Cloning has been a hot-button social issue ever since the announcement that Dolly the sheep had been successfully cloned. Visions of Frankenstein’s monster loom in the minds of people who are suspicious of new scientific technology, and there is a strong religious argument against cloning. However, fans of science fiction have dreamed of the day when Jurassic Park might become a reality. This became an even more vivid question upon the discovery of a preserved baby mammoth, complete with tissue and intact internal organs.
National Geographic recently wrote a feature article on the discovery of this mammoth, with a supplemental piece on whether we ought to pursue mammoth cloning. The article was totally inadequate, largely because it failed to raise the relevant moral questions. Thus, our purpose here will be to do a better job than National Geographic was able to. We will pursue the tough questions associated with deciding whether we ought to clone the mammoth.
One of my philosophy professors, Dr. Bernie Rollin, is highly critical of those who oppose cloning on moral grounds. In his view, criticisms of the ethics of cloning tend to take two forms. Some oppose cloning because it is “against nature,” as though humans have not been manipulating the genetics of other organisms for centuries. To state Dr. Rollin’s reply simply, if there is something intrinsically wrong with cloning, it’s not clear what.
The other common criticism of cloning tends to be religious, that cloning is a form of “playing God” that makes it morally objectionable. Even if this criticism were legitimate, a religious concern is not necessarily a social concern unless it can be reformulated in secular terms. This cannot be done with regard to cloning. There are legitimate concerns associated with cloning, but they are based on worries about potential consequences, rather than because there is something intrinsically wrong with cloning.
What consequences might we be concerned about? The most significant ones, in my view, have to do with harm to the animals. First, if the case of Dolly is any indication, the cloning of a mammoth will result in dozens of failed precursors, many of whom have debilitating health problems, from which they suffer greatly. Further, the cloned mammoth will be the only one of its kind, and it will be subjected to a life that lacks both social companionship and an acceptable habitat. The “mammoth steppe” has not existed for a long time, and it is unlikely that an animal like the mammoth would be happy in confinement. A further worry there is that we have no idea how to properly house a mammoth, because no one has ever done so before.
Dr. Rollin takes the position that if these concerns could be adequately addressed, and we could be sure that negative consequences were kept to a minimum, there is no reason not to pursue cloning extinct animals like the mammoth. I want to propose a counterpoint. Lacking a reason against something is not a reason to do it. If the argument for mammoth cloning is simply “No bad consequences, then why not?” we don’t yet have a good argument for doing this.
In addition, there are good reasons against cloning extinct animals, even if the consequences to the animal could be minimized. First, I question whether we can ever have certainty that the animal will not suffer as a result of the process of being cloned. Second, consider who might pursue cloning a mammoth. One possibility is for food production, the other is as a kind of scientific spectacle. In both cases, the animal is being exploited for our benefit. We already do this to millions of animals. Why create another animal simply for the sake of treating it as poorly as we treat other animals? Even if the animal lives a good life, it would be created to serve as a means to our own end.
There are two lessons that we can take from considering whether we ought to pursue the cloning of the mammoth. First, we should be critical of any argument that cites a lack of reasons against something as the equivalent of a reason for it, even when this argument comes from a respected philosopher. Second, and more importantly, even when the negative consequences of certain actions have been accounted for, we must look at the reasons in favor of pursuing some action. Even if there are no bad consequences, if we fail to consider how we are treating other morally relevant beings, we risk a moral failing of the deontological kind. The absence of bad consequences does not always entail moral acceptability.
About the Author
Elijah Weber is a graduate student at Bowling Green State University. He holds a Master's degree in philosophy from Colorado State University, and Bachelor’s degrees in sociology and philosophy from Chapman University. He currently lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan with his wife Laura, his son Brandon, and two cats.
16 responses so far ↓
1 William // Jun 10, 2009 at 3:45 pm
For me, the moral argument in favour of cloning extinct species is the opportunity it affords us to help prevent currently endangered species from going extinct - especially those which are endangered on account of human behaviour. The suffering of a few test case mammoths is acceptable to me if the technology ultimately leads to the prevention of the extinction of the giant panda or the snow leopard.
There is also a case to be made that it is morally right to correct the wrongs of the past where we have eradicated such species as the dodo and the tasmanian tiger by resurrecting those species.
It is also my understanding that early work on cloning technology ultimately led to current stem cell research which is making significant medical advances to the benefit of us all - often the exploration of new scientific technology leads to wider benefits (expected or otherwise) and although I don’t have the facts to back up my hunch, in this case I suspect the medical sciences would benefit significantly from cloning research driven by the spectacle of resurrection.
