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Having a clone does not give you an identical copy of an adult person. All you get is an identical twin that is years younger and likely has additional medical

Having a clone does not give you an identical copy of an adult person. All you get is an identical twin that is years younger and likely has additional medical problems. Why would you invest a lot of time and effort into that? Btw: The article does discuss why you still might want to do it. It's worth a read, but it turned out none of the reasons was good enough.

jcims 7y ago
To have a source for replacement organs?
- petschge 7y ago
  You are not even allowed to take the organs of a recently dead body if the person did not agree to that before death. Why would you be allowed to do it to a live person?!
  - Ygg2 7y ago
    I mean, there are countries that don't care about human rights and possess the necessary technology. However, growing whole human for just an organ or two is a huge waste of resources.
    - waterhouse 7y ago
      The book The House of the Scorpion has, as part of its premise, some ultra-rich drug lords who raise clones for organ replacements. (Seems like the right combination of rich and unscrupulous.) Most of those clones are injected with something to disable their brains at birth, with at least one exception.
  - jerf 7y ago
    "Why would you be allowed to do it to a live person?" Because you are the government making the rules, or you have a few billion dollars and can easily hide it. I'm not sure anyone's doing it, but if it is truly the case that nobody has cloned a human, it isn't because of "the rules". "The rules" don't apply to everywhere or to everybody.
  - iso1210 7y ago
    Ask Falun Gong followers > An independent tribunal sitting in London has concluded that the killing of detainees in China for organ transplants is continuing, and victims include imprisoned followers of the Falun Gong movement. > The China Tribunal, chaired by Sir Geoffrey Nice QC, who was a prosecutor at the international criminal tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, said in a unanimous determination at the end of its hearings it was “certain that Falun Gong as a source - probably the principal source - of organs for forced organ harvesting”. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jun/17/china-is-harvesting-organs-from-detainees-uk-tribunal-concludes https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jun/17/china-is-harve...
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - scottlocklin 7y ago
    Man you don't get out much. There are really bad people out there, and really bad places: it's big business in certain parts of the world.
- m4rtink 7y ago
  Even if you discount how morally wrong this is, cloning does not imply accelerated growth. Even if you started now, your (likely) involunatary donor will not be ready for many years, likely long enough for your morally corupt self to be long dead due to organ failure by then.
  - jcims 7y ago
    The question was ‘Why would you invest a lot of time and effort into that?’ If you’re Kim Jong-un, why wouldn’t you build in a little insurance for 20 years down the road? The entire promise that no human has been cloned is suspect anyway. The only thing we can say for sure is that there’s no public record of it. But it’s been possible for quite some time and the likelihood that nobody has ever done it anywhere seems quite low. It’s way less ethical to artificially modify the genome of a human, and we know that’s happened already.
    - perl4ever 7y ago
      "It’s way less ethical to artificially modify the genome of a human" It is? You are talking about the various attempts to treat illness in this way, or something else?
- ccozan 7y ago
  This is actually the plot of The Island [1] [1] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0399201/?ref_=nm_flmg_act_44 https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0399201/?ref_=nm_flmg_act_44
- Symmetry 7y ago
  What sort of person is willing to murder a close relative and harvest their body for organs? I've never heard of that happening with anybody and an identical twin, even one raised apart from them. I think this is even less likely in the cloning for organs scenario given that you'd have to bring someone into the world and raise them from birth intending to murder them later. Though of course if you can clone just a liver, say, that's a different issue and that might very well be the main source of clonings in the future.
cogman10 7y ago
I mean, could be interesting in resolving some nature vs nurture questions. Pick a famous scientist (Einstein? Hawkings?) clone them, and watch. Does this person rise to the top of their field? Are they even interested in physics? How much of intelligence ends up being your genes vs your environment? Probably not a good enough reason to clone though :)
- petschge 7y ago
  You can do that with twin studies.
  - cogman10 7y ago
    A little bit. There's just a much smaller sample size to draw from. The ideal candidates for these sort of studies would be monozygotic twins (3 in 1000 births) who are adopted by different parents. You can draw a few conclusions from that, but it's a pretty small sample pool. The other somewhat unique thing you'd get here is how much prenatal nutrition matters.
    - saghm 7y ago
      One type of study I heard about is comparing a large group of pairs of identical twins to a large group of fraternal twins (with each pair being raised together in the same household). The idea is that all the pairs from both groups experienced the same nurture (same parents, location, schooling, etc. at the same time), but one group has nearly identical genes with their twins, while the other merely has varying degrees of similar. If some measured effect is more commonly shared by the identical twins than the fraternal, it's likely due to the genetics rather than environmental factors. I never took any biology-related courses beyond high school, so I don't have any sort of knowledge to tell if this would actually work in practice, but the idea seems interesting to me.
- JohnJamesRambo 7y ago
  Would Stephen Hawking get ALS again? It seems the disease made him really concentrate his efforts on his studies and research more, it’s a strange thought experiment. Is it ethical to condemn another person to a life locked in ALS to get the greatness that was Stephen Hawking’s contributions to science? Surely not. I wonder what Stephen would say. Identical twin studies show that ALS seems to definitely have an environmental trigger affecting methylation of genes. My best guess is you get a Stephen Hawking twin that gets to enjoy a life of boating and walking and doesn’t contribute as much to science. Clone Beethoven and you get a talented kid that makes some SoundCloud songs and may have a small OxyContin problem. I think environment and random chance is far more important than we realize.

