Human clone 'to be born soon'
From correspondents in Rome
November 27, 2002

A WOMAN carrying a cloned human embryo should give birth in early January, controversial Italian gynaecologist Severino Antinori has said.

He told journalists the woman's pregnancy was in its 33rd week, and the male fetus, which weighed 2.7kg, was healthy, with a "more than a 90 per cent chance" of being born.

The gynaecologist also confirmed that two other woman were pregnant with cloned embryos, one them in the 28th week and the other in the 27th.

He refused to name the country or countries concerned or provide further details, but said all three women were "in the same geographical zone".

The doctor, who first announced the pregnancies in April, insisted he had not carried out the procedure himself, and that his involvement was merely "cultural and scientific".

Italy is preparing to pass legislation that would impose tough penalties for anyone involved in cloning humans.

An international group of about 20 specialists including Antinori and American doctor Panos Zavos announced in January last year they intended to clone a human being in order to help sterile couples have children.

Antinori said today that he now had almost no contact with Pavos.

Antinori, 57, shot to notoriety in 1994 when he succeeded in helping a 63-year-old post-menopausal Italian woman become pregnant through fertilisation treatment administered at his Rome clinic.

bah! you beat me to it- i was gonna do some research on this

is it likely that this will get into the wrong hands? 50 bin ladens- noooooooooo!

Originally posted by kim
bah! you beat me to it- i was gonna do some research on this

is it likely that this will get into the wrong hands? 50 bin ladens- noooooooooo!

what are they gonna do? hide from us too?

The real concern is spiritual, will the clone have a soul? or not?

I think not, because it is not concieved by 2!!! living organisms. I.E.

But then, that is because to me the "soul" and individuality are 2 different things.

I should say the clone will not have any idividuality, it will rather be like a VERY intelligent animal. Or rock. All of which can have a "soul" for all we know.

But I feel individuality is a trait that comes forth through 2 parents not just one. I doubt there is any scientific proof otherwise, it just doesn't feel right.

In either case, the clone should not be pursued. It is not natural for humans, maybe if it were an ameoba.

Sincerely,
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Well FreeMason, that asks an interesting question. Do our souls exist before we are born or do they begin at procreation ?

If on believes in christianity then souls are predestined to their fate and creation before the creation of the world. However this does not mean that the clone/clones were not predestined according to christianity. On the whole the posiblilties are frightening.(star wars)

Originally posted by $tranger

Originally posted by kim
bah! you beat me to it- i was gonna do some research on this

is it likely that this will get into the wrong hands? 50 bin ladens- noooooooooo!

what are they gonna do? hide from us too?

Unless the create a growth enhancer it would be impossible for us to see the creation of poly-bin laden

I think the clone will be just an identical twin. A totally different person. Technically, the parents of the "original" are also the parents of the clone...

A twin that is 65 year younger? Holy Sh@t that would be f*cked up.

Now, how would you know if someone HAD a soul or not? If you're judging on a-morality, I can show you plenty of people who presumably have souls that are quite evil in a soul-less way.

However, religious issues aside, I think the doctor's a fraud. They've had a lot of problems trying to clone the farm animals that they've cloned. I think the guy is a fraud and a trickster, personally.

Mad Scientist that is an interesting question. I feel the minimal answer covers everything and so here it is.

There is existance, this is the concious knowing of reality, we have existance and so on. This existance can be called our souls. But there is only "one" true existance, all else is individuality. Once you are born for the first time, you are an individual, and forever since then you will remain such, and be born again and again. You are in a sense set apart from the "oneness" of the over-all existance of things, but you return to it after death before your next life, where I figure that all your life experiences becomes a part of it, with your own individual twist to it. This is why I feel if you've caused much pain or sufferage, you lose your individuality and in a sense become only a memory.

That's a bit more complex actually then UTER simplicity. Simply put, once you exist you can not cease to exist. In some way our individuality has to be maintained. I.E. Reincarnation or Heaven or such...no one can be sure of how, but only that it is.

But the more I thought about it the more interesting it became, taking a path of its own, because for instance, if you are a young soul, say born for the very first time, does this affect your wisdom or commonsense, versus if you had been born millions of times through out the ages?

Sincerely,
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Ah, FM... you open a bigger can of worms with that concepts of souls.

It implies that all animals have souls and that vegetation (even the humble grass you cut) may have souls. How simple does a creature have to be before it's soul-less? That's difficult to answer, because even viruses respond to stimuli and seem to have some sort of self-awareness.

But it's too late in the evening for a heavy dose of philosphy, friends. I still think the guy is bunk and if he produces a baby that he says is a clone, I sure want to see an independant lab do some analysis to prove that it really is a clone.