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Comment by cliveowen | Hacker News Reader

Not completely related since "the embryos created in these recent experiments may have certain limitations that would prevent them from giving rise to a human clone", I was thinking how would a clone embryo differ from a twin? We know that environmental factors physically change twins, and that also applies to clones. So if we consider twins to be different people, we should also consider a clone to be a different person.Then why all the pushback and "laws explicitly banning human reproductive cloning"?

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I've seen a clone described as a "twin born at a different time." I don't see it as inherently raising any ethical dilemmas.

But since by definition we would need to perform experiments on non-consenting humans to perfect the technique, there isn't any ethical way to get to there.

I believe these laws target human cloning experimentation, rather than cloning as "twin manufacturing". The fact is, we don't know how to make fully viable clones yet (see the fate of our most advanced animal experiments for reference).

As such, it would be unethical to attempt to create a possibly failed human clone.

You'll likely produce many deformed babies before you get it right. Horrific.

Note that they haven't managed it yet on monkeys (surprised me).

Prediction: when it's been working perfectly on all primates for quite a while, these laws may start to change... perhaps at first for special cases, such as infertile couples (or a clone of an infant who died of non-congential causes - I don't know what to make of that, it's simultanesouly creepy and tugs at my heart-strings). IVF programs have similar restrictions.

probably going to get jumped on for using this phrase. but that feels like it goes against the "sanctity of life". In that it seems like it diminishes the value of the individual both the original and the clone, When you can just order up a replacement.

Only when you don't buy the value added PowerPack, which comes in variants Premium, Premium Deluxe and Premium Deluxe Dual Head.

Here's a prediction I've heard that I actually thought was kind of interesting.

China will be the first to clone humans because they don't have our ethical restraints. Since China already is interested in eugenics, its easy to infer that they'll be interested in cloning geniuses.

It will get interesting if a large population of geniuses in China starts to tip the technological and military balance and whether other countries would feel compelled to respond.

> if a large population of geniuses in China starts to tip the technological and military balance and whether other countries would feel compelled to respond.

If all you needed to get an edge on other countries was a bunch of intelligent people, that would be known for a long time and India and China would be leading the world by now. But that's certainly not sufficient.

that's a very good point.

However, wouldn't you agree that China is getting closer to the US in technological sophistication? How does that picture look if a much larger proportion of China's population is geniuses?

Why China, which has an over-population problem. Why not countries who want to solve their declining population problems such as Russia, Japan, many Western European countries, or Israel (whose Jewish population is declining quickly relative to other groups)? Those with popular biases in favor of specific ethnic groups might see this as the alternative to immigration or national decline.

The problem for Japan and most Western nations is not that their young people are infertile, it's that their young people are unwilling to marry and have children. (And even those who are willing, are only willing to have one or two children, and only at age 35+.) Cloning can't solve that problem!

Why China? Because culturally they don't have the same ethical restraints.

I'll admit, I don't have enough experience to say whether or not that's true, but the person who was making the argument to me had lived in China.

There's a article linked to below in the comments that talks about cultural differences and how it effects the ethics of cloning.

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