jcims 7y ago

To have a source for replacement organs?

petschge 7y ago
You are not even allowed to take the organs of a recently dead body if the person did not agree to that before death. Why would you be allowed to do it to a live person?!
- Ygg2 7y ago
  I mean, there are countries that don't care about human rights and possess the necessary technology. However, growing whole human for just an organ or two is a huge waste of resources.
  - waterhouse 7y ago
    The book The House of the Scorpion has, as part of its premise, some ultra-rich drug lords who raise clones for organ replacements. (Seems like the right combination of rich and unscrupulous.) Most of those clones are injected with something to disable their brains at birth, with at least one exception.
- jerf 7y ago
  "Why would you be allowed to do it to a live person?" Because you are the government making the rules, or you have a few billion dollars and can easily hide it. I'm not sure anyone's doing it, but if it is truly the case that nobody has cloned a human, it isn't because of "the rules". "The rules" don't apply to everywhere or to everybody.
- iso1210 7y ago
  Ask Falun Gong followers > An independent tribunal sitting in London has concluded that the killing of detainees in China for organ transplants is continuing, and victims include imprisoned followers of the Falun Gong movement. > The China Tribunal, chaired by Sir Geoffrey Nice QC, who was a prosecutor at the international criminal tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, said in a unanimous determination at the end of its hearings it was “certain that Falun Gong as a source - probably the principal source - of organs for forced organ harvesting”. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jun/17/china-is-harvesting-organs-from-detainees-uk-tribunal-concludes https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jun/17/china-is-harve...
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- scottlocklin 7y ago
  Man you don't get out much. There are really bad people out there, and really bad places: it's big business in certain parts of the world.
m4rtink 7y ago
Even if you discount how morally wrong this is, cloning does not imply accelerated growth. Even if you started now, your (likely) involunatary donor will not be ready for many years, likely long enough for your morally corupt self to be long dead due to organ failure by then.
- jcims 7y ago
  The question was ‘Why would you invest a lot of time and effort into that?’ If you’re Kim Jong-un, why wouldn’t you build in a little insurance for 20 years down the road? The entire promise that no human has been cloned is suspect anyway. The only thing we can say for sure is that there’s no public record of it. But it’s been possible for quite some time and the likelihood that nobody has ever done it anywhere seems quite low. It’s way less ethical to artificially modify the genome of a human, and we know that’s happened already.
  - perl4ever 7y ago
    "It’s way less ethical to artificially modify the genome of a human" It is? You are talking about the various attempts to treat illness in this way, or something else?
ccozan 7y ago
This is actually the plot of The Island [1] [1] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0399201/?ref_=nm_flmg_act_44 https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0399201/?ref_=nm_flmg_act_44
Symmetry 7y ago
What sort of person is willing to murder a close relative and harvest their body for organs? I've never heard of that happening with anybody and an identical twin, even one raised apart from them. I think this is even less likely in the cloning for organs scenario given that you'd have to bring someone into the world and raise them from birth intending to murder them later. Though of course if you can clone just a liver, say, that's a different issue and that might very well be the main source of clonings in the future.

cogman10 7y ago

I mean, could be interesting in resolving some nature vs nurture questions. Pick a famous scientist (Einstein? Hawkings?) clone them, and watch. Does this person rise to the top of their field? Are they even interested in physics? How much of intelligence ends up being your genes vs your environment? Probably not a good enough reason to clone though :)

petschge 7y ago
You can do that with twin studies.
- cogman10 7y ago
  A little bit. There's just a much smaller sample size to draw from. The ideal candidates for these sort of studies would be monozygotic twins (3 in 1000 births) who are adopted by different parents. You can draw a few conclusions from that, but it's a pretty small sample pool. The other somewhat unique thing you'd get here is how much prenatal nutrition matters.
  - saghm 7y ago
    One type of study I heard about is comparing a large group of pairs of identical twins to a large group of fraternal twins (with each pair being raised together in the same household). The idea is that all the pairs from both groups experienced the same nurture (same parents, location, schooling, etc. at the same time), but one group has nearly identical genes with their twins, while the other merely has varying degrees of similar. If some measured effect is more commonly shared by the identical twins than the fraternal, it's likely due to the genetics rather than environmental factors. I never took any biology-related courses beyond high school, so I don't have any sort of knowledge to tell if this would actually work in practice, but the idea seems interesting to me.
JohnJamesRambo 7y ago
Would Stephen Hawking get ALS again? It seems the disease made him really concentrate his efforts on his studies and research more, it’s a strange thought experiment. Is it ethical to condemn another person to a life locked in ALS to get the greatness that was Stephen Hawking’s contributions to science? Surely not. I wonder what Stephen would say. Identical twin studies show that ALS seems to definitely have an environmental trigger affecting methylation of genes. My best guess is you get a Stephen Hawking twin that gets to enjoy a life of boating and walking and doesn’t contribute as much to science. Clone Beethoven and you get a talented kid that makes some SoundCloud songs and may have a small OxyContin problem. I think environment and random chance is far more important than we realize.