🚀 go-pugleaf

Curt Welch wrote:
> 
> benny_patrick@hotmail.com (Fabrikant) wrote:
> > It does not really make any moral difference, that the
> > scientists have created the foetus.  The killing of the foetus is
> > either legal or it is illegal, regardless of how it was created.
> 

<snips>

> For example, what happens when we get to the point that we can manipulate
> human DNA and grow any type of lifeform we want in the lab.  i.e., just
> manipulate the DNA on the computer and then hit the "grow" button and a few
> months later the "thing" drops out of the machine. (you can do a complete
> computer simulation first so you will know whether it will "work" or not
> before you grow it).
> 
> This is going to create a huge gray area that current society just can't
> deal with.  All the current laws and morals are created for "humans" and
> "non-humans" (property).  What happens when we have the power to create
> humans with the mind of a dog?  What rights will something like this get
> under the law? Or maybe a dog with the mind of a human?  Todays' society
> just isn't ready for this stuff yet.

There has been a great deal of discussion of this, for some years, in
news:alt.bio.technology.cloning -- which I am happy to say I created along
with other newsgroups under alt.bio.technology. 

Society will never be "ready" for any of this... until it's a done-deal to
which society must adapt. However, people _do_ adapt rather rapidly. When
"Dolly the sheep" was announced, discussion was pervasive on all levels.
Many people who didn't know much about it began to research it, and those
who knew anything about it at all began to discuss it, particularly the
ramifications. Among others, a high level group convened by then-President
Clinton produced an excellent report, available off of
http://www.earthops.net/klaatu/cloning.html for your review, "Cloning Human
Beings" by the US Presidential Bioethics Commission. Subsequent discussions
have tended to sort out into the one pole of those adamantly opposed to all
research, almost exclusively on fundamentalist Christian grounds, and the
other pole was initially divided between those who wanted to try everything
and those who wanted extremely limited and slow research. The final
consensus, insofar as there was one, was that it would be legitimate to
clone for therapeutic purposes, in particular the so-called "partial clone"
which would essentially provide stem-cells which were genetically identical
to the intended recipient of tissues/organs derived from those stem cells. 

Almost _all_ participants in these discussions were adamantly opposed to the
creation of genetically modified humans, especially insofar as regarded the
creation of "specialty classes" such as the oft-remarked "supersoldier", or
alternatively the "idiot slave" type of modified human. Also, the ethical
and moral question was raised of respecting the individuality of
non-therapeutic clones, which is to say, clones which were essentially a
time-delayed identical twin of the genetic donor. Consensus was reached that
a "full clone" of any individual was itself an individual, with no less
rights than the original individual, or any other human being. This tended
to rule out specially grown sex-slaves based on celebrities, or
specially-educated clones of famous intellectuals, etc. The general
consensus was that if clones were produced illegally, and illegally raised
and distributed under the ethically-forbidden categories (i.e.,
celebrity-clone sex slaves etc) that under only the most limited of
circumstances could the clone be in any way made liable to the criminality
and under no circumstances destroyed, with limited exceptions for
highly-criminal acts which would be grounds for execution in any human
being. 

It should be noted here that many of the more fundamentalist contributors to
the discussion were willing to allow that they found it morally
objectionable to clone, more morally-objectionable to create a partial clone
as this was "a life intended only for destruction, a willful plot towards an
abortion" -- yet these same contributors were some of the most adamant
opponents to the idea of aborting a "full clone" as well as destruction of
full clones once they had been delivered to term. 

People were less able to reach a consensus regarding beings which were based
on humanity, but which had been modified to include genetic material from
other species, genera, or even other phyla. My own position has long been
that one should be kind to one's neighbors, even though they be transgenic
chimerae, yet other expressed opinions ranging from "if it's not all human,
it's not human at all" to the blue-skies faction's opinions that
human-transgenism was a laudable goal, especially if they all turned out
looking like "Max" (Jessica Alba of Fox-TV's "Dark Angel").

Most people held to the belief that while there might be acceptable
improvements to the general human genome which for specific individuals
would be tailored to specific needs (i.e., resistance to extreme cold,
adaptation to liquid environments, etc) that it was highly less-acceptable
to introduce human genetic material into a majority nonhuman template (i.e.,
giving human intelligence to dogs, creating cats with fully-articulated
hands, etc).

The point of me mentioning this is just to point out that society is ready
for this stuff, it's just that there is no general legal codification, what
consensus has been reached hasn't yet made it to the lawmakers in a form
which is acceptable both to the lawmakers and the constituents, and has some
slight conformity to the realities of science. Society will adapt, people
are smarter and more adaptable than many like to credit. Our major struggle
will henceforth be to ensure that emerging regulations will be firmly
grounded both in science and in people's educated attitudes. 

> 
> Then there's the whole AI problem.  One day, before too long (relative to
> the history of man), we will know how to build a machine that can think
> just like a human.  When you have the knowledge and power to build a robot
> that has all the mental capacity of a human (and more), and all the same
> emotional issues and drives, what will happen to society?  Who will be
> allowed to build these machines?  What rights will these machines have?
> What rights will we have?

You're going to have only so many rights as you can retain if you can keep
the damned thing contained. Look, the general consensus is that AI will
_always_ seek to expand its processing capacity. There are those who believe
that the NIMDA worm we're just now dealing with is one of the last worms we
will ever deal with which isn't actually an AI trying to usurp control of as
many distributed-processing nodes as possible. There is thought to be an
ever-expanding "war" between hardening your systems against intrusion, and
on the other side there is the ever-expanding field of cracking hardened
systems. Once any AI gets enough processing power through some unforseen
cracking tool, or it is exposed to enough lamely-protected systems so as to
get that same processing power, it will probably manage to develop some
means to hack to control of living systems -- you, that is -- and it will
proliferate throughout all of meatspace as well as throughout all of
insufficiently-hardened netspace. So, it's not a question of rights, it's a
question of either not building the damned thing, or making sure that
there's absolutely no possible way it can break through if you do build
it... and it's damned near impossible to keep something contained that is a
_lot_ smarter than you.

> 
> As we get closer to these technologies, the world as we know it will change
> completely.  It probably won't be like anything you have seen in any Sci-Fi
> book or movie (just because anyone trying to predict the future never seems
> to get it even close to right).

I've done a fairly good job so far.

> 
> These changes will happen.  We can't stop them.  But you have to make sure
> they don't happen too quickly and cause the boat to rock too much in the
> processes.  That really can end up tearing society apart.
> 
> So if people want to outlaw human cloning for a few years as everyone
> figures out what this means, I have no problem with that.  One day, we will
> be cloning humans. But we don't need to do it today just because we think
> we can.  There's still plenty more to learn about all this technology.

On this last, I asolutely agree. So, we must fight all attempts to outlaw
cloning, since we have no real idea what might be the drawbacks if we
abandon the research. Still, there should be a moratorium on actually
cloning a human being, with that clone intended to be birthed and raised as
an individual. 

> 
> --
> Curt Welch                                            http://CurtWelch.Com/
> curt@kcwc.com                          Webmaster for http://NewsReader.Com/

-- 
Whom thou'st vex'd waxeth wroth:  Meow. <-----> http://earthops.net/klaatu/