Genetic engineering

Luis G

Luis G

<i><b>Problemator</b></i>
Staff member
What are your views on this?

Having the possibility to "design" your kids, to make organ transplants, cloning, etc.
 
About the clonning, this obviously raises the possibility to grow a clone, would it be ethical to get organs from him/her, from a religious point of view, does he/she have a soul?
 
Its like a riddle...wrapped in an enema....:confuse3:

Hard to argue the pure logic of genetic engineering against the multitude of religious oppositions to it. Does a person who eats genetically engineered food lose their soul?
 
I have no idea and I'd rather not think about it. Is having sex with yourself incest, homosexuality, or masturbation? Ugggh
 
Luis G said:
does he/she have a soul?
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erm, kinda hard to answer...let's assume (ok, that's bad, but still) that soul equals conscious...mhh...is a person's conscious created by just the genetic make up?
most likely NOT.

a person's character, and a person's conscious is created by the way he or she evolves through time...that is determined partially by the genetic make up...
a person can have the exact genetic make up, but can still LOOK very different, and can also have a very very different character...why? yes, the same old nature/nurture story...
a person is created by it's genetics, but also by the environment he or she grows up, by society.

so, looking from MY point of view on what a soul is, yes. a person would most certainly have a soul. that person would be a whole DIFFERENT human being, only with the same genetic make up as the person that is cloned.
whether that should ethically be allowed is a whole other subject, and you're asking a few questions in one thread that can cover many threads luis :)
 
Shadowfax said:
and you're asking a few questions in one thread that can cover many threads luis :)
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I was just pointing out some subjects covered by it.

My personal opinion:

I don't believe in souls, that question was pointed at the religious in here, if he is an exact copy then he has a brain of his own and thus he's a conscious person, and he should be treated equally like all natural born humans.

I think genetic engineering is great, i'm not so sure about the ethics of "buying" a clone of yourself, and then take organs from him. I'm sure this debate will take place in the future when human clonning/growth acceleration became a reality.
 
I don't have a problem with genetic corrections, mutation cleansing, and predisposition circumvention. It can be a wonderful tool for eradicating disease, healing nerves, brain tissue and rebuilding organs.

I'm not sold on the idea of total person copying though. There are inherint issues that would condemn that copy to a reduced lifespan.
 
I've said it before and I'll say it again. I'm against medicine in all forms. It's unnatural. If a person is a genetic failure, it's checkout time. Survival of the fittest. Only the strong survive. As things are going now, the infant mortality rate is bottoming out. The average age has never been higher. But neither have the medical costs to support that. I regularly service computers at pharmacies and I often see an elderly person leaving with 10 or more medications, totaling hundreds of state supported dollars. Monthly. Sometimes weekly. Imagine the advances we could fund with that money. Mars by 2010? Not a problem. But we have to stop supporting the dead wood.

Medicare, state pensions, disability compensation. All a huge drag on 'civilisation'.

Not to mention life saving procedures on drunk drivers, and criminals. Rescue missions for lost hikers, skiers, and such are also sucked out of the public (read yours and mine) pockets.

Why am I paying for a criminal's dental work? Or even sex changes now.


The world has to stop coddling the defectives and start saving itself. Cloning to create organs for a failed lifeform is pure folly. And genetically engineering a defective back to health is only going to create even greater failures in the future.
 
I have to agree with Professur on this. Of course the mighty dollar will win out (try telling a rich person they can't have that pill because it will save their life) but what he says is the purer logic. We have, unfortunately, moved well beyond the chance of logic prevailing.
 
unclehobart said:
I don't have a problem with genetic corrections, mutation cleansing, and predisposition circumvention. It can be a wonderful tool for eradicating disease, healing nerves, brain tissue and rebuilding organs.

