Cloning of Humans - How About Your Loved Ones?

This sounds like something out of a science fiction novel, and yet I bet the human race is going to face legal and moral issues concerning cloning within another decade or two. Cloning of animals is available to you right now at admittedly high prices. Those prices will drop, and I suspect that cloning of humans isn't that far behind. In fact, it may be possible someday to clone your ancestors or other relatives.

First, start with the movie called "The 6th Day," which starred Arnold Schwarzenegger a few years back. Perhaps you don't recall that movie. After all, it was rather forgettable. The story involved a "re-pet" cloning service to get your dog back if you ever lost the animal. The "service" simply cloned the missing animal.

Fiction became fact: a US biotech company announced on Wednesday that it will auction off the right for five dog owners to have their furry best friend cloned, with bidding starting at $100,000. This is not a joke.

The Best Friends Again program, sponsored by BioArts International, is a limited commercial dog-cloning program. BioArts is auctioning off five dog-cloning service slots to the general public via a worldwide online auction. The bidding starts at $100,000.

Further details about this auction can be found at http://www.bestfriendsagain.com.

OK, what's next? The FriendsAgain web site says that "dogs are arguably the most difficult mammal to clone." I suspect that everyone who reads that will immediately think, "What about humans?" I have no idea if cloning a human is possible with today's technology, but I have no doubt that it will become possible within a few years. Will some company do that?

NOTE: The Raëlian Church claims to have cloned a human already but has offered no proof. The claim seems doubtful. More information may be found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clonaid .

Whether or not cloning has already occurred, it seems inevitable that it will happen eventually. How will we, the human race, react? Will we accept these new humans as having full rights? Will they be allowed to vote? to marry? to have children? Or will they be relegated to the status of circus freaks? If they look like us and act like us, I don't think they will be very interesting freaks.

To be sure, all of this creates interesting moral and legal issues. I won't discuss those issues in detail as they are already being debated in thousands of other venues worldwide. However, I am intrigued by one more question that I have not yet seen addressed in the printed or online media: who will be cloned?

I am sure that the scientists will first want to clone Olympic-caliber athletes or individuals with high IQs or some important historical figures. Did anyone ever save Albert Einstein's DNA material? How about George Washington?

Gee, I hope they don't clone Arnold Schwarzenegger!

Sooner or later, as the costs drop, some wealthy individuals will begin to think about cloning deceased loved ones. This is bound to happen. I wouldn’t be surprised to see Egyptian multi-billionaire Mohamed Al-Fayed think about cloning his son Dodi Al-Fayed. You will recall that Dodi Al-Fayed was killed in the same automobile crash that claimed the life of Princess Diana. In this case, the father certainly has the financial resources to clone his beloved son.

Perhaps someone will clone Princess Diana! Can you imagine the articles in future gossip magazines?

Assuming that all of this is technically possible and is allowed to take place by the laws of the various countries, I can envision prices dropping. Sooner or later, the price will drop to $100,000, the price of today's dog-cloning service. Perhaps the prices will drop even further, to $10,000 or even less. After all, the prices of other technologies have dropped 90% and sometimes even 99% within a couple of decades. What happens when cloning becomes financially reasonable for millions of people?

Who will be cloned? Assuming that we can afford the charges, most of us will not think about cloning athletes or scientists or mathematicians or former presidents. I suspect that most of us will think of our departed loved ones, especially if we have a lock of hair or some other material that can be used for cloning purposes. It might be parents or a sibling or a deceased spouse. Some years ago I lost a 15-year-old son, and I can tell you that I would pay any amount of money to "get him back." I suspect that millions of other people would do the same for their departed loved ones.

My guess is that we will face these issues within the lifetimes of most of us. It's not a matter of "if," I think it is simply a question of "when." In fact, if the technology doesn't progress that far within my lifetime, it certainly will do so within my daughter's lifetime. Will she ever think about cloning ME and bringing me back to life?

Do I even want to cloned?

How about you? Do you want "immortality" by coming back to life as a cloned copy of yourself?

There are great moral and legal issues to be addressed. It seems almost humorous to ask, "How will genealogists track cloned individuals in their databases?" While this seems like a minor issue in comparison to the other questions, I suspect that all these will be very real questions within a few decades.

This should be interesting!

Comments

[Linda Johnston]

The major problem with cloning, be it a pet or a human, is that scientists will only be able to clone the physical characteristics. The part that makes you an individual cannot be cloned. It is a combination of life's experiences and the learning accomplished, from those experiences. After all, Dick, if you were cloned, the clone would not know the feelings you experienced at the loss of your son.

I believe that the cloning of humans is inevitable. However, will they be categorized as "spare parts banks", to repair a damaged heart or liver? I agree that cloning of humans is inevitable, but what purpose it will serve, is a logistical nightmare. Right to Life groups will say that these "creations" are humans and, as such, cannot be utilized to shorten the waiting lists for organ transplants. Cloning would also present an interesting situation in genealogy, too. Would the individual, being cloned, be both mother and father to the clone? It does present some interesting material for discussion, doesn't it?

