> in the next 100 years we will accept cloning as a replacement for death. Simply duplicate the body, and transfer the brain
Cloning isn't the same thing as "Simply duplicat[ing] the body."
Cloning creates an embryo which turns into a human infant.
Then you have to wait 18 years for it to mature before you can transfer the brain.
There's an insurmountable moral barrier to raising a fully conscious child to adulthood and then killing it so you can have its body.
Some commenters down-thread have suggested removing the infant's brain and raising it, without consciousness, in a vat of some sort.
Aside from the obvious difficulty and huge expense of maintaining a fantastical life-supporting "vat" for 18 years, it just simply wouldn't work.
Human beings require social interaction, and consciousness, to survive. An infant deprived of social interaction and environmental stimulation, and the consciousness to experience it obviously, would die. Animals also require physical interaction; our bones and muscles and senses can't develop properly in a vat, so you'd end up with, at best, a pathetic excuse for a body, totally unable to function in any way you'd enjoy, if your clone survived at all (which it wouldn't).
In short, this idea is both morally appalling and biologically ridiculous.
>The human body does not literally require social interaction to continue operating. That's just silly.
I wasn't talking about you. I was talking about whether a human infant missing most of its brain and deprived of all social interaction, environmental stimulation, and physical activity would thrive and mature normally. It would not.
(Also, just for the record, there are things which aren't possible to do, no matter how many awesome engineers you have.)
Cloning isn't the same thing as "Simply duplicat[ing] the body."
Cloning creates an embryo which turns into a human infant. Then you have to wait 18 years for it to mature before you can transfer the brain.
There's an insurmountable moral barrier to raising a fully conscious child to adulthood and then killing it so you can have its body.
Some commenters down-thread have suggested removing the infant's brain and raising it, without consciousness, in a vat of some sort.
Aside from the obvious difficulty and huge expense of maintaining a fantastical life-supporting "vat" for 18 years, it just simply wouldn't work.
Human beings require social interaction, and consciousness, to survive. An infant deprived of social interaction and environmental stimulation, and the consciousness to experience it obviously, would die. Animals also require physical interaction; our bones and muscles and senses can't develop properly in a vat, so you'd end up with, at best, a pathetic excuse for a body, totally unable to function in any way you'd enjoy, if your clone survived at all (which it wouldn't).
In short, this idea is both morally appalling and biologically ridiculous.