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Message: <blockquote data-quote="mmu1" data-source="post: 557938" data-attributes="member: 319">Coming into this a little late, but I want to say a few things:1. The kind of "cloning" they're talking about doing right now has jack to do with being able to grow organs.  For that, you basically need a) A complete understanding of human embryonic development b) A way of simulating various stages of this development in vitro, and c) Access to stem cells with DNA matching that of the person receiving the transplant.2. Rich people making full-grown clones for harvesting for transplant purposes... If people were able to get away with things like that and were ruthless enough to do it, there's no reason they can't be doing a very similar thing right now: Have a child (or several children) with someone with compatible blood and tissue types, then harvest it for organs. True, not nearly as good as making a clone, but still much, much better than hoping to get lucky with the national donor list.3. Brain-Taping -  And how exactly does that make someone immortal? Sure, you make a near-perfect copy that might even think that it's you, but last time I checked, that still leaves the original you up the proverbial creek. (Since someone brought up Sixth Day, anyone remember the scene when the big bad guy activates a new clone of himself while still alive, to find out that, as far as he's concerned, he's still dying, and his "new self" doesn't care?)  Not to mention that, in scientific terms, (a lot of bad sci-fi nonwithstanding) your mind is not a bunch of electrical impulses you can somehow decant into a storage medium and then stick into a new body.  It is, at least in part, the very real, and very physical arrangement of billions of nerve cells and the connections between them. So unless you have a way of mapping billions of cells making God knows how many connections, making an exact replica, down to things like neurotransmitter levels, and then getting the exact same kind of electrical activity going on as in the original, you'd better think again about copying your mind.  And that's if we assume it really is as simple as that and that there aren't things going on we still don't even know about, never mind understand.4. The only way I can think of that could extend life without replacing you with a copy would be the use of nanotech to maintain your present neurological pathways indefinitely. Not that there aren't problems with that, since, presumably, you'd change slowly and without realizing it as old structures dcayed and new ones were built to keep you going... Also, according to people who studied the whole nanotech issue, the little buggers will have a tendency to generate huge (irreducible with our current understanding of the matter) amounts of heat when used in large numbers, making the use of them in living beings questionable.Edit: Of course, there is the whole "Stop the biological clock" thing, but keep in mind that even if you do it, wear and tear will occur, and even if your cells won't be programmed to die after x number of years anymore, a lot of them - like your brain cells - aren't programmed to divide and replenish, so they will deteriorate...</blockquote>

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