>Date: Mon, 18 Sep 2000 08:20:23 -0700
>From: hal@finney.org
>Subject: Re: responsibility for children
>
>
>We talk about father's rights, but what happens when anyone can take
>microscopic samples from anywhere you've been and either create a clone,
>or use them to create a baby for which you are the biological parent?
>
>Should this be illegal, that is, should society try to stop people from
>doing this without the consent of the donor? (David Zindell in his
>Neverness series called this crime "slelling".) Celebrities could find
>themselves being unwillingly cloned into thousands of babies.
>
>And then, there might be cases where consent is difficult to prove.
>Two people have sex, and the man has arranged to be sterile, but the
>woman wants his baby and has easy access to his DNA. The man's efforts
>to control his reproduction could easily be thwarted.
>
>These situations remind us that we are fundamentally information beings.
>It is the nature of information to be copied, which conflicts with our
>ideas about the uniqueness of each individual. The good thing about
>these scenarios is that the babies are wanted, so presumably there will
>be loving parents to raise them.
>
>Hal
>
>------------------------------
>
I think the "slelling" issue depends on the level of access to cloning
technology. If you can clone and incubate in the privacy or your own
basement (a Clone@Home system perhaps), then it'd be difficult to stop
someone intent on using your DNA for their own reproductive ends.
However, if it's run by an organisation or govt. institution, they may have
a "Consent Register", so if the DNA someone's provided for
reproducing/cloning is not their own, they check it against the register,
and see if your name pops up (assuming it's your DNA of course) as having
given consent to this person, if at all. If you haven't, then no dice, and
they destroy or retain the DNA and notify you of the attempt.
This of course would require a worldwide system, otherwise you could find a
half dozen clones of you in Brazil or somewhere :) Even the Clone@Home
system could be designed to only operate when confirmation has been
received over a network link of some kind to the Consent Register, or if
you've physically given the machine permission through a fingerprint or
retinal scan (with appropriate safeguards for severed limbs and gouged
eyes*Eeeuuuwww*).
Then again, both these systems raise all those ugly central
register/privacy issues. But hey, what doesn't these days?;->
Slan,
James......
J & J Corbally ~ Eire
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