Re: CLones as weapons? (was Re: freedom vs even distribution)

Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
17 Jun 1999 13:26:41 +0200

Chuck Kuecker <ckuecker@mcs.net> writes:

> At 06:19 PM 6/16/99 +0200, Anders Sandberg wrote:
> >
> >Is medical technology harmless? It can be used to create biological
> >weapons, and there was at least one media hoax that Saddam had looked
> >into cloning. Any technology has dangerous possibilities, but some are
> >more obvious than others.
>
> How does the ability to clone organisms become a weapon? Conventional
> biological weapons seem much more easily obtained and produced.

Of course, cloning isn't a weapon, and even if Saddam did clone himself he would likely get more trouble than benefits from that (given that he has killed a large part of his family to keep in power, the last thing he would like is a number of young identical twins of him, growing up while he gets older...). The point was really more to suggest that medical technology can be used for 'ill' purposes, big and small. Practically no technology is completely harmless.

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Anders Sandberg                                      Towards Ascension!
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