Menu

Argument: Cloning evil people will not result in evil clones

Issue Report: Ban on human reproductive cloning

Support

“Why cloning people is a good idea”. Everything 2 – “A person is more than their genes. This is without even considering the fact that Dolly was not genetically identical to the source sheep.

A person’s outward appearance and inner personality are mostly determined by their environment, and to a much smaller extent by their genes. How much food the child eats, how the environment interacts and how he or she interacts with the environment – these are the real issues that determine who we are. There may or may not be genes that influence how we react to the environment, but there certainly aren’t genes that determine it.

So even if a person wanted to go and clone Hitler – let them. The Hitler they create would have only the tiniest chance in the universe, considerably less than winning a lottery, of turning out even remotely the same. The two Hitler’s wouldn’t look anything like each other – our clone might be short and fat, tall and thin, excitable or calm, determined by what childhood he led. His world outlook would have nothing in common with Hitler, and even if we force-fed him the same ideology there would be no guarantee he would accept it.

There are no such things as “evil” genes. There are no people who are evil because of their genes. Evil itself is a stupid subjective term – I prefer anti-social. Only a combination of factors far too difficult to reproduce will create an identical personality copy of a person.””