Debate Therapeutic Human Clonation

What do you think about cloning for therapeutical purposes?
In the UN Costa Rica, supported by the USA and 60 other countries, looked for banning all kinds of human cloning. While, in the other hand, Belgium with 22 other countries, went for banning cloning with reproduction purposes and allowing each country to make their own laws about other purposes.
Questions are:
Is 'bad' to clone a human? Can we 'play' with nature like this? Where's the limit in science? [Add more questions here]?

 

I believe it's wrong to play with nature like that. I mean it's like playing God!

I also believe that there are no limits to science, since we're developing new things all the time.

Can we play God like this?

 

"Clonation"? Hehehehe!

Anywho... what's wrong with playing God? How is it wrong to clone for medical purposes?

 

I knew you'd be on that side, Neph. As for myself, I can't really pick a side. I don't particularly like the idea of cloning, but I can't just say NO! outright.

To use some simple arguements:

We (humanity) don't need to clone ourselves. We have enough population troubles as it is. (Although, I can easily see how necessary it is on Terra II)

Clones have always had problems. They've died young, had all sorts of health problems, and, well, just look at what happened to Dolly the sheep.

Please explain what you mean by 'therapeutical' purposes. Do you mean, say, using cloned children for stem cell research? I can only see problems with that. Or do you mean something else, like, say, a way to live on after you die?

I think that that we should abstain from cloning humans at least until we've made further progress in the science. I don't think that sufficient improvement will be achieved any time soon.

 

Every early tech had problems.

 

My position with cloning has to do with religion.

I believe that human embryos, no matter how small (even 1 cell), are still human and have a soul. And creating them to kill them, even if it's to save a life, is an aberration. It's simply wrong.

If they didn't have a soul, my arguments would go about messing up with our own genes, but i won't get into that for now.

 

I agree

Finally, my vote is up there! Why? Well, a human trend has been always to get a better life, being more precise, to be healthty. I think that no one here would enjoy living as our ancestors lived, let's say, at least Medieval Age. Therapeutic Cloning gives us many solutions to many of our health problems. Think on how many lives could be saved with this technology. For example: Blind people could see again with natural eyes, many blood diseases would have a cure now, there are so many ways to exploit it.

News search from Google (UN discussion)
http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&ned=us&ie=UTF-8&q=un+therapeutic&btnG=Search+News

Of course not! No one of them. Well, I'm not sure what you're saying about children. Anyway, stem cells can be get right after a child is born, it could avoid the controversy with embryos.

Soon or later we'll have to do it with humans and neither then we'll be completely experts. Therapeutic means that it would heal diseases and other health related treatments.

Interesting links:
Human stem cell research: all viewpoints
Just use google!

 

Except that you aren't entirely creating them. Their base material comes from you. As their bodies are essentially grown "off" you, they can be viewed as extensions of your body. Certainly they are individuals, but as they are a body double derived from the original work, how does this influence their soul? Do they have a soul of their own? I ask this because your religion is weighing into your answer and I am eager to see how you respond to this.


Edit: For the love of God, it's "cloning", not "clonation".

 

Then again, I said my decision was based on religion. Where the base material comes from, is irrelevant.

[EDIT]Think about identical twins. My religion states that they have independent souls. Even if they have identical DNA.[/EDIT]

 

Yes, but cloning means creating a human embryo (even if it's only one cell). That would be the equivalent of having a child just to extract his eyes so a blind man could see.

If stem cells can be obtained without cloning, why push the envelope with cloning?

 

It's still a cloning related process

-----------------------------------------------------
em·bry·o
n. pl. em·bry·os

1. An organism in its early stages of development, especially before it has reached a distinctively recognizable form.
2. An organism at any time before full development, birth, or hatching.
3. The fertilized egg of a vertebrate animal following cleavage.
4. In humans, the prefetal product of conception from implantation through the eighth week of development.
Source: The American Heritage® Stedman's Medical Dictionary
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It's just method. As Neph said, the materia comes from you, it's an extension of you. When you donate a kidney, where is your soul? It *would not* be equivalent.

 

That's why I said this:

I think I'll go with no on this, because cloning is simply too problematic at this point to safely use, especially when you're talking about replacing naturally born organs with cloned organs. I'd really rather not think about the problems that could cause.

At the very least, we should wait until further progress has been made, because there are simply too many problems with cloning now.

[EDIT] Up to 700 posts! In only... 5 months. Am I overposting?

 

No. You should have seen how bad User18 was initially. I believe his post count actually made it past 1000 in under a month. His post count was reset.






Twice.

 

Well, if we're talking about cloning a whole person, I just don't really see the point in any plausible scenario - having a "new" body wouldn't let a person live forever unless we figure out how to do memory transplants (and even then, wouldn't we theoretically be killing the new body's consiousness in the process?). Cloning a person who has died won't bring the person back, either - at best, all you get is an identical twin who's been born at a later date. The motives behind either of these scenarios seem entirely selfish to me, and I don't think there would be much justification for whole-person cloning.

On the other hand, cloning organs is something I support quite passionately. Being able to grow someone a new heart, a new ear, a new lung - sure, it takes time, but it would still potentially save more lives than waiting conventional donor organs, particularly for patients who have chronic, progressive conditions which would allow the time for a healthy organ to be grown. There are very clear benefits to cloning "spare parts" - unlike conventional organ transplants where there's a chance of the organ being rejected because it's foreign tissue, a cloned organ would have the patient's DNA. Without the risk of rejection, the survival probability for a major surgery like a heart transplant would increase. And think of people who have lost some part of their face - their nose, their ear, an eye - to an accident or a disease. These people could have a natural, flesh-and-blood replacement, not a prosthetic.

Besides, even with the health problems seen in cloned animals, for someone with cancer or some other major disease, being able to buy a few more months or years until better treatment is available can be invaluable.

 

Exactly! Each clone is just another person, isn't it? Unless you consider yourself your memory, I mean, what you are, your experiences and memories. This way, inmortality could be reached. A question, what are we? Our brains? our memories? our hearts? our... souls?

This is what therapeutic cloning is supposed to be

Yeah, fear to death is enough to try these possible treatments. Anyway, as each new tech, there are always some troubles which are solved very often.