Send in the Clone, For Real?

[sdelmonte]

And then the world, already strange, got stranger...

http://reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=healthNews&storyID=1967600
(Wherein a religious sect of the "aliens are our gods" variety claims to have produced the first human clone)

I don't know what is more disturbing: that a religious sect - cult is a better word - would be the first to try and create a human clone; or that the scientific world is now forced to deal with the remote possibility that a clone has been created and the greater likelihood that any cloning research, no matter how legitimate, has been tainted forever.

Comments

[khaosworks.livejournal.com]

I'll believe it when the results are peer-reviewed and verified by the international scientific community and not just one independent expert whom they have not named.

But I'll tell you what really perturbs me.

If they haven't solved the problem of the shortened life span and other genetic defects inherent in cloning so far, what the fuck happens to the kid? This is child abuse, pure and simple.

[mtgat]

And you know, I was okay with the concept of cloning, right up to the point where it was done by the Raelians. (I don't know enough about them to evaluate whether they actually qualify as a cult [which is based primarily on how much control the group hierarchy exerts over aspects of the member's daily life --- this is important to know when you have to explain on a regular basis to people that you yourself can't be in a cult when you're the sole member of your religion] but I know just enough to go, "You people are freaks. Sorry.")

On the other hand, now the debate is really open, rather than just theoretical reactionism. We can't just say "Cloning is wrong, period." Now there's a child who wouldn't have been born without it