RE: virus: Strange attractors and meta-religions (was God and

Wright, James 7929 (Jwright@phelpsd.com)
Fri, 11 Apr 97 10:16:00 EDT


Martz wrote:
>Yes. I'm also very curious to see how the recent cloning breakthrough
>hastens our discovery of the answers to these questions. From what I
>hear, identical twins are a sought after research commodity in the field
>of behavioural science (for obvious reasons). Now that it seems we're
>capable of producing them en masse with no restriction as to the number
>of genetically identical subjects I think huge strides can be taken. It
>can be argued that such experiments are unethical but *someone* will do
>them, rest assured, and the most significant outcome of banning the
>research is that the scientific community at large may never see the
>results of the clandestine lab work.<

"Oh Obi-Wan, you were a great assistance to my father during the Clone
Wars...."
Amazing how that darn science fiction seems to predict future
developments! <VBG!>
As you mention, I doubt it would stop at twins; how about identical
villages of people?
Seriously, if people are bred the way strains of lab mice are produced,
then we may have only seen the beginning of our problems. The resources
of the planet, poorly distributed and allocated as they are, would be
pushed past breakdown by cloning. Even if the quality of the human race
was improved as a result (which is a dubious proposal), someone is going
to have to RAISE and FEED and TEACH all these clones how to be human.
Now imagine that a group decides how the ideal human is constructed
(Shades of Hitler's Master Race!) and clones a few hundred thousand or so
of them. Many thousands of potential parents will have to be found to
raise these clones as their own children; will they be volunteers or
conscriptees? The forced sterilization of people (widely practiced by the
Chinese on the Tibetans) would be small in comparison. Would
intermarriage among clones be forbidden?
I am not preaching banning the research; I am preaching thinking through
the consequences of unleashing yet another experiment before executing
it.
Cheers!
james