daemon@decwrl.UUCP (03/02/84)
From: squirt::arndt
From: SMURF::ARNDT 1-MAR-1984 17:30
To: SQUIRT::ARNDT
Subj: Science
Advances in science and technology can have a tremendous impact on our
morals only if our morals are relative. It can affect social roles.
If technology allows me to steal (computers) or lie without being caught
it is still morally wrong to do so. Let's not split hairs, there are times
when it is moral to lie and cheat (lie to the Germans to hide the Jews, etc.)
But you get what I mean I hope.
Don't confuse morals with mores. There are relatively few moral standards,
(the ten commandment type) and plenty of mores such as social roles.
Even if you can clone a human egg, and I certainly believe it will be possible,
all that would mean that human life began when the cell started to divide
rather than at the fertilization time. If a human clone survived it would be
genitically unique but still human, would it not? A single egg cell is
still not human life! Remember, left to itself it will never produce
a human life. It is only a single cell. You would have to DO something
to it to get it to divide. Presumably whatever the sperm does only without
the extra genitic material added.
You seem to be describing doing something to a woman which makes every
egg she owns clone itself. But who or why would anyone want to do that?
What moral imperative would drive us to do that as you suggest?
Only if the egg and the sperm by themselves are a beginning of human
biological life! But they aren't until they are activated by whatever
means. Otherwise masturbation if more of a horror than we men know.
Dad never mentioned that one!
"What would we do with all the people?" Eat them, of course!
"I guess the moral is that you should not only consider 'today', but
'tomorrow' when you plan policies." - I've ordered that one struck
in brass for my desk.
Sorry!! The devil made me.
For the next twenty years. . .
- AI
- Genetics
- Nets like this one that allow nitwits like us to flame i.e.,
the loss of reason. What was it that Orwell said: "The future belongs to men
in three piece suits who think in slogans and speak in bullets."
Monty Python