks early) would be alive now.  Some would say if the technology is there to save lives then use it, others would say that families like mine are unnatural and contributing to over-population.

The same "if you can use it then do" argument is probably applied by many to cloning.

So where do you draw the line? I don't know.

yeah fishy,
it is tough isn't it, tho i managed to reproduce with no medical intervention & only nearly died once in childbirth... I would have been dead & crippled a few times from other stuff, some time ago with out the intervention of medical science.
so maybe we should draw the line somewhere which helps people & the planet & doesn't do anything, destructive, greedy, damaging Or pointless (like cloning for the sake of it) , then i think there would be enough of everything to go around.
where does a self sustaining happy balanced eco system lie ?

I totally agree with you.

You know i find it amazing. So many people you talk to have, by the time the reach their thirties, had something that would have killed / crippled them without modern medicine (yer fish included).

It makes you realise why most people didn't get past their thirties not so long ago.  Maybe that was natures way of ensuring balance.

I totally agree with what your saying.  If these things could just be used for good then there would be no issue.  The problem is that humans just don't seem to work like that do they?

So you are a warrior mother then too!!  Just like the first Ms B.

Theres a lot of duality in people generally, whilst we disagree with some science.  If it would save our lives most of us would use it.  On that I agree with the fish and the warrior queen.  

However, if we clone a new life, just coz we made it.  Does that mean it shouldnt be treated as an equal???  These are the questions that morally we have to face, its tough an its difficult and I for one am glad that I dont have to make the decision on it......

Somehow making a life to save another seems somehow odd.....

yer Perplexed slippo

Yeah- it's a toughie.  I'd have died at seventeen if not for the wonders of modern medical science (maybe we can start a whole new thread out of our collective "I nearly died" stories?!?) and I think a lot of this argument is all about a matter of perspective.

It wasn't all that long ago that organ transplants were seen as being totally unnatural (and they are- but they save lives, so I'm all for it).  No doubt fifty to a hundred years down the line, we'll all be saying the same thing about cloned organs and future generations will be wondering what all the fuss was about.

Right now (to me at any rate) it seems pretty fucking stupid to be cloning humans when we can't even clone sheep without serious problems occuring later on.  I'm sure that one day, the cloning process will be understood inside and out- but until you can perfect it in animals (apologies to all you animal lovers- but this is only my feeble opinion), it just seems unnecessarily cruel and stupid to experiment with human lives.

Like I said, at the moment, it seems crazy that we could all end up living for ages past our sell by date by replacing our knackered organs with cloned spares- but it wasn't that long ago in the great scheme of things that if you lost too much blood, you bled to death and that was that.  If you want to be really pedantic- any medical procedure is kind of against nature- but who doesn't want to live as full a life as possible?  I can't believe that living to your fifties was at one time considered a long life.  In the future, the same might be said of those that didn't make it to their one hundred and fifties- or beyond- in our time.

The tech is out there and won't be going away any time soon- but little steps need to be taken.  Outright bans on cloning and cloning research will only lead scientists to more liberal countries and less ethical (or in this case- fucking lunatic) backers (in my opinion).

I don't know- I don't explain myself very well- but I guess I can see good and bad in the situation.  It'd be nice to save lives, but the arrogance of cloning humans at this stage of understanding is bordering on evil as far as I am concerned.  I even feel a bit sorry for the bloody sheep.

All that said- we'll no doubt have cloned armies in the future as well- which isn't quite so cool.

Do I go on?  My girlfriend says I go on...

What about the issues of clone predjudice and slavery? Has nothing been learnt from history? Methinks these scientists should be forced to watch multiple screenings of Gattacca until they finally understand that the human spirit is what makes us unique and a better constructed human does not make a better human being.

FYI, all, it has indeed been a slow news week.

For a fortnight.

- Trout

I would have died at birth without that incubator, and this board would have less posters so role on scientific advancements.

I suggest only people who like 2000ad should be cloned then we would have more posters....