2 Elijah Weber // Jun 17, 2009 at 4:57 pm
It sounds like you are in favor of cloning the mammoth because of the positive consequences to humans and other animals. Two thoughts on this:
1. Do these consequences outweigh the potentially horrific suffering of early attempts to clone the mammoth? Cloning Dolly the sheep required hundreds of animals that didn’t survive and were often severely deformed, and that was an animal we had seen before . What if 50,000 mammoths suffer horribly in order for this technology to be realized? Is it still worth it?
2. If the benefits are all indirect, like improvements in medicine for humans or the resurrection of animals like the dodo, why not just pursue those directly and leave the mammoths alone? In other words, what, if anything, is in it for the mammoth?
I’d also like to hear more about why it would be morally right to try to bring back a species that humans eradicated? Is this a greater obligation than we’d see with a “natural” extinction? Why does the fact that humans caused this matter at all?
Thanks for the helpful comments, and for checking us out.
3 Blah // Jul 8, 2009 at 12:57 am
You say: what if 50,000 mammoths have to suffer in order to benefit the human population. What exactly does “suffering” mean? Pain? Inhumane conditions? One could not rightfully say a mammoth is human in any case. Morality is something that should be questioned, it’s old world, much like the sun revolving aroud the Earth. What is moral based on in the first place.? Suspect notions of right and wrong? The soul? Religion? God? Try explaining moral without any of these illusory concepts and you’ll win a nobel prize.
The Earths population stands at roughly 6.8 billion people. Expand that over a few hundred years and its a hell of a lot more. 50,000 is a small number in comparison. The bottom line is that it’s very easy to make the case that the survival of our species is the ultimate moral trump card there is. In comparison 50,000 mammoths is a small price to pay if that aids in the endeavor of mastering our environment and furthering our knowledge of the universe .
4 Elijah Weber // Jul 8, 2009 at 11:22 am
Two concerns here. First, you say moral is a suspect concept, we don’t really know what it is, it’s “old world,” etc. We use morality every day. We make moral judgments and engage in moral debates. Morality isn’t some outmoded superstition, it is a central aspect of our everyday social interactions. Further, you cite human survival as “the ultimate moral trump card.” Either morality is an outmoded concept, or it isn’t, you can’t have it both ways.
Second, I find it puzzling that you think suffering is somehow difficult to define. How about the phenomenal experience of physical and psychological discomfort, including but not limited to pain experience? Mammoths, as mammals, are capable of this experience. If you want to argue for why only human suffering matters morally, you’ve got some tough work to do, and most of that debate took place in the 1970’s, with the resultant conclusion that there isn’t a relevant moral difference between human suffering and the suffering of other animals. If you disagree, tell me what makes humans so special. Either all suffering matters, or none of it does. Further, a moral view that regards suffering as morally irrelevant would be a pretty crazy view. I doubt you believe this, because at a minimum, you probably think your own suffering is morally relevant.
Finally, but related, why assume that human survival is a “moral trump card”? You need an argument for such a controversial claim. My point in this article is that pain matters morally, no matter who experiences it, and it’s not clear what if any benefits might come from trying to clone the mammoth. It’s not obvious that the ends would justify the means in this case, even if we grant that such an argument would be valid. Why think human projects are intrinsically more important than anything else, including horrible suffering? That’s an assumption, and it’s my job as a philosopher to question such assumptions.
5 Shadow // Sep 5, 2009 at 9:37 pm
Tell me now…
Those of you who say “we shouldn’t allow the mammoths to be born under any circumstance because most will suffer!”…if you say that, then using the same exact argument, we should force all women to vow and take an oath that they won’t have any children anymore because getting pregnant has the small risk of giving birth to a deformed child who will suffer before passing away.
If it wasn’t for your parents’ desire to take a risk and give birth to us all, we wouldn’t even be here to write these comments! And though lots of crazy religious people say “Oh but cloning is unorthodox, it’s blasphemous!” well let me say this: “If i clone myself, and my clone grows up and gets raised like a normal human, he would certainly be alive, right? And since when has creation of life been a bad thing? I though MURDER was bad! Not the ability to procreate LIFE!”
So first things first: placing aside the fact that chances of a deformed mammoth clones are high, i would fully support cloning just like i would fully support the right for women to get pregnant and have children. The creation of live, whether naturally or artificially, is a good thing no matter how fools want to contradict it.
