Should Human cloning should be permitted

[kailbomb]

Personally i think that it should be done.
Saying that though i would like the clones to be never let out, and live lives.
Keeping Clones would only benefit us, we could have a full body waiting for us.
But, I think the cloning help should only be used for people under the age of 30, only they should get a second chance and then once they go over 30, thats it there on there own.
There Clones would be killed and they would have to be careful.
But again, How should the second chance be used?
It should only be for people who didn't have a choice in there misfortune, like babies born with mental or physical retardation, or diseases brought on naturally.

Personally if Cloning were to happen it the clones would have to be kept in the lab.

[Rodri]

The meat-locker clone for spare parts? Forget the immorality of it and think about this.

Your clone would have the same genes as you, so if you are genetically prone heart disease or cancer etc, so is your clone. Your clone will also be lacking the disease resistance that you have built up over a lifetime and could be killed by something we think of as minor, such as measles.
Is your clone going to be kept unconscious? Then it would be weak like a new born baby or even worse, as muscles that are not used regularly tend to atrophy.

So these things can be overcome by letting your clone live a full and normal life right?
Yes they can but what does that mean in moral terms when you need to harvest those spare parts? Or what happens if your clone becomes a drug taking s3x addict who enjoys adventure sports such as base jumping? Do you have the right to control your clone's life so that they don't put your spare parts at risk? If so, is your clone now your property (slave)?

What if your clone develops kidney disease? Would you be willing to give a kidney to help keep your spare parts alive? If so, which one is spare parts for which? After all, your clone just harvested one of your kidneys. (maybe you are the clone and they are the original?)

So you become ill and need to harvest some parts to survive. The parts you need means that your clone will not survive. Now what happens if you get sick again and need some more parts? Easy, more clones, right? So how many clones is a safe number to have for organ harvesting and, more importantly, who is going to pay for their upkeep, so they are nice and fit and healthy when you need those parts? Can you afford to pay for maybe three or four clones?
Then what about your children? (if you ever have any) Are you prepared to pay for three or four clones for each of your children so that they can have spare parts available as well? Remember, they need to be kept healthy and active or those spare parts won't be in tip-top condition. I am thinking it would take a very large fortune to be able to look after all these clones.

Now here is the last question I will ask.
You have your three or four clones that are all nice and healthy but you die in a car crash and no amount of spare parts can bring you back to life. What happens to your clones now? They were only created for spare parts, so do they get to live out their lives or do they need to be killed? If they get to live, what happens if one of them gets sick? Does it now have the right to harvest parts from any other surviving clones?

I sometimes wonder if these big ideas such as cloning for spare parts ever get fully thought through.

[armbarchris]

Mabye not right now, but in the near future it might be possible to clone just a specific organ. The organ would basically be kept in a tube untill it's ready to replace it's original. If this was possible, then I have no issues with it. Full human cloneing, on the other hand, has the potential for all kinds of problems.

Other points to consider:
Cloning wouldn't be perfect; in nature there are always imperfections in animal/plant assexual reproduction of cells. How much more would there be in a lab-grown clone of something? There would invariably be clones with genetic defects; what happens to those? And if the original dies and it's tissue is for some reason unusable, how would you make more? If you clone a clone, you'll only compound the imperfections.

[neko_lord]

I don't know about full "cloning", per se, but I would like to see stem cell research with the purpose of developing replacement organs. Nancy Reagan is an advocate of this, as were both Chris and Dana Reeve. Like them, I too have a personal connection, as I've lost a brother to Leukemia and also have a replacement heart valve. I'd seriously consider another surgery to replace the valve with one of my own so that I could get rid of the medicine I have to take for the rest of my life, Coumadin (warfarin), as that medicine increases the risks of internal bleeding as well as an increased risk of osteoporosis.

It is unfortunate that beneficial medical advances are linked to things that indeed could be abused...