hal@finney.org wrote:
>
> > From: "John M Grigg" <starman125@lycos.com>
> >
> > >I look forward to the day when humanity is not faced with this issue. And
> > >that time is not too far off from now.
> >
> > How do you envision this abortion problem going away? The only thing I can
> > imagine is universal birth control that is 100% effective.
>
> Yes, I'm sure that is what John had in mind.
>
> However even if future technology gives us this degree of reproductive
> control, it will raise many new issues.
>
> We talk about father's rights, but what happens when anyone can take
> microscopic samples from anywhere you've been and either create a clone,
> or use them to create a baby for which you are the biological parent?
>
> Should this be illegal, that is, should society try to stop people from
> doing this without the consent of the donor? (David Zindell in his
> Neverness series called this crime "slelling".) Celebrities could find
> themselves being unwillingly cloned into thousands of babies.
>
> And then, there might be cases where consent is difficult to prove.
> Two people have sex, and the man has arranged to be sterile, but the
> woman wants his baby and has easy access to his DNA. The man's efforts
> to control his reproduction could easily be thwarted.
>
> These situations remind us that we are fundamentally information beings.
> It is the nature of information to be copied, which conflicts with our
> ideas about the uniqueness of each individual. The good thing about
> these scenarios is that the babies are wanted, so presumably there will
> be loving parents to raise them.
"If I had my druthers, none of us would have to go into the future without a
firm contract."
Your point is exactly why I've argued that each individual needs to be able to
command ownership of their own unique genome. Given that there is a recognised
right of procreation under natural law, it should be obvious that ownership of
one's genome is a clause or corollary of this.
In the past I've tried to argue that this ownership should be treated under
intellectual property concepts. Of course, I didn't think me up, my parents did,
so technically it would be IP rights endowed to me (as a gift) by my creators
(mom and dad) which are unalienable (I can't give it back, or away, only
forward). Borrowing the statements of Larry Wall about Open Source vs. Napster,
its rather obvious that there is a distinct difference between giving and
taking, at least to anyone with any sense of moral distinction.
It used to be that such gifts were only legitimate in the context of marriage,
which has since broken down, as the first of the major moral distinctions of our
culture to be destroyed. Napster was not the first to contribute to this
problem. You can blame it on King George, if you want.
Now, its pretty well recognised, as I've posted before, that when it can be
proved that a man's sperm were forcibly removed without his knowledge, any
resulting children cannot lay, nor can the mother lay, any claims upon him. This
is an important precedent for the question of liability for unconsented
reproduction of one's genome. What has not been examined is whether the offended
party can collect damages for such a violation. Most such cases involving normal
reproduction tend to be tossed, typically due to the state's institutional and
historical bias for the mother.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Mon Oct 02 2000 - 17:38:25 MDT