[Vision2020] Re: Cloning

[Robert Dickow]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Donovan Arnold" <donovanarnold@hotmail.com>

>> "However, it does seem reasonable to protect people
>> from being cloned without their permission."
>
> How are you going to do this? Seal everyone in a bubble?

Reasonable counter, but it was yourself who suggested the need to protect
people. Anyway, we would do it by passing laws, I suppose. Bubbles are too
expensive and cumbersome. We would have to rely on the same methods we use
presently to protect people from getting murdered, for example. People will
inevitably get murdered, but we do our best to prevent it. We haven't simply
avoided or outlawed the manufacture and sale of guns, poisons, knives,
explosives, piano wire, etc simply because we can't prevent the murders that
will be almost certain to result from at least a few of these things.
(Yikes...sounds like "Guns don't kill people....people kill people")

>How much would the Chinese government pay
>to get a hold of a hair left behind the top medalist
> in swimming?

The Chinese government probably won't pay anything. They'll just hijack it.
But....I think the solution to the 'top medalist in swimming' example is
simple. Since the source of such clones will be identified by their physical
appearance, any and all medals garnered by them will go automatically  to
the original genetic owner rather than the clone. Simple solution.

The notion of countries, commercial concerns, etc., managing to actually
make use of a clone for the purposes you suggest are just a little too
far-fetched to be a reasonable concern. I am not convinced that it will ever
be practical to develop clones in the way you suggest. No matter how much
coercion, viscious beatings, or offerings of delectable sweets that a state
applies to a clone of, say, William Shakespeare, they will most likely not
be able to make the clone produce masterful plays. Shakespeare's genius may
have had something to do with his genes, but probably much more likely he
was, at some important moment in his life, 'turned on' to poetry and writing
due to some spark of experience. Same thing goes for high jumpers and jazz
trumpet virtuosi. These factors can not be engineered or planned.

Bob Dickow (who wants a clone of himself so that the clone can take out the
garbage on Monday nights instead of himself.)