What's Wrong With Cloning?

MHGinTN ^ | 1/31/2003 | MHGinTN

[MHGinTN]

The President called for a ban on cloning in his State of the Union Address. So, what's wrong with cloning?

Every individual life is a continuum hallmarked by growth and development. We are invited, through the media, to differentiate reproductive cloning from therapeutic cloning, but both conceive a cloned individual human being, in vitro. Scientists seeking to exploit therapeutic cloning would have us believe that, because their goal doesn't include life support to the birth stage, their 'form' of cloning is okay. Far from it; it's a worse application of the technology. Therapeutic cloning seeks to conceive 'designer' individual human beings, give them life support either in a growth medium or a woman's body, then kill and harvest from these individuals the target tissues for which the cloned being was conceived.

It is important to realize that an embryo IS an individual human being: goals of cloning scientists bear witness to the hidden truth that they are conceiving a unique human being, whether for reproductive or therapeutic aims. Giving tacit acceptance to a proven lie --that the embryo is not an individual human life-- is bad enough, we’ve done this for more than thirty years, but to embrace cannibalism founded on such a lie is far more degenerate.

Tacit acceptance for manipulating individual human life has lead from in vitro fertilization to partial birth infanticide, proving the bankruptcy of continuing moderate acceptance. We are now staring at cannibalism in the name of whatever you care to call it. Even an embryo no bigger than a grain of sugar is an individual human life. Is it acceptable to kill that individual for their body parts? If you think that it is, at least know that it is cannibalism.

[spunkets]

"An embryo is a human embryo. But it's still just an embryo! Likewise a person whose brain has stopped functioning for the last time is a human cadaver. But the human person doesn't exist anymore."

An old man is a human old man, but it's still just an old man. Likewise a fish whose brain has stopped functioning for the last time is a fish cadaver(dead fish), but the essence of live fish doesn't exist anymore.

[MHGinTN]

Thank you for adding so much to this discussion. Appreciate the wealth of links, also!

[carenot]

Then what is it?

[carenot]

When there is a heartbeat and brain activity.

What is it before that?

[carenot]

A Blastoclyst is potential life but not life itself.

I don't understand what you are saying. How can it not be alive?

It can easily be said that a newborn baby only has the potential for life.

[weikel]

A blastoclyst is alive the same way a single celled organism is alive. Alive technically, but it doesn't feel pleasure or pain, think, learn, or have even a rudimentary self awareness the way humans do. Its merely undiferentiated tissue in the process of running some genetic and chemical instructions which will eventually turn it into a human being if all goes well.

[spunkets]

Human life can be thought of like a line segment closed on one end and open on the other. It has a definite point of origin, (conception) and is open on the other end. For the materialist, closure at the open end is approximated by their measure of death. The others know, with some it is hope, that the line continues on forever.

Here the topic is cloning and how those that wish to protect human life and the rights that life has, from violaitons that would be imposed by the wicked, or at best ignorant. Cloning is reproduction by a single parent. At present and for a long time into the future, this would involve imposing a very tortured life on any child so produced. Regardless of how the medical community promotes itself, nurse Wratchett is alive and well and resides in the heart of these charlitans.

Cloning for body parts! How do they propose to do that? They don't have a clue other than to create a life and then start disposing of the unwanted parts, so they can say it's not a human individual anymore, it's just a pair of tits for the hollywood guy.

These people need to be shut down now, before they send someone out demanding that I pay a bill I owe them, so this can be done for the common good.

[MHGinTN]

A blastoclyst is alive the same way a single celled organism is alive. No, there is a significant difference. I will assume you have read the posts previous to this one and go from there. A single-celled organism is at its final age for a single-celled organism. [Just for clarity: the organism is made of its organs and/or organelle. The first cell of the human organism divides during growth and development, taking that ORGANISM through a myriad of ages.] A single-celled organism is precisely the first age of many, many ages of the individual human lifetime. That is significant fact you appear to choose to ignore, thus lending a certain hollowness to your further comments.

Alive technically, but it doesn't feel pleasure or pain, think, learn, or have even a rudimentary self awareness the way humans do. Is it not yet apparent to you and anyone reading these comments that what you are defending is the termination of the human lifetime begun at conception? You defend the arbitrary assignment of less worthy because of the age attained along a continuum hallmarked by form and function of the human organism, I suppose, simply because you want these individual humans cannibalized prior to their reaching the arbitrary point that you would stamp them worthy of reaching other ages along the continuum.

