On Fri, Aug 17, 2001 at 09:33:13AM -0700, Wei Dai wrote:
> 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.
In what ways do twins reduce each other's economic value in a manner
ordinary sibling's don't? Unless you work in a field where genetics is a
major determinant of success (sports or modelling?) clones do not reduce
your value on the work market. Copying of you with your complete
skillset might reduce your market value, but that is not what we are
speaking of here, isn't it?
> > 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.
Some kind of genome removal process triggered by cell differentiation?
Sounds doable, if tricky.
A simpler possibility would be to add genetic switches expressed in
somatic cell lines that are activated by the pecularities of nuclear
transfer (there has to be some re-methylation process there, I guess)
and then activate a suicide gene.
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