The Business of Baby-Making
Nov. 28th, 2002 12:30 am... or, my thoughts on the Italian doctor proclaiming to have the first cloned baby due in January.
Lying in bed last night, trying to get to sleep, I kept hearing about the cloned baby on the BBC. All I could think was, "would a cloned being have a soul?" Yeah, they might have a personality - albeit, not much of one. Would they be a complete individual, or just like a shell of a person? Would there be anything of substance to a cloned being ... or would they just exist to serve the purpose of being farmed for organs, or to be bred? Would they even be fertile, or would a cloned being be sterile?
So many questions kept going through my mind. I guess because it seems so odd that someone would be so desperate to have a child that they'd be willing to have themselves cloned, consequences be damned. What would you do if your child ends up having complications that have never been seen before? It's just disturbing to me, since cloning could be abused - and we don't know the consequences of playing G*d like that.
Lying in bed last night, trying to get to sleep, I kept hearing about the cloned baby on the BBC. All I could think was, "would a cloned being have a soul?" Yeah, they might have a personality - albeit, not much of one. Would they be a complete individual, or just like a shell of a person? Would there be anything of substance to a cloned being ... or would they just exist to serve the purpose of being farmed for organs, or to be bred? Would they even be fertile, or would a cloned being be sterile?
So many questions kept going through my mind. I guess because it seems so odd that someone would be so desperate to have a child that they'd be willing to have themselves cloned, consequences be damned. What would you do if your child ends up having complications that have never been seen before? It's just disturbing to me, since cloning could be abused - and we don't know the consequences of playing G*d like that.