I'm not sold on the idea of total person copying though. There are inherint issues that would condemn that copy to a reduced lifespan.
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Professur said:
I've said it before and I'll say it again. I'm against medicine in all forms. It's unnatural. If a person is a genetic failure, it's checkout time. Survival of the fittest. Only the strong survive. As things are going now, the infant mortality rate is bottoming out. The average age has never been higher. But neither have the medical costs to support that. I regularly service computers at pharmacies and I often see an elderly person leaving with 10 or more medications, totaling hundreds of state supported dollars. Monthly. Sometimes weekly. Imagine the advances we could fund with that money. Mars by 2010? Not a problem. But we have to stop supporting the dead wood.
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Echo on both quotes. Avoiding the subject of cloning, genetic enginnering is good, and will be eventually used to fix all sorts of genetic defects. I will be supporting the advent of the genetic revolution.
Although I don't agree completely agree with the Professur's more negative view on the world, it's one of my observations of the world. Instead of progressing, we've always been trying to pull the weak along. Instead of forging ahead to better and greater things, we wait for the other people to catch up. It might be good; it might be bad; but it's just an observation. My mind is still in debate over this issue.
I'm not too sure about the cloning issue. The main points of both sides:
Pro: Think of cloning as a person who just "happened" to have the exact same genetic makeup as the original person.
Con: Think of cloning as an attempt to duplicate a person, to replicate them, to simply copy them, as an extension of them.
 
Professur said:
I'm against medicine in all forms. It's unnatural. If a person is a genetic failure, it's checkout time. Survival of the fittest.
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funny...why not use the technology and the knowledge we gained?
go tell your daughter who has cancer she shouldn't have medicines because it's unnatural...no painkillers, no chemo treatment...and let her just die, yeah, that's the spirit...

Rescue missions for lost hikers, skiers, and such are also sucked out of the public (read yours and mine) pockets.
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go make that comment again after you went for a long hike in the mountains and got totally surprised by the weather for instance...or when it's somebody close to you freezing to death out there...


the other things i do agree on, but these situations...i know they're just examples, and i don't understand that you could be so harsh about them....
 
If my daughter gets cancer, so be it. If medicine is availible, she'll get the best. But should the money be spent as it is? No.

As for lost hikers, they made the decision to go hiking. I didn't. Why should my taxes be spent to pull their asses out of a predicament they chose to be in? When I go fishing, I take precautions. If they can't be bothered to check the weather, is that my fault? That they don't take a compass? Or water? Or a freaking map?
 
Do identical twins have souls? I suppose if people have souls, identical twins should still have souls. Thus, if identical twins have souls, clones should have souls too, since identical twins are essentially natural clones. Thats just my view on this matter.

Right or wrong, well, as I say repeatedly everything is relative and these terms are quite arbitrary. I couldn't care less about it. If you want a clone, by all means, feel free. Now if you want to cut your clones heart out cuz you have a problem with your own, well, then I guess I have an issue with that!

As for Professur's arguments, wow, thats an interesting take on it. Ok, lets make a stand and stop devolution now :D WE stopped evolving when the welfare state was born, well "natural" selection stopped anyway. I guess this is kind of an argument to bring back evolution. Ok, works for me. I dont' get sick, what do I need health care, medicine, and astronomical health insurance premiums for when I will never reap any benefits. Lets ban medicine and bring back evolution :D Sure why not.
 
I think Prof is a hardass, but I still respect his opinion to a point. There is too much effort made to save people that have no real quality of life. My wife worked in a pharmacy for a few years, and can tell you about the hundreds of dollars worth of medicine that the state pays for every month, why? So they can live. Not live well, just live.

However this is the point, many of these illnesses could be cured, not just treated, but cured through the use of genetic engineering. Brain cells regrown, nerve damage reversed. Is it worth taking a look at? I think so. The only problem I see is people living to 140, 150 years old. In order to sustain a population like that, we would have to look seriously at China's laws concering birthrate, and I don't think the US is ready to look at something like that yet.
 
Either way, whether it is declining or increasing, if you extend the life expectancy of people, it will increase, causing overpopulation problems.
 
The article i psoted talks about that, but not from an "overpopulation" view, rather they talk about the problems of having too much old people and not having young and productive people.

There must be a balance of young people and old people, overpopulation would be then a term not easily defined.
 
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