Principia

A while ago, I remember a story about a mother who, I believe, was rather elderly, but got pregnant specifically to help her sick child get a compatible transplant donor -- namely from her unborn sibling. Does anyone remember this story?

In any case, one obvious problem here is that conception in this manner is ethically dubious because the organ typing is not guaranteed to match. I was wondering, with this cloning technology now available, what the ethical implications are for people who would impregnate themselves with genetically screened clones (not eugenics, mind you) so that they could cure the diseases of others. [I guess I should add here that the organ under consideration here is nonessential -- like a liver or kidney... no killing the fetus, in other words.]

Food for thought.

PS: If I bungled the details of the hypothetical in the first paragraph, let me know.

EDIT: I found the story, about the Ayalas.

Viti

Principia...that story makes me sick. As a recent living orgon donor I know that my first thought upon waking from anesthesia was "I just made the biggest mistake of my life" (luckily it only lasted a few minutes). I chose to donate, I had done the research, I ws aware of the risks and benefits and that I would be in pain. To put a baby through that...heck anyone without their informed consent, is criminal in my opinion.

Answerer

Guess what guys, I predicted by the turn of next century. Mankind will be divided into two main divisions, the souless(cloned humans) and the naturals(uncloned humans). I won't be surprised if the future cloned humans went further on to enlarge their 'unique' race regardless of what some theists like to prevent.

Principia

LadyShea,
To be a living donor takes great courage and compassion, imo. I applaud your decision to donate, but I also understand your later regret.

I think the notion of "informed consent" is a little sketchy when it comes to infants. Many medical procedures that typically require informed consent (e.g. surgery, clinical trials) cannot be obtained from newborns, and are thus relayed to the parents for approval. Here, I think the courts have consistently ruled that the role of biological parents as guardians gives them that right.

On the other hand, the informed consent notion was brought up by the author of the article, but in another light. Specifically, one wonders whether or not a child can be conceived for some material cause that he may not later approve? Here, unlike typical medical scenarios involving consent, the infant does not actually benefit directly from the marrow transplant. Does the commodification of the child (through his potential though unproven benefit to some other party) lessen his future value as a person? In the case of Marissa Ayala, she might have endured pain during the transplant ... but it was of finite duration. Despite that, by all accounts, she lives a normal life with loving parents and sister. What's wrong with this picture?

lpetrich

As to which sex is easier to clone, I'd be surprised if there is much of a difference. Can anyone track down the claims of differences?

Principia

Not the most technical of sites, but it's a start:
Let me see if I can follow up on this lead...

Demosthenes

I think that's rather unlikely, there's nothing really that unique about cloned children, and techniques used to "improve" cloned people can easily be applied to the convienient people. If anything, I predict that cloned people would be looked at no differently than any other people, in fact we probably would forget that there are even cloned people. Look at in-vitro babies, they're no longer such a novelty, in fact people hardly think about it at all.

As for the subject of cloning males, the first cloned male was in 1999, when researchers successfully cloned a male mouse. The clone's name was Fibro. The information can be found hereFibro

From what I've uncovered, apparently, the reason that males currently are more difficult to clone than females is due to the type of cells involved in the cloning process. In case of females, the cells used in the nuclear transfer method are more robust and are only found in females. Other types of cells can be used instead and are found in males, but those types are less likely to survive the cloning techniques, so it takes more tries to get a viable cloned embryo.

The information can be found at this site of a organization established to provide reproductive cloning.

Yogini Cloning

Though the organization does seem to have questionable sources so I went to those sites instead,

Human Cloning Foundation

and

Reproductive Cloning

I left inquiries at the Human Cloning site, they haven't been replied to yet. I'm still doing research on this subject, so there still remain more interesting information to be uncovered.

Viti

Principia...my regret was short lived (literally the first few minutes, while being wheeled into recovery)...waking up from that kind of surgery just sucks. Obviously bone marrow donation is not as invasive or stressful as a kidney being removed...but still. How would you like to grow up knowing you were only conceived to save someone else...maybe like a hero...maybe like livestock, who knows.

Ipetrich...can't remember where I read the female/male difference. Will see what I can find.

Viti

I read it in a post on another board. The poster is a working scientist (though a Christian) so I thought the reasoning may be sound...here it is...is it valid?

Principia

Correct me if I am wrong, but isn't hospital guidelines that the recipient is unaware of who donated the organ? Or perhaps the donor has the option of witholding the information?