From: Brett Paatsch (paatschb@ocean.com.au)
Date: Sun Dec 29 2002 - 20:40:33 MST
Harvey Newstrom wrote:
>
> On Sunday, December 29, 2002, at 05:25 pm, Lee Corbin wrote:
> > Two questions: (1) which legal structure most closely meets
> > with your approval? (2) which community more closely meets
> > your ethical or moral standards?
>
> Neither. They seem to be two extremes. I think pushing human
> cloning too soon is just as bad as banning it. It should proceed
> at the normal safe rate that most medical procedures progress.
>
> Why not handle this new medical procedure the way we handle other
> medical procedures in development?
As a matter of public policy I think that's the wiser approach. But I
am libertarian enough to be concerned about the basis on which
someone other than the woman (who may be informed of the risks
and choses to run them) is refused the right to make that choice for
herself. I think we need a good reason to deprive her of the choice.
> Test in vitro until it works. Test on animals until it works.
That wouldn't extirely remove the risks. At the current rate it could
probably be decades before cloning became a reproductive option
and that would put it beyond the reach of some who apparently
want to try it.
> Test on humans until it works. And then
> market it to the general public. Why should human cloning skip any of
> the safety steps?
There can't always be safety steps for new things. Thats because they
are new and encapsulate aspects of the unknown. The point is who
gets to decide what risks are permitted to be run.
>It is only the race to be first that is causing
> these groups to skip all preliminary testing. Right now cloning is not
> routinely workable for animals yet. It fails more often than it works.
> Taking into account the problems with miscarriage or birth defects,
> this procedures is more likely to cause harm than produce a healthy
> baby. Why the rush? Why not develop the procedure until we get it
> working? I rather see a lot of healthy clones in ten years than a
> dozen unhealthy ones now.
>
The rush would presumably arise because people who want to clone
want to clone to produce *their* children in their timeframe not see
"hypothetical" children cloned for someone else in someone else's
timeframe. They are not thinking like social scientists they are thinking
like would be or wannabe parents.
I'm tired of hearing just the same old stale conventional wisdom on
cloning, (not from this list, but generally - it seems the analysis always
quits because of the yuck factor and the overwhelming desire of most
people not to stray too far of the track off the "politically correct" kicks
in.) But dammit "political correctness" has impeded some really
good research in stem cells for a couple of years now. It is equally
capable of slowing down nanotechnology and genetic engineering and
a swag of other issues that are of core interest to extropians. Stem cell
research unencumbered by claptrap but still conducted in a genuinely
ethical context would impact positively on thousands if not millions of
lives. But rather than blow away mountains of specious luddite
conservative fundamentalist nonsense with large gusts of reason all too
often it seems the "good guys" have to pick away at some tiny little
corner of a problem lest the concentration and childlike sensitivities of
Joe and Jane public and Joe and Jane politician be overstretched.
I'm beginning to think is not so much the minds of Jane and Joe public
that are in greatest danger of stultifying. All too often they aren't paying
that much attention to the details anyway. I am beginning to think that
almost all the significant challenges and roadblocks to the futures
extropians would apparently like to forge fall into the category of
"the ethical" and "the political" and that in comparison the technical
problems are relatively trivial.
Where's Voltaire with his battlecry of "crush the infamous thing"
when we need him. A little more intellectual ferocity coupled with
honesty wouldn't go astray.
Maybe I should don a pseudonym to hide behind and really cut
loose. Problem is dammit, frank words, taken out of context,
can really cut down ones chances of marshalling serious resources
in the non-virtual world.
[Apologies Harvey..... this rant wasn't directed at you]
Brett
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