> Impressive from a perspective of science, but also deeply unsettling to me. It's clearly only a matter of time before a human clone is created.
Identical twins are "natural" clones. They are genetically identical. (Barring mutation.)
People take issue with "artificial" or reproductive cloning.
If you reproductively cloned an identical twin, you would end up with three genetically identical people. One is just born later, with a more certain outcome.
[Edit: I am not advocating anything. This is a descriptive observation of genetics, not a normative one.]
Keyword is natural though. It's one thing to push science to it's limits. It's another entirely to delve into eugenics.
It's pretty understandable and a default position to advocate for it, but it could be a slippery slope, and will definitely push the politics towards engineered babies over natural ones.
For what it's worth, I wasn't advocating anything. I was just pointing out that cloning occurs every day. I was also hoping to highlight that deliberately cloned people are essentially the same as 'randomly/naturally' cloned people.
A hypothetical clone (in the popular connotation of the word) of myself is essentially identical to my hypothetical identical twin sibling, the distinction is that the hypothetical clone is born after me, and was 'deliberately conceived.' Declaring one to be 'natural' and one to be 'unnatural' is unkind. And arguably, bigoted. (I'm speaking generally, not accusing you of doing this.)
The hypothetical clone will still be a human being in every sense of the word. I suppose you could call them the 'deliberates', but are they more 'deliberate' than those born of copulation or old fashioned, 20th century artificial insemination?
Would identical twins be considered as a higher caste than the 'deliberates'?
Also, what percentage 'clone' do you have to be to be considered a 'clone'? (After all, each 'normal' person only differs from one another in one nucleotide out of every thousand.) Can we replace our damaged organs from those bio-printed of our own DNA? How will this limit proteomic engineering? If we engineer a protein that confers some immunity or cure to an affliction, would we have to deliver it like we do 'artificial' insulin? Or could we "cut the middleman" and edit in a 'copy' of the engineered gene that yields the engineered protein? Might that put the entire genome over some arbitrary 'clone' threshold? Do we wait until the genetic immunity randomly/selectively occurs in nature? Or do we stay 'organic'?
Genomic engineering and artificial genomic reproduction will certainly be the debate of the 21st century. The two fields might engender the next major civil rights movement.
What about eliminating allergies, Alzheimer's, and cancer? How about increasing the intelligence of the human species?
Do we want to give our children better opportunities? Forget superficial stuff like blond hair and blue eyes, we're talking about the possibility of having guaranteed super-healthy, super-happy, super-smart children.
That's all been doable for a long time, using controlled breeding. We do it all the time with animals; look what we've done to dogs. The only difference genetic engineering brings is how quickly it can be done.
But that's eugenics, and it's been rejected as immoral by pretty much everyone. A big part of the problem, I think, is that a custom-engineered child is a lot more expensive to create than a natural random-chance child, and therefore eugenics only produces super-humans for the rich and powerful, who will become even more rich and powerful by breeding themselves into master race that enslaves everyone else.
Eugenics can't upgrade all of humanity directly because natural breeding, being cheaper, is also much more common. So the vast majority of inferior humans will always outnumber the eugenics-produced super-humans. That's where the enslavement comes in; the super-humans will have to use their inherited wealth and power to make sure they retain control because they can't out-breed everyone else.
The other possibility, and the only way the super-humans can replace the normals, is to kill off all of the normals either directly or by making them infertile. That's even worse than enslavement.
No matter how you look at it, eugenics has a bad outcome if it's not available to everyone at the same time. And if it was available to everyone, we wouldn't call it eugenics. We'd call it 'medicine', 'vaccination', 'pre- and post-natal care', and 'preventative care'.
> That's all been doable for a long time, using controlled breeding. We do it all the time with animals; look what we've done to dogs. The only difference genetic engineering brings is how quickly it can be done.
Selective sexual reproduction and genetic engineering are actually markedly different. Genetic engineering involves precise splicing, insertion, or rearrangement of an organism's genome (or subset of genes). Selective sexual reproduction is a directed random rearrangement of genetic material over successive generations based (on often poorly understood) "meta-characteristics" or traits.
The critical distinction is that genetic engineering is the deliberate editing of exact genetic information, whereas selective sexual reproduction is a gradual, iterated, locally-random mixing of genetic information with imprecise results.
Furthermore, genetic engineering enables genetic mixing that aren't possible with selective sexual reproduction. For example, the insertion of genetic information into E.coli in order to produce human insulin for diabetics. Or, the modification of a particular cyanobacteria to secrete petroleum after photosynthesis.
>> ...eliminating allergies, Alzheimer's, and cancer...
> That's all been doable for a long time, using controlled breeding...
This is incorrect. You may be surprised to learn that those deeply complicated, diverse families of afflictions would not be effectively treated via 'controlled breeding'.
A simple, naive disproof of the assertion that cancer can be eliminated in domesticated or selectively selectively bred animals (via artificial selection): pigs, huskies, and laboratory mice all get cancer at rates that are more or less congruent with wild boar, wolves, and rats.
I don't think you can have both - super-happy and super-smart. But otherwise, yes. I see no problems with you creating super-smart children that will be able to wipe out all the stupid ones. Who knows, maybe this is the only way to save humanity from AI menace ;)
I think it's not quite that simple. We're more than just our chromosomes. How much more is a matter of philosophy, but even restricting ourselves to just what we know by science, we know that the fetal environment, mitochondria, etc. play a role. Artificial cloning methods as I understand them are distinct from the way natural identical twins form. If it were so simple to reproduce "natural cloning", it would already done and commonplace. In reality, it seems to require quite a bit of hacking.
I don't think something having a natural analog makes it any less unsettling. I also have not specifically advocated anything, although it's probably clear that I have reservations.
I'm not sure where you are disagreeing with me. I wasn't really trying to simplify anything. I was just saying that genetic clones already exist.
Identical twins are clones. They are genetically identical barring mutation. That's basically a catch-all for copying errors, environmental mutations, fetal environment, etc.
> Artificial cloning methods as I understand them are distinct from the way natural identical twins form.
Correct, artificial cloning is commonly divided into therapeutic cloning and reproductive cloning. The pop culture idea of cloning is closest to reproductive cloning. You mentioned that we were close to creating a 'human clone'. I was just pointing out that there already are clones. We might be talking past each other, I was not saying that we have reproductively cloned (or that the two methods are the same). I was just trying to highlight the fact that twins are essentially genetically the same as what reproductive clones would be, as in the outcome isn't that much different.
People do take issue with reproductive cloning. Reproductive cloning in humans is still hypothetical at this point, but it is theoretically possible and could yield people that are 'identical' in the same way that identical twins are 'identical.'
> If it were so simple to reproduce "natural cloning", it would already done and commonplace. In reality, it seems to require quite a bit of hacking.
I didn't really say it was simple or currently possible, I said people take issue with it.
> I don't think something having a natural analog makes it any less unsettling.
Suppose, that whether we like it or not, for better or worse, somewhere cloning occurs. Through no choice of their own, these clones exist. They are exactly the same as the natural analog. They are people that would deserve the same treatment and consideration as you or I. The thought of these people being oppressed is unsettling.
