{"id":2437,"date":"2004-11-18T22:29:14","date_gmt":"2004-11-19T06:29:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kith.org\/journals\/jed\/2004\/11\/18\/2437.html"},"modified":"2004-11-18T22:29:14","modified_gmt":"2004-11-19T06:29:14","slug":"a-clone-by-any-other-name","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/2004\/11\/18\/a-clone-by-any-other-name\/","title":{"rendered":"A clone by any other name"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>And now, some polemic on a topic that <em>isn't<\/em> on everyone's mind, 'cause I've been meaning to post something like this for a while.  (In fact, I thought I had posted something like this at some point, but apparently not.)<\/p>\n<p>I think the debate over cloning might suddenly get a lot more reasonable if people stopped using the word <span class=\"word-as-word\">clone<\/span> and started using a phrase like <span class=\"word-as-word\">delayed twin<\/span>.<\/p>\n<p>'Cause when we talk about clones, that's basically what we're talking about: a being that's genetically identical to another being, but isn't necessarily identical in any other way; the two are subject to differences in environment (including prenatal environment); they may not even look identical (especially in the case of cats).  Clones are, basically, just twins who aren't born at the same time.<\/p>\n<p>Yes, yes, that terminology obscures certain important issues, such as the fact that we're not good enough at cloning yet, last I heard, for there to be a high chance of long-term survival of the clone.  But that's an issue with an as-yet-immature technology, not an issue with the <em>idea<\/em> of cloning per se.  I think if we were to make clearer that cloning isn't some magical or mystical thing, that in essence it's a variant on what happens when twins are conceived, that human reproductive cloning wouldn't be <em>making a copy of a person<\/em> but rather <em>making a copy of a person's DNA just like nature does<\/em>, then the idea might freak people out less.<\/p>\n<p>But I could be wrong.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>And now, some polemic on a topic that isn&#8217;t on everyone&#8217;s mind, &#8217;cause I&#8217;ve been meaning to post something like&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2437","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2437","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2437"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2437\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2437"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2437"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2437"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}