From: Harvey Newstrom (mail@HarveyNewstrom.com)
Date: Thu May 23 2002 - 00:27:57 MDT
On Wednesday, May 22, 2002, at 02:08 am, Nick Bostrom wrote:
> I was thinking that it would be possible to practise therapeutic
> cloning in a way that overcomes this objection. The idea is to insert
> some kind of biological "time bomb" in either the ovum or the sperm, so
> that the zygote they form is set to self destruct before it becomes a
> human person. Since neither egg nor sperm is a potential human person,
> it would not be immoral to insert such a time bomb - one is not harming
> any potential human person. Then the zygote itself will not be a
> potential human person either, since it is not set on a course that may
> lead to the birth of a human person.
How is this any different than any abortion process? You are
introducing outside forces to prevent the zygote from growing into a
human. This is the exact process that anti-abortionists object to. I
don't see how you are addressing their objections in any way.
Your argument about the timing doesn't help. The fact that the weapon
of destruction was created before the victim solves no moral dilemma as
far as I can see. Nor does the argument that since you are going to
kill it, it wouldn't grow up, so it's OK to kill it. These are all
illogical arguments that miss the point of the objections.
The anti-abortionists object to zygotes being killed because they could
turn into humans. A better approach would be to duplicate stem cells
instead of duplicating zygotes. Use adult stem cells. Clone tissues
instead of whole zygotes. Block the differentiating factors so the
blastula can't develop into a little human. Remove DNA defining the
full human body and just leave enough to create stem cells. Or control
the differentiating factors so it only grows the organ we want, and not
a whole little body to be aborted.
There are so many ways to avoid the zygote question. There is no reason
to develop technology so that we can keep the zygote and abort it more
efficiently. As Dilbert would scream, "You're solving the wrong
problem!" It would be much more direct to avoid creating and aborting
the zygote anyway. We don't want the zygote.
-- Harvey Newstrom, CISSP <www.HarveyNewstrom.com> Principal Security Consultant <www.Newstaff.com>
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sat Nov 02 2002 - 09:14:17 MST