It's merely undiferentiated tissue in the process of running some genetic and chemical instructions which will eventually turn it into a human being, if all goes well. That is surely one of the most obtuse defenses of cannibalism I've ever read! "... if all goes well" is to be raised in defense of making certain all does not go well for the individual conceived life, so that that individual may be exploited for its body parts. An interesting turn in defense of modern cannibalism, I grant you that.

[sneakypete]

"When there is a heartbeat and brain activity."

What is it before that?

A fundie Christian?

[hocndoc]

Of course the zygote and embryo are human, if the oocyte and sperm or nucleus which is transfered to the oocyte is from a human.

[hocndoc]

""Should we say it doesn't end until every cell in their body has died? If your concept of a person's life is internally consistent, you have no other choice. Think about the absurdities that would imply. Are you comfortable with that?""


If that cell (those cells) is capable of continually carrying out the normal functions of the organism at that stage of development, then, yes.
This would only pertain to the cells that result from the first few cell divisions, however.

[hocndoc]

The development of the human begins *before* the heart beats or the brain has "activity." Otherwise, there wouldn't be a human heart or brain.

[realpatriot71]

If there is no person before sentience, adding this feature will not transform it into a person.

Really? How much of a "person" would any of us be without sentience then? In order for this argument to work, one has to be able to point to the personhood of a/any nonsentient person(s). How many nonsentient people do you know?

Ball's in your court . . .

[hocndoc]

No, embryology is very specific on the beginning of life in nature - fertilization of an oocyte by a sperm. Cloning may have added a few modifications to this standard.
However, in vitro fertilization, and nuclear transfer techniques would each have a first marker of success in common with the usual fertilization sequence: the appearance of the processes of nuclear replication and division.

Let's just go watch and see whether the lab technicians can tell which cells are living and which are not, and which are maintained (until the required decanting, implantation, freezing or harvesting).

[MHGinTN]

Is this what we are now to embrace in the United States?...

While Canadians are debating the “merits” of “genetic termination” or the lack thereof, the Dutch are also busy debating two aspects of modern-day eugenics - first the use of aborted and miscarried babies for lethal, non-therapeutic medical experimentation and as a source of spare body parts, and secondly, the extension of the “right” to euthanazia to incurably ill youth age twelve and over. Further East, the Czech parliament has begun a full-scale investigation of the death of at least 49 seriously ill patients at a teaching hospital in Ostrava, who were alive, but declared dead, so that their organs could be harvested for organ transplantation. The Michael Fund Instead of Pro-Abortion, March of Dimes The Michael Fund ^ | 01.31.03
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/833732/posts

Sadly, we are already authorizing this ghoulish practice with intentionally terminated fetuses. It would be instructive (though not precisely pertinent to this discussion) to search out information on the fetal tissue industry. The presence of tissue harvesters in abortion 'clinics' is already affecting the timing of some abortions, opting for later rather than sooner abortions in some cases because of the 'more differentiated tissues' that are to harvested for sale to research facilities. These harvesters are not paying directly into the aborticutionist's pocket for the body parts or whole bodies, instead they 'rent' space and the right to pick and choose which about to be aborted pregnancies they want to dissect for body parts. In my honest opinion, that too is cannibalism of individual human lives, with the twist, of course, that parts are taken from dead children ... in most cases.

[MHGinTN]

Therapeutic cloning will be conception of 'designer individual human life' with the goal of killing and harvesting the body parts. With tacit acceptance of the fetal tissue industry, we've descended to the next ghoulish level. Isn't it time to put a halt to this modern-day cannibalism?

[MHGinTN]

Have you missed the concept of a continuum of individual life discussed above?

[hocndoc]

Your definition of person is not a scientific one, merely an assertation of which humans are human enough to be considered "persons."
That is pure discrimination based on stage of development in a normal member of the species. And by this, you would consider allowing these human beings to be killed by those you consider "persons"?

[MHGinTN]

How much of a "person" would any of us be without sentience then? This is the same twisted defense of 'killing it before it reaches the arbitrarily assigned start of the individual life, to prevent it reaching that higher, more worthy level, to support the non-human, non-individual speciously applied designation of it, so it can rightly be exploited' argument offered lamely by weikel.

[realpatriot71]

Have you missed the concept of a continuum of individual life discussed above?

No. But with all due respect . . . so what? Yes, life, my life, your life, have all moved through a continuum, and that life began at conception - no arguments. However, none of us can be persons without sentience, so any of the continuum before sentience is really quite moot to the argument as one cannot inflict force or fraud against that which cannot take exception to said force or fraud.