From: Sampo Syreeni[SMTP:decoy@iki.fi]
On Sun, 1 Jul 2001, Tim May wrote:
Despite warnings from scientists who say such practices are fraught with potential health risks, some Raelians have built a secret U.S. laboratory and vowed to create the first human clone this year.
It would be fairly interesting to hear what those health risks are. If they refer to risks to the people doing the experiments, I can't see any beyond what normal parenting would bring. If they instead refer to the babies being born/built, then we're seeing one serious extension of the concept of "unborn babies". The GE scare has religious morality, ignorance and fear of the unknown written all over it.
Cloning is far from a perfected technology - dozens of embryos are started for each one that comes to term, and many that are born have severe defects and die young. A lot that don't die young are pretty darn unhealthy in various ways. The State has problems (heck - I have problems too!) with applying this technology at a point in development where *most* of the resulting people are likely to have severe physical and mental defects. Unlike animals, you can't just slaughter the ones that don't work out. OTOH, the fact the State chose to stop a religious organization brings chilling memories of Waco - "Is your religion FDA approved?". A lot of the rhetoric seems to be on the level of 'this is just soooo creepy'. It's worth remembering that the boundary of what's acceptable moves - back in the 60's Britain banned cornea transplants from cadavers, essentially for creepyness reasons (since repealed). When cloning has a high success rate, and embryos which are going to have problems after birth can be identified and culled at an early stage, then I have no problem with human cloning. Until then, I'd rather people did not try it (though, unlike the State, I would not stop them). Peter Trei