What is it that you imagine being "worse for us."
Let's review the bidding.
Laz was all exercised about the potential for some mad-scientist outcome, specifically engineered soldiers. My point was about that. If we outlaw research on cloning here, then the breakthrough to do so would occur somewhere else, say China. Engineered Chinese super soldiers is, IMO, not a good thing. If we don't ban cloning research, then maybe that brilliant Chinese researcher gets his education here and stays on to work here. Maybe then he will put his energies into some other benefit of cloning. Or even if he does figure out how to make a super soldier, he would be doing so under our ethical system, not theirs. Or some brilliant American researcher, so intrigued with cloning but unable to pursue it here, goes to China and we end up with Chinese super soldiers that way.
My point that the risk of an unhappy outcome from mad-scientist scenario is less if we do cloning research here at home.
Laz made the point about the atomic bomb and proliferation. Does anything think things would be better if we had not done that research? Somebody else, the Germans, would hav been first and the bomb would still have proliferated, unless, of course, the Germans took over the world before others got a chance. Us eschewing making the bomb would not have been a good thing, IMO. |