[theLaven]

No human should be cloned whether they are reknowned person as like Einstein.As Einstein is cloned again,consider,then people loose their self confidence, they start to say,"oh my god,Einstein is here,so we are nothing in front of him".Isn't it true people.People who have capacity to be as Einstein also cease to stack up with world.
Next one to the beloved ones who is cloned after s/he died,is valuess to continuing life because they had utilized their life already.Why they want to create problems in world?
So cloning human is too devastating to human themselves.

[Tom Wood]

Hey, what is wrong with Arnold Schwarzenegger?

[John]

We might "get back" a child. But by the time a cloned adult became an adult, ourselves would be over the hill and gone. We'd also have to clone copies of ourselves, to be in synch.
Cloning would mess up our genealogical charts too much. I'm not going to wait around for it.

[Raelian]

As a member of the Raelian movement, I fully support cloning. Keep in mind that with today's technology, if you were to clone someone all you would be doing is creating a "twin", and not the actual person. Is having twins bad?? As someone pointed out above, what makes you you are your life experiences, etc.

If someone were to clone their lost child for the purpose of giving that genetic code the opportunity to express itself again, what is wrong with that? Again, that clone would not be the exact same person, just a twin going through life at a different time. So to say "Do you want 'immortality' by coming back to life as a cloned copy of yourself?" isn't quite right. All you've done is created a twin, nothing more. Now, if we were to clone people for the purpose of keeping them locked up in our back yards and to use for spare parts later in life, well, then I would certainly be against that :)

However, cloning will one day be part of the "immortality" process, when science understands the human brain more and is capable of taking the memory from one body to another. Yes, it sounds like science fiction, but I have no doubt that it will one day be reality. Immortality will be achievable through science one day.

[Nancy Ross]

A clone would be a "twin"-but with a huge difference in age. And don't forget if you have someone cloned, you have to raise him from a tiny baby. I wouldn't go through diper changing again for anyone. A clone of George Washington might look like and have the personality of George, but he would not have the cultural influences of the original, nor the financial and social advantages. He would not be placed into a time and place where his unique skills and personal beliefs could determine the fate of a nation forever. Actually if he were raised in this day and age he would most likely become an athlete, not a statesman. But he'd have better teeth this time around.

[Judith Reesor Hutchinson]

There are some science-fiction movies and TV stories out that have cloned humans included as some of their characters. Some of these stories have become cult movies (e.g., the replicants of the movie "Blade Runner", which was based on the story "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" written by Philip K. Dick.). Most of these stories I have read or seen have portrayed clones as evil or warlike beings. Consider "Star Wars II: Attack of the Clones".

A real clone of a human being is, genetically, a twin of the person who donated the nuclear DNA. The mitochondrial DNA would not be the same as the original unless the original mother or a direct decendant of the oringal mother through only daughters donated the egg for the cloned chromosomal DNA. Would you get a genetically identical clone? Not necessarily. It depends a lot on when the cloned DNA was collected from the donor. Over a person's lifetime the DNA in his body's cells accumulates many small mutations that were not in the sperm and egg that formed the original embryo. These may affect the clone in various ways, from being lethal to the embryo to subtle changes in the adult clone.

And then there is the environment. In order to get an exact replica of Albert Einstein (in addition to getting an exact replica of his genes), you would have to duplicate the environment in which he grew up, beginning with the uterine environment. That would include duplicating the type and quantity of food his mother ingested as well as the diseases she may have had during her pregnancey. And then there is the physical and cultural environment. Do we really want to duplicate the conditions in Europe during the two World Wars just so we can get a new Einstein?

How about a clone of someone who is living right now, or who died recently? If I wanted to make a clone of my father, who was born in 1899 and died in 1993, I would first have to duplicate the farm in western Kentucky where he was born and grew up. His father farmed without the advanced farm equipment we have nowadays, and without the advanced knowledge of farming techniques and improved seeds. Just think of what we have now in this world that didn't exist in my father's lifetime, or at least in his youth. Daddy was 4 years old at the time of the first airplane flight of the Wright brothers. Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin stepped onto the moon's surface on my father's 70th birthday. Daddy grew up when telephones and radios were a rarity. Now we have televistion and satellite communications, the internet and iPods. There were two World Wars and several other major conflicts in the world during my father's life time. Penicillin and other antibiotics were discovered in his era. New surgical techniques were developed. Very few people had cars or trucks when he was born, and to travel across the country took days or weeks. Now we can fly to almost anywhere on earth in less than 24 hours.

