DNA Databanks

[AndyDufresne]

I agree. But I'm sort of hoping they'll use my DNA to create mutant super-soldiers. Or sex slaves. Either way.

EDIT: I now have a new sexual fixation. I want to watch videos of myself having sex with strangers, but without personally doing the deed. We need to get to work on this cloning thing.

Is having sex with your clone illegal?

I suppose it depends on what (human and legal) rights were given to clones?


--Andy

[thegreekdog]

I agree. But I'm sort of hoping they'll use my DNA to create mutant super-soldiers. Or sex slaves. Either way.

EDIT: I now have a new sexual fixation. I want to watch videos of myself having sex with strangers, but without personally doing the deed. We need to get to work on this cloning thing.

Is having sex with your clone illegal?

I suppose it depends on what (human and legal) rights were given to clones?


--Andy

What if the sex was consensual?

Are we talking incest or are we talking masturbation?

[AndyDufresne]

That was one of my initial thoughts, as well. I think you'd have to rule out masturbation sort of, at least if masturbation is defined as sexual gratification to one's own body. For legal purposes, if clones were given rights, they would likely be given individual rights as well, right? You can of course sexually gratify someone else's body, and still use the term masturbate (according to the OED at least).

OED defines incest as "The crime of sexual intercourse or cohabitation between persons related within the degrees within which marriage is prohibited; sexual commerce of near kindred." So if you could not legally marry your clone, or if cloning was deemed as "near kindred," then you might run into issues?

And as you mention, it probably also comes down to how much of a mind the clone has (i.e. a living doll vs "a person"). Weird thoughts. I'll leave the legal mumbo jumbo to you, TGD.


--Andy

[Neoteny]

I feel clones would be subject to incest legislation, the legality of which would vary from state to state in the US, and from country to country.

[thegreekdog]

I feel clones would be subject to incest legislation, the legality of which would vary from state to state in the US, and from country to country.

I bet that incest legislation would need to be updated since, as Andy indicates, incest definitions seem to revolve around marriage and familial relations rather than DNA. There would need to be a DNA update.

And then we have the age-old question of whether you would have sex with yourself if you could, which has nothing to do with DNA.

[AndyDufresne]

I feel clones would be subject to incest legislation, the legality of which would vary from state to state in the US, and from country to country.

I bet that incest legislation would need to be updated since, as Andy indicates, incest definitions seem to revolve around marriage and familial relations rather than DNA. There would need to be a DNA update.

Right.

You'd also want the higher-ups to clarify what happens if your clone produces a child with someone else (assuming clones are fertile and function like any given human being)), since I figure the "original" (you) wouldn't want to be on the hook for child support of "your child."


--Andy

[PLAYER57832]

Assuming that not much has changed since I learned about it, DNA matching uses regions of DNA called short tandem repeats. These are segments of short repeating sequences of nucleotides (for example, gagagaga) that everyone has, but there are variations in the number of repeats. Say, a quarter of the population has four 'ga' clusters in a row, another quarter has five, and another quarter six, etc. The more of these you use from different locations in the genome, the more you narrow the odds that two samples were obtained from two separate people.

Since they are often nonsensical genetically, their usefulness in actual genes is limited (I guess they could be filler in some cases), so they are generally found in the "junk DNA." For a database purely for identification purposes, you would only need the commonly used sequences for the most part, so people worried about genetic profiling may or may not be mollified by that knowledge. The hard part, of course, is trusting the government or other companies to limit themselves to only the relevant information.

A couple of reasons why this really doesn't matter.

First... all that "junk DNA" might not be. Think "white matter" in brains, just as an example. Also, there is no gaurantee at all that this testing will be so limited, just because it has been.

[Neoteny]

I put "junk DNA" in scare quotes for a reason; there's all kinds of baggage associated with it. Anyhow, there's no guarantee of anything at the moment. It would just be easier to sign on to such a thing if the restrictions were limited solely to the data the STRs represent. I'm not really even saying anyone should sign on to such. Just that there is, in theory, a workaround for those who are concerned about genetic profiling.

[PLAYER57832]

I put "junk DNA" in scare quotes for a reason; there's all kinds of baggage associated with it. Anyhow, there's no guarantee of anything at the moment. It would just be easier to sign on to such a thing if the restrictions were limited solely to the data the STRs represent. I'm not really even saying anyone should sign on to such. Just that there is, in theory, a workaround for those who are concerned about genetic profiling.

Supposedly, those limits would be in place.. that this data can only be used in crime investigations and so forth.

But... well, the real trouble is that its likely we won't have any choice.

I heard an example of this in an interview today. The speaker gave the example of insurance companies offering people bonuses if they submit their DNA and show that they are free from certain defects. A lot of people might sign up, except those who don't want their information revealed. At some point, the number of people putting up their data will be large and the assumption will be made that anyone not submitting is "hiding" something... and therefore its OK to charge them a higher fee.

(wish I could find the original interview.. I will keep looking because reading this, it seems less sensible than when I heard the intereview, making me think I am maybe missing something?). Anyway, it was part of a whole discussion of the perile of relying upon tech to fix major issues around us.