🚀 go-pugleaf

Savard jsavard@ecn.ab.ca wrote:
>	The difference is that we're keeping someone alive who has a
problem, not inflicting a
>	problem on someone by deliberately bringing that person into
existence in an unsafe
>	manner.

The difference is only in our imagination.  Here is one situation: a
pregnant woman is told that her baby is severely deformed and will die
soon after birth.  You continue to support her, if she chooses not to
abort the foetus.  This is moral, because it conforms to your
definition of "keeping someone alive who has a problem".  Second
situation: you have an embryo in a dish and a woman wants it to be
implanted in her womb, and you can not refuse, because again, it is
the case of "keeping someone alive who has a problem".  If you do not
implant an embryo, it will die.  Now, the question is: can you or
should you refuse to implant the embryo, if you know that it is
defective?  Using your own logic, you can not refuse.

Now about cloning.  There is no doubt, that there is a risk of
creating a severely defective child, but the same risk exists for any
woman over 40, as well as those, who are known to have defective
genes.  Would you forbid mentally retarded to procreate?  It is almost
sure that their children will be defective.  This country has quite a
shameful history of forced sterilizations.

All medical innovations are inherently risky.  The first heart
transplant recipient lived just several days. There is no doubt that
his life was shortened by this transplant, but this procedure paved
the way to many others, and now thousands people are saved every year.

We allow killing of millions perfectly healthy foetuses every year
(abortion), and if this is moral, why is it immoral to kill a
defective one?  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.  Here
is my understanding of the situation.  Any human cell (egg,
spermatozoa, etc.) is the property of the person from whom it was
taken, and this person can do with it whatever he wants.  This right
of property continues until this cell (or group of cells, including
foetus) can survive on its own.  From the moment it can survive on its
own, it becomes a separate human being and has full protection of the
law.

The cloning will and should proceed.  It will be unsuccessful at the
beginning, as everything new in human innovations, but it will be
perfected, and it will become as normal, as in-vitro fertilisation is
now.

Fabrikant

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