From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Fri Jan 17 2003 - 01:52:21 MST
Peter wrote
> [mailto:owner-extropians@extropy.org]On Behalf Of Peter C. McCluskey
> Sent: Sunday, January 12, 2003 9:43 AM
>
> lcorbin@tsoft.com (Lee Corbin) writes:
> >Why wouldn't a mature cloning technology substantially
> >increase the number of people? Why, I myself would go
> >get two or three new clones of me alone. Besides, the
>
> A mature version of the current approach probably wouldn't enable you
> to do that because you probably wouldn't persuade a woman to bear the
> fetus.
You have an unerring instinct for alluding to unpleasant truths. :-(
> >"unhealthy babies" will be a mere transition effect...
>
> A suspicious assumption. Remember why sexual reproduction evolved -
> a static set of genes is more vulnerable to rapidly evolving germs.
What is the relevance? The huge burst of trillions of
new cells indeed does leave the old body's pathogens in
the dust. But the new body has the same explosion, and
the pathogens don't go along because they're not in the
DNA.
But your great instincts perhaps anticipated Hal's post
"Risks of IVF, implications for cloning?".
Or are you are thinking about cloned babies being in
proximity to their originals, and that the germs would
have two lifetimes instead of one to "solve" the problem?
Anyway, I'd be perfectly willing to chance it, and would
be happy to pay some woman to bear my clone, if only we
lived in a free country and contracts were enforceable.
Lee
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