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To: M. Dodge Thomas
I expect to see headless clone "organ banks" in my lifetime.

Larry Niven, the SF writer, had a series of books set in his own future history, where science had progressed to the point a heart transplant was like a muffler job...in and out same day with little rejection...the same kind of thing for arms, legs, kidneys. The sheer demand caused the government to set up "organ banks" fed by the dis-assembly of capital criminals. (This idea actually might have some merit, but the ACLU would howl, so it will have to wait until after we gut them.) So a murderer got to repay his crime by supplying a heart, twelve quarts of blood, two kidneys, etc. However, people being people, before long the aging population were voting the death penalty for tax evasion, check kiting, jay walking...

What a Brave New World that has such people in it!

4 posted on 11/19/2004 9:54:14 AM PST by 50sDad ( ST3d - Star Trek Tri-D Chess! http://my.oh.voyager.net/~abartmes)
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To: 50sDad
I expect to see headless clone "organ banks" in my lifetime.

I'd have to give some thought to how I’d feel about a decephlelated clone of myself "farmed" as a source of rejection-free spare parts - as visual image it's pretty creepy, but on an intellectual level I don't know that it's much different than, say, growing cloned skin on a nutrient substrate - it would "look" more human, but it would be no more sentient (unless you assume that some significant portion of physiological "humanness" exists extra-cortically - for example, in spinal tissue).

In the meantime I sure wish we had a international treaty banning reproductive cloning - that's REALLY going to get messy.
5 posted on 11/19/2004 12:11:57 PM PST by M. Dodge Thomas (More of the same, only with more zeros on the end.)
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