Now you say “there are chances the mammoths will be deformed”. Well there are chances that a baby born to a mother will be deformed too. Sure, the chances are low, but chances are only mere probabilities. There’s a small chance that every single baby born after this night will be deformed. And there’s a chance that every single attempt at cloning a mammoth will produce a healthy specimen. How can we know for sure, when the chances are themselves in their own level of probability? In other words, there are chances that the chances will fail!
Might as well try. If the mammoth is born deformed, you can always perform a silent death, that’s considered perfectly humane. After all, we kill tons of animals daily to produce food we alter consume. As long as we don’t torture them, we are allowed to kill them without hearing an outrage from the common public, right? Same with the mammoths. If they are born deformed, just quietly rid them of their sufferings…the same way you would perform euthanasia on a suffering elderly man.
I support the cloning of any and all organisms on this earth. Including humans. I don’t see anything wrong with it, in fact i see more right in taking the risk of cloning, than death sentences…
…or adultery…
…or stealing a bag of chips from the local store…
…or telling a teacher you didn’t finish an assignment…
Tell me, my friends. When a person is told that they can survive from a cancer only with an operation, yet the chances of surviving the operation itself are only 20%…does that mean that the doctors who perform the operation are evil just because the chance of dying are higher than the chance of living?
Similarly, if a mammoth is about to be cloned, yet the chances of them being healthy specimens are low, does that mean that the scientists involved in the cloning are evil?
If the former example is thought to be good, because it is done with the best intentions, i think that the latter example should be treated similarly, otherwise it would be unfair and completely foolish.
So my opinion on the mammoth cloning? It should be done.
6 Shadow // Sep 5, 2009 at 9:41 pm
By the way…i mistakenly spelled the word “later” as “altered” in the phrase “to produce food we alter[sic] consume”
Sorry about that, i’m making this post because i feel it’s necessary to let you know…
7 Elijah Weber // Sep 6, 2009 at 6:14 pm
-Shadow,
Two quick points, since I think I’ve already addressed much of what you’re saying. First, I’m not sure your comparison of cloning to women giving birth makes the point you want to make. In the case of women giving birth, they are almost always doing so voluntarily, the risks of defects are exceedingly small, and we’ve got all sorts of ways to treat human birth defects. In the mammoth case, the mammoths are having cloning imposed on them, defects are almost certain since cloning is in its infancy and is something of a trial and error science at this point, and the care and housing of full-grown mammoths is unlikely to meet their needs to any reasonable degree because we have no idea what those needs are. So one example is a voluntary act with a low probability of some suffering, compared with an involuntary activity with almost certain suffering that is likely to be severe and unable to be remedied sufficiently. These don’t really seem the same to me, and the comparison doesn’t really do much philosophical work for you.
Second, you draw a comparison to agricultural animals as justification for euthanizing mammoths that end up being deformed. Two worries here. One, it’s an open question whether the fact that we kill millions of animals for our food needs is justified or morally acceptable. Many people think it isn’t. Second, you’ve got another disanalogy at work. In the case of ag animals, we at least know why we’re killing them. We may not be justified in doing so, but we can cite a relevant reason for why we think we’re justified. But what’s the reason behind mammoth cloning? To see if we can? This trivializes the pain that cloned animals are likely to experience. At a minimum, we need an argument for why we should clone animals like the mammoth. You seem to take the absence of an argument against as analogous to an argument for. These are not the same thing.
8 Shadow // Sep 8, 2009 at 5:50 pm
I think that you did confuse one fact when mentioning the idea that “women getting pregnant is a voluntary act”. No, it’s not voluntary for the baby being born. It’s voluntary for the parents, sure. But not for the soon-to-be-born baby. Similarly, the scientists are the ones performing the voluntary act of cloning in case they do so. Like you said, however, mammoths aren’t doing it voluntarily. I’m saying that the baby about to be born never really asked to be born. Just like the mammoth clones never asked to be cloned. You’re saying it’s not fair because we have no reason to clone mammoths. But i think the simple idea of producing life is a good reason for doing it. After all, when we isolate a married couple and use them as an example of what their personal reason for having a child or more is, what’s the reason we discover? Well they just want to do it, for pleasure. They want to enjoy the idea of nurturing an individual, etc. If you say it’s not a good reason to clone mammoths just because we want to have the pleasure of seeing them and similar related stuff, then using that same exact logic, it should also be a bad reason to have children just because of our own pleasures, our own desires to have a kid, watch them grow, learn, etc, something the average parent finds an enjoyable experience.
