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Thursday, July 20, 2006

Cloned humans would feel selves to be individuals

In what is clearly a bid to soften up the public for human cloning (currently "not allowed" in the UK, hint, hint), a BBC news story announces that, based on a study of identical twins, "A cloned human would probably consider themselves to be an individual."

Well, apart from the ambiguous wording - "a cloned human" is singular but "themselves" is plural - does anyone who gives the matter a moment's thought doubt that identical twins feel they are individuals? They have separate consciousnesses after all. For example, will most identical twins share spouses or children? Bank accounts?

However, if children are cloned for the purposes of being "just like" whoever has the power of life or death over them, they had better take care not to show much individuality.

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