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Illegal Beings: Human Clones
Re: Mixing sexes for better science
SC ( 12/09/2003, 11:09:11 )Other cloning research aims at creating cells that are destined to become part of a human being, with the goal of making the resultant human being as healthy and/or compatible with the earlier-born twin as possible. A mixed male-female embryo is, by design, not a true clone, and apparently, not ever intended to be part of a complete human being. None of us ever asked to be born, as far as we know, but cloning is about the closest we can come to that. We can say, "knowing my DNA, if I had my life to extend or live over again, would I do it?" We can make the best guess possible as to whether we or our offspring will be happy. Mixing sexes takes away the potential advantages that cloning could give a child.In an experimental setting, we can give consent for our cells or cells with DNA identical to our own to be used. Once again, this is the closest we can get to getting consent from the cells themselves. Mixing sexes takes us one step away from that security.It also concerns me that there could be a nascent double standard developing; one for "normal" embryos and one for mixed male-female ones. If these mixed sex embryos come to be seen as expendable when regularly sexed ones aren't, how will that affect people's views of adult people who are hermaphroditic, transgendered or otherwise "different?"Men can produce millions of sperm and everyone has even larger numbers of cells available to potentially make another person through cloning. Death is reversible as far as individual cells are concerned; lose one and another can take its place; an embryo "destroyed" for stem cells could also be turned back into an embryo again using the stem cells taken from it. I consider the argument that cloning is "creating life only to destroy it" to be false in the case of true cloning. Some cells must be made young again if the whole organism is to survive, and rejuvenating cells is doing unto them as you would have them do unto you; it's a partnership where both the senescent cell and the organism it was taken from can be preserved. Hybrid embryos are unique, different from their parents, and destroying them is destroying a genetic code that exists nowhere else. Here, the justification is on utilitarian grounds; the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the cell. This sort of calculation is what bothers many people.
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