Can we duplicate all those conditions, which may seem primitive to us now, that existed during the lifetime of our loved one or idol whom we wish to clone? Do we want to put our human clone into an environment where he is denied modern medical intervention when he becomes sick or is injured? Do we want to deprive him of nourishment just to duplicate the conditons of the Depression or natural disaster that he lived through? How about denying him access to modern literature, movies, computers, television, air conditioning (for those who grew up in the deep South) and other conviences that we take for granted?

We already have natural clones in existence. They are called identical twins (or triplets, etc.). The Dionne quintuplets were identical, ergo they were clones of each other. They looked alike and had more or less the same environment while they were growing up, but they were still individuals with their own personalities. An artifically-made clone of a person would be a unique individual, not a replacement of the origimal person.

As far as cloning a person in order to obtain a replacement organ, you don't have to create a complete new human being. Although the techniques to clone just an organ are not very far advanced, the time may come when that will happen. I believe that human skin has now been cloned to help those who have suffered severe burns. Is the cloned skin that is grown in a petri dish a human clone? It has the same DNA as the original donor. Technically, it is a clone, but I doubt that any court would consider a suit by fanatics to consider the cloned skin (or liver or pancreas or muscle, etc.) to be a human being with the right to vote.

Genealogically, I would consider a cloned human being to be the offspring of the genetic parents of the original DNA donor. Whoever happens to raise the clone from childhood would be considered the adoptive or foster parent of the clone, even though s/he may be the clone's genetic grandchild.

[Glenda]

I'd be concerned about legal ramifications of forcing a cloned human being to undergo a "memory transfer" to be a complete duplicate of the original with memories... since they would essentially be a "twin" of the original, they'd be a human being in their own right. I'm pretty certain that forcing a memory transfer would violate the cloned humans civil rights.

We already have a problem with overpopulation... why would we want to be able to create humans just for their physical attributes??

While I would love to have my late husband back, I wouldn't want to raise him!! And then we have another question.... if I raised him, would his status as my husband make it an incestuous relationship?? Thank God that I'm old enough I probably won't have to deal with these problems!

[Karen Howell]

My son and I just finished reading a book together entitled "The House of the Scorpion" which deals with the effects of cloning. I highly recommend this book as it does bring up some serious issues regarding cloning such as 1. If you pay to have yourself (or anyone else) cloned, do you "own" the clone, or does it have basic human rights as others do? 2. How do you deal with the issue of the "hidden organ harvesting agenda"? 3. If you clone your 4th great grandfather, you have to raise him, of course. How would you explain this relationship to others? 4. How would we deal with the psychological effects of raising our own 4th ggrandfather/mother? How would you feel when you had to discipline this once-revered family member's clone? Would you expect that the clone would naturally have the same likes/dislikes as your ancestor? What if you became extremely disappointed in how this clone turned out - say they had criminal tendencies that you did not realize existed (or may not have existed) in your ancestor? 5. What would you call the children of the clone of your 4th great grandfather? Not aunt or uncle. Then what??? I'm not against cloning, just thinking of the issues.

[Timothy Eastman]

Human cloning is inevitable. Whether with or without any government or UN sanctions. It would be wise for the governments to begin making laws NOW in regard to clone rights, etc before we get there. For organ harvesting, cloned body parts will eventually be the "norm".
Everyone ASSUMES that cloning means to copy the DNA and implant it to a new fetal cell which needs to be raised from an infant. Within the next 30 years we will have some chemical compostion which will take the DNA we program into it and create whatever body part we need. And, yes, it could create a fully developed adult. There would be no real memory in this clone and, if kept in the solution and not "revived", then a memory transfer could then be made to make a truer duplicate. (Although I believe acurate memory transfer to be further off than cloning.)
Cloning may become a necessity in the future. With all the irresponsible research on various viral and other chemical weapons, we may one day unleash a virus which will make all humans impotent; or kill off 90 percent of us; or wahtaever "end-of-the-world" scenario hollywood dreams up.
One day cloning may be the only way for the human race to continue.

[Danelle]

Cloning is freaking wrong!! What is the point of it anyway?? Back off!!!!!!!!!!! WHY DO YOU WANT A CLONE!!??! So you can replace your dead child!!?? you people.. :(

[John R. Botifoll]

I'd like to add to the existence of cloning or an exact replica without the possibility that the individual's memory may not be the same. My thoughts drift to the cloning that we now apply to a Computer when attacked by a virus. The best remedy to wipe out a virus without deleting you records or documents is to go to System Restore in your Computer and pick on a previous date to restore your Computer without wiping out your recorded data, yet some of the previous data may be short of it all because some of the programs may have to be re-installed. If we humans could restore our system to previous years we may have to go back to the school of life to relive the motivation factors that shaped our character which made each one of us unique that is to re-live and experience the feelings we had for our loved ones and why, perhaps to avoid making the same mistakes in judgement and to be a better person. The System Restore exist but as of now you must suffer death and its consequences in a spiritual realm or existence.