You may say “oh but there’s a reason for having offspring, it allows us to reproduce, otherwise our species goes extinct”. Well, we are ensuring our specie’s survival because we want our species to exist for time after our deaths. Let me ask you this personal question, i hope you don’t mind…
Let’s produce a thought experiment. In it, during a specific generation, all humans throughout the world that were born were all infertile, and eventually all fertile humans would perish, leaving simply the infertile ones. If you were part of such scenario, would you be in favor of cloning for the survival of the species, or would you go against it and instead just let humans die out forever?
It’s almost like that with extinct animals, except that they failed to survive. Technically, we have a chance for them to “resurrect” since we have frozen mammoth flesh. True extinction would mean that there’s no possible way for a new individual specimen of such specie can be born.
Seeing your argument, it appears that your concern is not the cloning, but the idea of mammoths suffering unnecessarily. What is pain? Physical pain is an illusion, once you discover it more in-depth. Pain, like sound, or color, is the way that the human body responds to several stimuli. The stimuli, however, are not universally possessive of the traits that the responses appear to perform. It is possible to be born colorblind. It is possible to be born deaf. It is possible to be born with slightly-deformed pain receptors. For example, a specific individual with such case may touch a fire and experience a gentle, tingling sensation instead of the awful painful burning sensation experienced by most people. Either way, however, the flame does cause physical damage.
But what is physical “cruelty” described as? Is it the idea of damaging the body, or causing pain to it? It seems that the opinion fluctuates depending on the scenario. I mean, when a person is told that they have gangrene and will lose a limb, they will receive anasthesia to not feel the pain. But the physical damage…the loss of a limb…it still happens either way.
We must treat death the same way, it’s defined as physical damage because it causes the organism to stop being a complex self-mantaining machine and just turn as unalive as a rock. So here comes the trouble…because death is disputed as being evil by some people, but as being an act that may be done if justified. If i brutally kill any organism, it is considered bad, but if i drive them off pain and kill them as a method of relieving them of their sufferings, then it is treated as a justified act by most people.
I brought up earlier the idea of cutting off a limb for a person with gangrene earlier in this post. Seeing that you criticized me earlier for making comparisons between two things which you view as uncomparable, i will have to explain more in depth so you can see what i mean.
When an individual gets a limb cut off due to gangrene, it is done because otherwise the gangrene will advance thus killing the man. Thus the doctors have a choice of two “wrongs” to choose from, one which appears to be worst than the other.
Similarly, the same happens with euthanasia. The individual is killed in order to avoid physical suffering. Once again, one wrong is chosen over the other because the latter appears to be worst.
Again, the same applies for surgeries where the chances of survivals are low, but without them the chances of survival are even more critically low. One wrong is chosen over the other because the other is certainly fate, while the former is based on probabilities, thus there’s a chance the patient will live.
Another example is the idea of killing an animal to feed others. Without food, our species would die. Animals are thus a supply. Yet again, we choose one wrong over the other, and justify with the apparent reason that one might as well live while allowing the chicken or cow to die.
Finally, comes the subject of the mammoth cloning, and overall cloning overall. The reasons for doing it would be to bring forth new life into existence, allow for a new specie to develop and reproduce in this world, etc. The reasons for not doing it would be to understand that the risks of producing a malformed clone are rather high, and thus it would be painful for the clone who was unwilling to be brought to life in a painful situation.
Let’s take it a little more philosophical now. What importance to us is the idea of death?
We all are doomed to die, that is a fact. But does other individual’s deaths impact the rest of the world? Since the rest of the world’s population will also die and be replaced by a new batch of souls, then the real impacted individual isn’t actually an individual. It’s history. But never has history mourned over all the deaths of each organism in this earth, ranging from a paramecium, to the average human. Right now countless people are dying, and we all know it, but we don’t ever feel like mourning over that fact.
On the other hand, life is a celebrated act. Since death is unavoidable, we have come to justify the ways of each and every death, no matter how awful the lives of those people were before their deaths. It does cause some amount of emotional pain to think about other deaths, we do kind cry when our loved ones pass away. But it’s not death that makes us mourn, it’s the loss. That’s what us humans cry for! When we lose a valuable relic, a special item of importance, we do kind of feel sad. On the contrast, when we hear that 81 people died this day somewhere in the world, we don’t burst into tears.
