File this under the “duh” heading, as far as I’m concerned: human clones would probably “feel individuality”:
A cloned human would probably consider themselves to be an individual, a study suggests.Scientists drew their conclusions after interviewing identical twins about their experiences of sharing exactly the same genes with somebody else.
The team said the twins believed their genes played a limited role in shaping their identity.The UK/Austrian research will shortly be published in the journal of Social Science and Medicine.
Maybe because I’ve been immersed in science fiction for multiple decades, but the question even crossed my mind. Of course they would.
Now, would they have a soul? {ducks}
I joke, but no doubt someone will raise the question. More importantly, will folks raise the issue of whether human clones, at such time as they actually occur, share human rights and privileges? Would they be citizens of the nations they were born in?
Again, the answers seem pretty self-evident to me, but I’ll betcha some folks will challenge them. What will be interesting will be to see what sort of ideological line-up there will be on some of these issues. Will social conservatives, for example, who tout the sanctity of human life, especially the unborn and embryos, be the most or least protective of clones, born or unborn?
I bet social conservatives will be the first to discriminate against clones.
We already have people who are genetically identical. They’re called twins. Yet nobody reckons either to be less than a whole person.
When Dolly was cloned years ago, I heard some man-on-the-street interviews in which people were asked to express their views on human cloning. One young lady was opposed to it because “rich people would clone themselves to have a source for spare organs.”
Is this the popular idea of cloning? You grow a person in a tube in a month or two? How can people not realize that the clone has to be carried to term in a womb, then raised as any other child is? Or did she expect that when the clone’s 30, he’s going to be sent to the donor’s personal organ bank?
Gah.
Not so far-fetched at all. Imagine Monty Burns sending several clones of himself out in the world and having his organization track them. They never know their true identies, and never suspect that if Mr. Burns needs a heart or a liver, late at night one of them will get a knock on the door…
“Duh” is right…
Fellow sci-fi buff here, I’ve always thought we can short-cut our way through all the political/moral/technical arguments and call for banning by just passing one law that recognizes clones inherent humanity and equal status as natural-borns (or whatever you’d call the rest of us). No clone-as-organ-bank, no second-class citizenship, no medical experiments, etc. You got human genes, you’re human. Period. End of discussion.
Tony
Not an uncommon sf theme — more often including cloned organs, clones raised in a vat with brain development or activity artificially suppressed — or, yes, the “harvest ’em when you need ’em” school of cloning. (Cf. Vandal Savage surviving eating his own offspring.)
And, Tony, what you suggest is perfectly reasonable, rational, and therefore highly unlikely to be as simple as described.