Saturday, October 13, 2007

Van Gogh Was A Lightweight

For those who think nobody in the free world would do anything as stupid as clone a human, think again. From the weird-and-scary mailbag, check out this article about an Australian man who decided to grow an extra ear from his cells and implant it into his arm.

Why would he do such a thing do you ask? Maybe because he can...and has a few loose screws bouncing around upstairs.

It's never been clearer than today that protecting life from those who value it only as something to amuse is essential. With people like this demonstrating such serious lack of judgement, self respect, and consideration for others who may have to see this self-imposed freakiness, it's hard to think of them somehow developing these attributes in other matters.

4 comments:

Sirocco said...

Not that I think this is ethically correct, but whom, exactly, has he hurt by doing this?

Having said that, human cloning is going to occur. It's incumbent upon the medical community and national governments to develop some ethical guidelines and police them.

AZAce said...

"No man is an island unto himself." Your point is well taken, but the reality is that it's really hard to demonstrate that nobody else is in any way impacted by our actions as evidenced by the known chain of pornography—pornography addicts—molested little girls and boys. Or, recreational drugs—hard drugs—drug addict—crime.

Sirocco said...

Well, yes, those chains are known BUT there are unquestionably other elements in play in the creation of, say, child molesters or drug addicts.

This is easily demonstrated by the simple fact the vast majority of those who view pornography do not become pornography addicts, and even the vast majority those who might be considered pornography addicts do not molest children.

Similarly, the vast majority of those who use recreational drugs do not move on to use hard drugs/become drug addicts.

Meaning the whole "slippery slope" argument generally only comes into play when other, additional factors, somehow are involved.

Which isn't to belittle the need to create a set of ethical guidelines and apply them rigorously - human cloning is most certainly an area which one can easily envision being abused.

AZAce said...

Just as not all smokers follow the chain of smoker—addicted smoker—lung cancer, nearly all lung cancer patients can be traced back through the chain. We see the pattern in the other strongly correlated relationships.