Greetings good citizen, one of the ethical dilemma's Futurist's faced was the cloning issue. Why mess around with robots/cyborgs if you could just clone yourself for spare parts to be replaced 'as needed'?
While the technology doesn't (yet) exist to just grow part of a body and this still entails the difficulty of connecting it to the nervous system so it would work properly, advances have been made in this direction with the [partial] unraveling of our genetic code.
Again, as writers, we get to play both sides of the issue..or mix them! Which is to say let's suppose on some forsaken rock out there in the universe, some lunatic discovers the off switch for the body's self-destruct mechanism and then gifts it to both his co-inhabitants/progeny.
Now, with eternity stretching before them, who would undertake the dangerous business of space exploration?
Sounds stupid good citizen but this is exactly the trajectory our civilization is following...although I, for one, do not believe 'immortality' will be, er, 'wasted' on the unwashed. Which is to say the first immortals will keep their gift a secret...to the point of 're-incarnating' every decade or so to throw off suspicion. [This assumes they're smart enough to consider the danger of not aging like everybody else.]
But like all secrets there truly is nothing more fleeting...so we'd become a race that wouldn't dare much and risk even less.
Now we have an 'enter the clone' moment.
Our 'forever young' set knows this planet isn't going to survive them but space travel (particularly exploration) is fraught with danger, who do we send to find us a new home?
The answer, initially, would be robots...but robots are much more 'robust' than flesh and blood, even flesh and blood that continues to heal itself perpetually.
Eventually the only way to insure safety is to have somebody risk the journey...or send a clone.
Well, good citizen. Cloning, of a human, is illegal in MOST of the world...at the moment. Which is to point out that not so long ago not attending church was illegal and punishable by fines depending on which mercenary sect you were unfortunate enough to be born into...
They may even have thrown you into the stocks for your misdeed...or their own savage amusement, pick one.
So much for 'the rule of law...' [which is regularly made a mockery of.]
And no, this time I don't 'digress'...
Still we are left with the ethical dilemma, one that is particularly thorny given capitalism's stand on the issue. If you were to clone yourself (or PAY to have a clone of yourself made, that clone, under capitalism, would be your 'property' to 'dispose of' however YOU saw fit.
I'd like to believe there is still enough 'common decency' floating around that we would act to prevent/halt the bored and callous among us from cloning themselves so they could 'torture' the end result...just because they could.
Yes, part of us is 'that sick'/power-hungry.
But herein lies the 'ethical dilemma'.
Along that same line, producing whole clones just so you can harvest the organs [or have a slave workforce..or worse, both] is also 'morally repulsive' but I suspect most people wouldn't have a problem with using stem cells to grow a part they need replaced.
So, with the advent of the ability to grow replacement parts on the horizon [again, you'd need to be very wealthy] cloning is a part of the future once more!
Thanks for letting me inside your head,
Gegner
While the technology doesn't (yet) exist to just grow part of a body and this still entails the difficulty of connecting it to the nervous system so it would work properly, advances have been made in this direction with the [partial] unraveling of our genetic code.
Again, as writers, we get to play both sides of the issue..or mix them! Which is to say let's suppose on some forsaken rock out there in the universe, some lunatic discovers the off switch for the body's self-destruct mechanism and then gifts it to both his co-inhabitants/progeny.
Now, with eternity stretching before them, who would undertake the dangerous business of space exploration?
Sounds stupid good citizen but this is exactly the trajectory our civilization is following...although I, for one, do not believe 'immortality' will be, er, 'wasted' on the unwashed. Which is to say the first immortals will keep their gift a secret...to the point of 're-incarnating' every decade or so to throw off suspicion. [This assumes they're smart enough to consider the danger of not aging like everybody else.]
But like all secrets there truly is nothing more fleeting...so we'd become a race that wouldn't dare much and risk even less.
Now we have an 'enter the clone' moment.
Our 'forever young' set knows this planet isn't going to survive them but space travel (particularly exploration) is fraught with danger, who do we send to find us a new home?
The answer, initially, would be robots...but robots are much more 'robust' than flesh and blood, even flesh and blood that continues to heal itself perpetually.
Eventually the only way to insure safety is to have somebody risk the journey...or send a clone.
Well, good citizen. Cloning, of a human, is illegal in MOST of the world...at the moment. Which is to point out that not so long ago not attending church was illegal and punishable by fines depending on which mercenary sect you were unfortunate enough to be born into...
They may even have thrown you into the stocks for your misdeed...or their own savage amusement, pick one.
So much for 'the rule of law...' [which is regularly made a mockery of.]
And no, this time I don't 'digress'...
Still we are left with the ethical dilemma, one that is particularly thorny given capitalism's stand on the issue. If you were to clone yourself (or PAY to have a clone of yourself made, that clone, under capitalism, would be your 'property' to 'dispose of' however YOU saw fit.
I'd like to believe there is still enough 'common decency' floating around that we would act to prevent/halt the bored and callous among us from cloning themselves so they could 'torture' the end result...just because they could.
Yes, part of us is 'that sick'/power-hungry.
But herein lies the 'ethical dilemma'.
Along that same line, producing whole clones just so you can harvest the organs [or have a slave workforce..or worse, both] is also 'morally repulsive' but I suspect most people wouldn't have a problem with using stem cells to grow a part they need replaced.
So, with the advent of the ability to grow replacement parts on the horizon [again, you'd need to be very wealthy] cloning is a part of the future once more!
Thanks for letting me inside your head,
Gegner
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