Human Cloning

[Dene]

Secondly, why is it that by keeping people alive they are going to spread their genetic disease? What diseases do you have in mind exactly? Most people with serious genetic diseases still do not stay alive long enough to reproduce. If they do, they would have whether we could do anything about the disease or not. Before you try to counter argue I expect you to provide a good example of a genetic disease that would otherwise kill, but due to us keeping these people alive they are able to reproduce and spread their disease.

Easy: Myopia (not a disease I guess but certainly a condition that is hereditary). Back in the day people with bad vision would have been eaten by saber tooth tigers. Now with corrective lens technology they can all live to pass on their genes.

Sickle Cell Anemia.
Haemophilia.

Plenty of diseases are considered "treatable" now due to modern medicine, even though natural selection would dictate they be eradicated.

I'll tackle Haemophilia since sickle cell anemia has already been accounted for:

Whilst in severe instances you are probably correct in saying that by natural selection these people would be killed. But the less severe cases are unlikely to kill before reproductive age in a "natural selection" scenario anyway.

But this is nice because it illustrates the other point I was trying to make: while there is no actual cure for haemophilia at the moment, the knowledge we have of it will allow for us in the future to eradicate the disease entirely, while anyone that would have died would be able to live a healthy life without the disease at all.

 

[TheMachanga]

Instead of cloning people we should be killing people because of overpopulation right?

 

[daniel0731ex]

i sense some Nazi logic here.....

 

[megaminxwin]

If you aren't sure, then just pick what your intuition tells you at present.

My intuition tells me that I'm not sure.

 

[Chapuunka]

If we cloned a human, does it have a soul?

Um, DUH? It's just a person who happens to have the same DNA as someone else. Your question is like asking if identical twins both have souls.

I don't think humans should be breeded--we're not animals.

Sure we are.

That kind of depends on what how you define a soul. It could also be seen as the ability to think, react, have instinct (what sets an animal apart from say, a rock), which would give clones souls. But personally, I see it as the part of us that makes us "in the image of (the Christian) God." With that definition, I think you'd have to go through the more traditional process, a God-sanctified sort of thing. We ourselves can't make a being that's God-like, seeing as how we're not God. I think that's also what sets us apart from animals--in the spiritual sense, not the scientific sense.

But, y'know, Christianity; not science.

 

[Dene]

i sense some Nazi logic here.....

By whom?