Its humanities destiny to develop more and more ace ways to fuck up nature and then bleed the planet dry of resources and have an all out war etc. etc.

as richard dawkins says in the selfish gene, their is a natural solution to overpopulation - starvation.

I figure if you cant get a mate and breed naturally their is probably a good reason so your clone will probably die out as well, your just postponing the enevitable.

Suprise suprise...

Tests to "prove" that this baby is a clone have been delayed, possibly because of legal claims over guardianship but more likely because these people are utter nutballs who are talking a load of old twaddle.

Link: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/2624661.stm

There are further moral issues than so far discussed - questions that cannot be answered until a 'perfect' clone has been created.
Would a clone actually have a human soul?
Should a clone be classed as a person or an organism/animal?
We'd like to think that yes, a clone is just like anyone else - but we can't know that until we've got one living (and dying) amongst us.
God gives us the soul that makes us who we are - not scientists.
Would a clone has a soul would it have a different soul to the one it was cloned from or would it be effectively a new person (more like a son/daughter then the same copy)?

"Would a clone actually have a human soul?"

These are valid points. I'm glad someone's raised them, because the fact we probably don't have an answer to them is in itself an argument against cloning humans.

There are also several related legal issues, not least whether "manufactured" babies would have the same rights as "normal" ones.

The whole thing's a bloody minefield and, frankly, our society isn't ready for it yet.

Even medically, this issue would be easier to deal with when we know more about the effects on the clone itself.

Is it fair to a child to "create" them with 30-year-old genes, a shortened lifespan and the possibility of a painful existence, with a whole host of possible medical problems?

I, for one, am quite glad the Raelians seem to be lying loonies.

- Trout

Given that there is a huge amount of orphans / unwanted children in the world already, you also have to question why anyone would really want a cloned human...
(Would it not be easier & better all round to stop abortions & cloning by putting these people in contact with each other?)

Cloning limbs/organs (other than the brain) may be acceptable for medical transplant reasons, but I can see NO reason why full human cloning should ever need to be used.

Well this is going to be a highly controversial point of view but I feel that in the world we live in overcrowding and pollution and destruction caused by scientific advances are bigger problems than disease or Suffering. Technology can help us live longer and now, perhaps forever but what is the point if the world is a poisoned destroted nightmare. The endless march of science has saved lives but it has cost much more. I say no more. Man must face the world he lives in. If he gets hurt he can die, if he gets sick he can die. Imany people would have died without the advancements in science but science is picky about who it helps.

We should all be equal but money says otherwise. Oh, and the Raelians have no more cloned someone than I have a bald farmer called Pat growing out of my back.

J "anarchist" Katooie

More on the nutball cult...

Link: http://www.msnbc.com/news/855014.asp

"Soon, he promises, people will be able to make exact genetic copies of themselves, grow them instantaneously to the prime of life and then download all their accumulated memories and traits into the new bodies"

Additional to my queries on whether a clone would have a human soul -
Would this process "kill" the soul of the new clone?
Would the "original" soul be transferred along with the memories & traits?
Presumably these cultists don't care as they don't appear to believe in the human soul, but (as Chopper once said) "you gotta wonder".

Cloning is interesting but until they develop magnetic @brain-burning@ techniques it'll be mostly useless with regard to evil schemes.

J.

Cloning bodies is not the ultimate aim of those vain enough to want physical copies of themselves - they want to be able to transfer their personalities and memories into a body at the prime of its life. All this fuss about clones won't amount to much until mind-transferral becomes possible. Not many people would want an infant copy of themselves - what would be the point? The human species has the capability to reproduce without such methods. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

- JC

Well clones would be handy for the odd rejection-free new kidney or heart...

People want to clone themselves because they want to pass on THEIR genes in case they get luckier than they did i.e. improve their genes even further.

Fact is, its a mad idea really but their are a lot of nutters out there !

Worse, these nutters hunger for publicity. They're certainly getting it here.