Banned Research and Raids on "Secret Labs"

[Sampo Syreeni]

On Mon, 2 Jul 2001, Trei, Peter wrote:

>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.

That I didn't know. I've been under the impression that most failed cloning
attempts result in a miscarriage. But, it really doesn't affect my point --
if we think that starting a pregnancy known to end in unhealthy babies gives
the government a reason to intervene and incarcerate, then we also have to
apply the same standard to those who smoke/use dope/live unhealthily during
normal pregnancy. That is what I meant by the "unborn babies", the view that
we should think of foetuses as first hand citizens with constitutional
protection that is being violated when they're "made unhealthy".

>A lot of the rhetoric seems to be on the level of 'this is just soooo
>creepy'.

Yep. That's even worse.

>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).

That I can relate to. The point was less about whether cloning is ethical
than about the right of the government to stop it.

Sampo Syreeni, aka decoy, mailto:decoy at iki.fi, gsm: +358-50-5756111
student/math+cs/helsinki university, http://www.iki.fi/~decoy/front