Cloning

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It's not that easy. You still need to raise just like you would any other cow, and it would take just as many resources as a non-cloned cow would. The advantage comes in cloning idea specimens.

Well, you can't eat people - I guess you mean animals and plants.

Why is cloning better than just getting babies? They don't come out fully grown.



Clone armies are fine until someone gives order 66

Soylent Clear - clearly less people, clearly less fat.

We have been cloning plants for a long time. Taking a cutting of a plant and sticking it in water so it roots is cloning. The new plant is typically genetically identical to the original. Most domesticated fruit trees are clones - the offspring from seeds is too unpredictable. So when a really good apple tree is found, that is given a name (like 'golden delicious') and all the golden delicious trees are from branches of the original, or from branches of trees that came from the original.

Exactly. Down here, a couple Bush walkers hiking trough a remote area of the Blue mountains accidently found a species of tree that had been though to be extinct since the time of the dinosaurs. Individual trees were cloned by the same method as above to allow the species to be sold commercially. Now the species is far from extinct and will probably do well. The point is, cloning can be useful and is not dangerous if done correctly.

And how exactly are we to perfect an illegal practice without the legality of practice? The Sixth Day, Resident Evil, etc, should we allow cloning to be an underground illegal practice developed in secret by corporations already practicing illegality, without government or at least public checks and oversight?

Kind of like drugs...

Or even filtering of the internet... Make music sharing, warez, etc, impossible on the mainstream 'net, and a so-called DarkNet will arise, with no oversight, where the "bad" things roam free.

Men would become virtually redundant if human cloning was perfected and legal. After all what purpose would they serve? Just put plenty of stocks of male cells on ice for eventual demands. But why would anyone want to clone men?
Just clone women so there are enough viable wombs in action at all times, but why bother with men, or anybody not entirely useful, beautiful or brilliant? Unless human cloning would just be about The Island style body parts creation as gbollard said.

The trouble is that the laws which may end up being passed, designed to regulate cloning, could well end up being used against human sexual reproduction rights... "you do not have the right to reproduce unless you meet certain criteria", etc, a bit like the laws to protect genetically engineered plant seed by patent now excludes some farmers from planting certain seeds, without paying hefty fees etc. It is forcing certain seed stock on farmers.
What if old fashioned sexual reproduction got legalised out of existence because of its high risk factor, except in certain cases for which would have to get certificate authorising a "sexually-reproductive act with all its attendant risks"? "Do you waive all rights to insurance, etc bla bla..."! !

Or imagine "Your genetic patrimony includes the rare DNA bundle E056T which now belongs to Zero corp for medical purposes. For independent, ( ie; sexual) reproduction rights apply to..... for the sum of......"

Cloning for the purpose of making embryonic stem cells is good. Reproductive cloning definitely isn't good, at least for now, because clones tend to have major health problems.

I've always wanted a clone of myself.

I want a female version of me to be my girlfriend.

That's an entirely different kind of incest... lol

No it can't. Where are you getting this nonsense? You don't suddenly have more resources available simply because you can shape one piece of matter to make it identical to another. The basic laws of thermodynamics still apply. Cloning food would actually be more expensive than just growing/raising it and the lack of diversity in cloned food stocks would increase the risk of a global famine.

Orwell is correct, though I'm not sure what the Law of Thermodynamics has to do with this, nice insert of buzzword

Matter can neither be created nor destroyed. Energy can neither be created nor destroyed. Snake's proposal of generating infinite beef through cloning wouldn't work because he essentially suggests simply making new cows from nothing. That is not possible because both matter and energy are of finite availability. Thus, the matter of which the cows would be composed and the chemical energy stored therein could not exist according to basic thermodynamics.

Haha, I thought anyone that thought about it for more than 30 seconds would see that aspect. Perhaps someone was more gravitating toward genetic manipulation of the livestock to yield more meat.

Cloning does not involve the creation of something from nothing, any more than any other method of reproduction. The result is an embryo/seedling, which will grow as any other member of its species does, consuming the same amount of resources. While this does not lead to "infinite food", this has more to do with the laws of biology than physics.

If someone were to create Star Trek's food replicators, you would be able to crank out as much food with them as you could supply energy - and since you've probably stumbled on fusion technology along the way, that shouldn't be much of a limiter. However, this still wouldn't solve the basic problem of world hunger, as in many places, this isn't a matter of availability of foodstuffs - it's a matter of politics. In Somalia, for instance, even when the UN was flying in rice and wheat by the ton, people were still starving - because local warlords were stealing the supplies, feeding their own first, then giving food only to those who pledged their allegiance and paid whatever tribute the warlord demanded.