X-Message-Number: 7821 From: (Thomas Donaldson) Subject: Re: CryoNet #7813 - #7818 Date: Fri, 7 Mar 1997 17:47:03 -0800 (PST) Hi everyone! 1. The Venturist ideas sound like good ones, especially the rental facility for cryonics to live. If I became seriously ill and wanted to live near cryonicists, I don't believe I'd care much just what style of living it was --- so long as I could get decent medical care and a much better suspension. I will point out, though, that a "communal" situation with one person needing to be cared for rather than able to provide any help to the community is going to need more definition, at a minimum. Who is responsible for caring for me? No doubt I could provide some financial help, but if I understand "communal living" that's a bit of a deviation. 2. I am interested by the comments of a LIBERTARIAN bioethicist. One major issue in terms of ownership for cloning: sure, I may be able to clone myself. It's just another form of reproduction, perhaps not as enjoyable as the other kinds, but a kind. HOWEVER: do I then own the clone resulting? I would think that clone also deserves the same rights as myself, and I could not own the result. Moreover, clones don't spring into being out of the air. If I were a woman, I might be able to clone myself without help from anyone else (I'd need instruction in the technology, though). If I were a man, one more person gets involved in this reproduction, and that person again has rights... as for instance, the right to refuse to clone you. (Eventually I'm sure we can make systems able to bring fertilized eggs --- or clones --- to term, but right now we must rely on some other person. Perhaps sooner than independent womb-machines, we might have modified animals, but even that is not now available). As for outrage, it seems to me that before we get het up about cloning and what it might or might not do to our rights, it would be better to focus first on all the ways in which the government (or politicians) want to control what we do with our bodies now. Like taking drugs, or wearing a motorcycle helmet, or restrictions of abortion (though some libertarians may believe the embryo has rights too), or in BC, banning cryonics, or many many other things. A ban on cloning is just one more; I see no reason why it sets any precedents that the others have not set already. (No, I'm not in favor of any of these restrictions, but there are already enough that one more won't make much of a difference --- and if you want to stop such governmental conduct, you should not need the excuse of bans on cloning to get you started). What is the FDA but one large organization trying to control what drugs we take or do not take? And isn't that interference with what we do with our bodies? Long long life, Thomas Donaldson Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=7821