Ally and I were recently talking about abortion, since it poses so many interesting ethical questions, and the conversation ended something like this:
Billy-"I think if someone could make a clone of himself without a brain and the clone just lived on life support, then it would be okay for someone to use the clone for spare organs, limbs, etc. "
Funny how easy it is to get off topic like that. Its just that abortion really brings up so many questions such as 'what is life?' and 'what role does science play in defining the matter?'. I was thinking about how in many countries and states the general rule for how late is too late to abort is 'If the fetus can survive outside of the mother's body then its too late too abort.' (hold on because now things are going to get a little sci-fi). What about the day when science will be able to create a test tube baby and nurture through its entire gestation period, will abortion not be allowed because technically the fetus could survive outside the mother's body any moment after conception? It just seems to me that we're defining when its okay to terminate a potential human life by how advanced our medical resources are. Personally I think that just goes to show the lengths we go to as a society to get around answering a philosophical question like 'when does life start?'
Naturally the test tube baby idea led us to talking about cloning and whether or not it is right to clone one's self and then use the clone for 'spare parts' in a manner of speaking. I felt that it is the mind which defines us as human. Since having a brain seems to be a necessary, but perhaps not sufficient, condition for the existence of a mind, then if the clone had no mind then there would be no crime in using the body for any purpose we saw fit.
Anyway, that's the kind of conversations I have with Ally sometimes when we're lying in bed trying to go to sleep. Just thought I'd throw that out there.
About Me
- Schulk-Hogan's Heroes
- Math and physics are kind of interests for me that hope produce a job someday. As Richard Feynman once said, "Physics is like sex. Sure, it may give some practical results, but that's not why we do it." Favorite random stuff I like to do online: follow this awesome site http://emailsfromcrazypeople.com/ , shop for textbooks for classes I have not taken, read fml and fail blog, check out crazy classical musicians on youtube, google images of black holes nebulae etc., play bloons/bloons tower defense 3 and other addicting online games, play the original legend of zelda on nintendo8.com, check to see if they're any new comics on pbfcomics.com, read cyanide and happiness, facebook it up, I read tons of online news articles and I like factcheck.org during election season, and occasionally I blog.
4 comments:
Except that you can't make a clone of everything except the brain unless you have a person to clone that HAS everything except the brain :P
Have you seen the Island? They clone people and use their bodies for spare parts...except the people who buy the clones don't know that their clones have to be conscious in order to become functional as a transplant. Then the clones escape and meet their real self and it's all sorts of weird...So kinda like that? That wouldn't be good, right?
Curse my retched wife, I can always count on her to steal the words out of my mouth before I can say them. BTW The Island rocks.. its got Scarlett Johansson in it, she's a hottie.
Yeah, that movie was better than I expected it to be. That movie growing an ear on a mouse, and other stuff like that probably helped put the question into my head.
Post a Comment