It sounds evil, after all popular culture has drilled into our heads that it is wrong to not mourn when we see something that is “worthy” of mourning. We all share that guilt, i know i do. When we hear of a friend’s loved one’s death, and the friend isn’t even too sad, we often feel like we should feel a little sad, even when withing our minds, in the depths of our emotions, we don’t really find much reason to weep.
It sounds mean, but it isn’t. Death isn’t bad. Loss of something we care for, whether a living person, animal, plant…or an inanimate object like a beloved treasure…that’s what causes us grief.
That’s also the reason why i’m being honest. I’m willing to accept that mammoth cloning should be allowed because there are chances that some clones will be successful and live, and such fact will affect me and most of humanity in a positive way. It fives us pleasure.
On the other hand, their deaths probably won’t even be publicized to the general public. We won’t have a reason to mourn because we haven’t even be told. The deaths of the deformed ones won’t affect us. And it won’t affect the mammoths themselves for too long, because once again, in a scenario where the doctor can choose between a pain-inflicted suffering mammoth and a peacefully dead mammoth, the latter will be justified and done without anyone saying it’s wrong except those people who think death is a bad thing. And i firmly believe that death isn’t a bad thing. If death was a bad thing, then we should all reunite and cry for the deaths of the countless microrganisms we inhale and kill daily, for the roaches we step on, for the rats we poison. It’s public loss that’s a bad thing, and it’s bad to a specific individual or group of such individuals, not to the entire world. If my pet turtle perished today, i would be greatly saddened. But the rest of the world isn’t obligued to, and if they don’t naturally feel grief, faking it would be a worst act, because i personally consider lying as a worst act than euthanasia, despite the fact that i am guilty of lying rather often during my life.
9 Elijah Weber // Sep 9, 2009 at 9:30 am
Good point regarding my criticism of my counter-example. I’ll keep my reply brief, since I think much of our discussion is about questions that I’m not addressing, either here or in the post.
My main point is that we need a reason for why we should pursue mammoth cloning, and that it should be a really good one in light of the nearly immeasurable suffering that mammoths might endure as a result of the attempt. Your argument seems to be that life is always a good thing, and that pain and suffering aren’t really bad, or can be mitigated in a way that isn’t morally suspect. I’m not sure either of those claims are true. By your own analysis, we have reasons on both sides. What we don’t have is a way of extracating a decision from those reasons without further support. Maybe we just have differing intuitions, but I find the idea of slaughtering mammoths that are deformed and in horrific pain in the name of trying to promote life as some sort of moral trump card to be highly suspect. Further, the comparison of pain to other subjective experiences, like seeing color, is deeply problematic, because pain hurts immensely. It is not a subjective illusion for the experiencer. Death may or may not be a bad thing, but the idea of “painless death” doesn’t justify painful living in and of itself. Your argument seems to turn entirely on the assumption that promoting life is always good. What’s the argument for that? Also, I’m going to ask you to try to keep your response brief, since I think it will help with the clarity of your views.
Thanks again for reading, and for your enthusiasm about philosophy, even if we disagree on this particular topic.
10 dillon // Sep 21, 2009 at 12:45 pm
we should
11 Shadow // Oct 3, 2009 at 1:37 pm
Hey sorry for not replying right away, i was busy for a period of time and i eventually forgot about this.
I did e-mail you that originally i was unable to post, which is why i didn’t post right away originally, but i did save my write-up so this is just a copy & paste of what i wrote that day:
“What’s your argument that life isn’t good, though? As you can see, it all varies on opinion. Philosophy is not about true or false, but about what the individual believes as true or false.
I understand what you say, that i have no basis for claiming something is like so, but if we don’t claim anything at all in anything we do, we’ll never go on with our lives. If people never managed to say either yes or no, then stuff wouldn’t flow like it does.
The comparison between pain and color isn’t as problematic when you understand both phenomena better. They are both qualia, the way our body senses its surroundings. Color is the interpretation of the wavelengths of photons, pain is the interpretation of things like pressure, heat, coldness, and other things to which the neural receptors react and produce a sense of uncomfortability. I agree that color isn’t really uncomfortable, while pain is, but all i’m saying is that pain differs from actual damage in many ways. Usually we connect the two because our body usually produces a sense of pain due to damage, but it’s possible to have one without the other. A hypersensitive being may experience pain just due to a tickle, a person with malfunctional pain receptors might not feel pain at all.
So that’s what i wanted to make clear, not that pain doesn’t make one uneasy, but that pain and damage count as different categories, and depending on opinion, and occasion, pain-related and damage-related acts get classified as either good or bad.
