Would you get a clone

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Hey, hey, I've been wondering about it. It could be a great way to pass your genes to a new generation, if you are not really the kind to get a stable couple (I am definitely not) and I do want children. It would also be very "interesting".

I think that progress in that regard will happen whether people agree or not. Maybe even in 20 years cloning yourself will not be more expensive than buying a house, and it will not be riskier than artificial insemination . It will allow people that cannot procreate a chance to have children with their own genes. I think that in 20 years I will be slightly older than the parenting average but not really the worst case ever and I met normal people who grew up with such old parents. It will be a hot religious subject, but so are abortion and artificial insemination, yet people do those every day.

I do not believe that cloning will create or duplicate souls - assuming they exist - Identical twins have the same DNA but they have different personalities. So in fact, getting yourself a clone will be similar to having a kid.

Anyway, so what do you think? If those predictions go true. Would you want to get a clone? Would you accept a member of your family's clone if (s)he decides to do it? Would you be tolerant towards those clone children that will share class with your kids?

If I could get a clone of my wife, that would be pretty hawt.

I for one actually don't really want to see reproductive cloning happen, though. It's not that there is something inherently wrong with cloning. There IS such a thing as "natural" cloning in the case of identical twins. So we know it's POSSIBLE to clone human beings, though whether it's RIGHT is another question.

As a means of creating progeny, I'm perfectly cool with cloning.

I think it gets messed up when you start talking about harvesting organs and things like that. If you want a "later-born twin," fine. But killing another human being is a whole other matter, and I'm afraid human cloning would more raise the question of "humans as property" rather than solving many problems.

Cloning as a viable method of reproducing yourself may still be a century away. We have not yet resolved all of the technical issues involved, and are as yet unable to make a stable clone from an adult mammal. Oh sure, we made Dolly the sheep, but she was already old when she was born. Too many health problems resulted because the organism's cellular/genetic age was higher than its chronological age. We have no idea what that would do to the development of the human brain, and at this point it is way too risky to even attempt, from both a medical and an ethical standpoint. We have to wait for a lot more to happen in molecular genetics, particularly a much more nuanced understanding of telomere function.

AngelRho: cloning for organ harvesting isn't going to happen. It is grossly inefficient. Stem cell research, if allowed to develop, will provide us with custom-grown organs in isolation. And the law would never allow that to happen anyways.

Naw, I think our current means of reproduction work well enough.

I don't see the point of cloning, or the problems, really.

i already have a pretend brother

If I have a clone can I chop him up and use him for spare parts?

No. I'm pretty sure his lack of a job would lead him to eventually becoming a pyromaniac or something to that effect.

No, I would not get a clone.

I think the temptation to raise her as a "mini-me" would be too great to overcome. Parents (and I am one) have a hard enough time raising their genetically unique children as unique and not as a "do-over" for their own childhoods. If somebody looked exactly like I did as a child and had the same genetic makeup, I don't think I'm personally strong enough to treat her as a unique individual who may nevertheless be very different from me.

On a larger scale, I don't think it would be good for us as a species if asexual reproduction became dominant. Sexual reproduction has flourished because it allows genes to be constantly re-shuffled. For complex organisms, this is necessary. Admittedly, there would be 6 billion genetically unique templates and that seems like enough. But even so, I think it's safer to stick with the perma-shuffle that sexual reproduction gives us.