From: Mike Lorrey (mlorrey@datamann.com)
Date: Fri Aug 17 2001 - 10:27:12 MDT
"J. R. Molloy" wrote:
>
> From: "Wei Dai" <weidai@eskimo.com>
> > I don't think DNA can be copyrighted, so this particular way to prevent
> > oneself from being cloned probably wouldn't work. The story also mentions
> > that US courts have ruled against turning someone into a parent without
> > his or her consent
>
> Correction, US courts have ruled against turning someone into a parent without
> her consent, but in the case of his consent, US courts have not ruled against
> it, and men have indeed been turned into parents without their consent.
And the courts actually support it. Women have the right to consent to
be parents at any time, men don't have any right to consent. So much for
'equal protection under the law'.
>
> > so copyright protection isn't really necessary. But
> > this wouldn't prevent large-scale cloning of celebrities, since you
> > can create one illegal clone, get his consent, and then all subsequent
> > clones will be legal.
>
> Not according to US law, where otherwise lawful acts, dependent upon unlawful
> acts, thereby become unlawful.
Ah, but the reverse also applies in the parental consent ring. For
example, a teenage boy was asked by an adult woman to father her child,
with an agreement that she'd never ask for any support or anything from
him. She later abrogated this agreement on the grounds that with him
being a minor, the contract could not be consented to by him, yet when
he counterclaimed statutory rape as a means of escaping responsibility
for the child, the courts found in favor of the mother.
In a similar case, a fellow was passed out, drunk, in a bed, when a
woman came in an had sex with him while he was asleep, later fathering
his child from that one sexual act. Her rape of him therafter made him
financially responsible for the child, according to the opinion of the
court.
If abortion is permitted to women in cases of rape, should not men be
afforded an equal means of eliminating the responsibility that was
forced on them?
If women are permitted to steal a man's DNA without consent, and later
force them to pay child support, I would not be surprised at all that a
similar crime could be perpetrated by cloning. Keep your hairbrushes in
a safe, fellows. Incinerate your condoms, underwear, socks, etc.
This sort of absurd legal conundrum is tantamount to a thief breaking
their leg while breaking into your house, and suing you for medical
expenses.
>
> > (It does cause an 18-year delay though, or however
> > many years until the illegal clone reaches age of consent.)
>
> By that time the evolutionary phase transition will have rendered organic
> carbon units obsolete, and biology will have transcended organic chemistry. As
> a consequence, cloning will have become a moot issue.
>
> > I wonder if we might see anti-cloning technology that actually would work.
>
> Such technology already exists. It's called abortion.
Well, a proper court precedent to discourage this would be to give the
DNA owner full custody while giving the cloner full financial
responsibility with no visitation rights.
>
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