My own opinion in the case of the mammoth killings is that it is fine to relieve them from their pain. Your opinion is that we shouldn’t even create the mammoths so that they won’t experience pain, but also not experiencing anything else…how can we know for sure that the mammoth won’t enjoy things like color or sound or basic life? We don’t really know because we’re not mammoths, but as humans, we can infer that they do enjoy life, because we do, even though we all go through troubles that cause us either physical or spiritual pain.
I’ll continue later, i don’t want to make this post too lengthy like you asked. And thanks to you too, i think the agreement we have between each other to respect each other’s disagreements is a measurement of appreciation and maturity. If only all others did the same…due to disagreements, we kind of have wars after all…”
12 s0ulberzerkr // May 25, 2010 at 8:43 pm
It seems that people believe we should correct our wrongs of killing off animals. But scientist believe that our ancestors were the ones who lead the mammoth to it’s downfall. But I agrre we shouldn’t bring the mammoth back because who will pay for the costs of this research? Taxpayers. That’s a whole lot of us. Plus is it right to do this? What is the Mammoth gonna get in its life? A bunch of kids saying “Hey Mommy, Look at that!” And a bunch of scientist studying it. Then what does the mammoth get? Even though (in a religous point of view) they can’ make moral descions, they are still living beings. Why should we make others suffer for our own gain? That’s just not right. I’m a 13 and I’m the one saying this. I admit it be cool to see one of those but no matter what the reason, it’s just not right, just not right…
13 s0ulberzerkr // May 25, 2010 at 8:46 pm
Please comment on mine through this link, my youtube channel
14 s0ulberzerkr // May 25, 2010 at 8:48 pm
http://www.youtube.com/user/s0ulberzerkr sorry wrong link youtube as website doesn’t work my bad hehe
15 ELENA AZUCENA // Oct 3, 2010 at 12:38 pm
hola
16 Manaphy00X // Sep 28, 2012 at 6:03 pm
Hey All, i know you were all posting 2009, but here’s an excerpt from an essay I’m writing.
“…the concept of cloning extinct animals is perfectly fine, considering that we are able to find enough information of how the animal lived and obtained its needs for survival, if any such situation occurs then all of the other ethics of cloning an extinct species are irrelevant because we know how to take care of that animal. If people cared about this being ‘against nature’ then they would not have cloned plants, or sought to cure diseases, etc. However, people say there are still problems with cloning them, because all we would really do is exploit them. But what if people are the ones who made the animal extinct; then we would surely know how to take care of the animals and it would be un-ethical not to bring them back and restore their habitat? It would be their responsibility to ‘play God’ for ‘playing God’ so to speak. So if people really care about being ethical, why then, do they ignore the fact that scientists have the technology to fix their wrongs; why do they not take the stray lamb back to their brother’s flock, but hide from it so to speak? They instead say upon finding the lamb’s carcass, ‘it was never of the flock.’ So in light of the peoples’ responsibility, they were wrong. In light of cloning extinct animals we were not responsible for, the question is simply ‘why not?’
“Why not?” ,is a question most animal rights activists would look at in disgust. However, other should hold their grounds because “do rights really exist in nature?” The answer is no, no one organism is guaranteed anything in nature, not food, not water, not shelter, not even life. Rights are solely something created to make us happy, or at least the majority. If any animal had the comprehension to understand rights, it is more likely to say “survival of the fittest” than “okay buddy, you will always have this no matter what.” Whether marking territory, mating, starving or happy, none is guaranteed and nothing is equal. Putting rights on animals is just as bad is creating them, how does anybody know whether an animal wants rights or wants to be subjugated, no one knows how they think. People know how people think, most people want rights, that is “all fine and dandy” but not universal. Lastly, the creation of another animal (as a clone) has nothing to do with the feelings of the original animal nor does the clone invoke the original, the clone itself is original with its own problems, thoughts and genetic makeup to go with it. Therefore it is not a matter of rights of the original, but the clone, if it has any. For example, Snoopy one is cloned, who decides whether it was a good idea; Snoopy two, because Snoopy two decides whether he was worth it whether verbally or no-verbally. Snoopy one can assume it whether it was right to do it or wrong to do it, but since he has nothing to do with Snoopy two, who may or may not be thinking, he cannot determine it. That would be the same as assigning rights to something that he just does not know, which is unethical; to say that the other way around is unethical is just wrong, and confusing. Rights are invested in people if they want them, they should not be applied to things that do not want them or even need them—wild things—and definitely not to clones, which at the time of their creation have not yet said they want them.
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