On Thu, Aug 16, 2001 at 10:16:06PM -0700, hal@finney.org wrote:
> David Zindell's Neverness series has characters very worried about
> the crime of having their DNA stolen and clones made, which they call
> "slelling". It wasn't clear to me what the big deal was though.
I haven't read that series, but in general having clones of you reduces
your own value. It's just the basic economics of greater supply leading to
lower price.
> Therefore any self destruct will probably take some time to operate,
> and it is possible that it could be frozen and/or disabled by the thief
> before it manages to destroy the DNA. It sounds like a difficult problem
> to do well.
It does seem difficult. Perhaps another way to prevent cloning is to make
sure each cell only has the genes necessary for it to function, instead of
the whole genome. Then, to clone someone you would have to obtain a
cell from each of his organs.
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