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In this imaginary future (about 50 years from now), cloning functioning and viable healthy humans is possible. The procedure needs some stem cells that should be extracted just after your birth. Your clone would be a baby version of yourself with exactly the same DNA as you. The cloning procedure creates a single cell embryo of you. This embryo is put in a surrogate mother and then grows to term like any normal embryo.

You cannot clone an adult from adult cells so if you didn’t extract and save your stem cells, it s too late and you cannot clone yourself.

There is a religious movement which claims that cloning yourself is akin to making yourself immortal. They developed a very structured and efficient teaching method for clones which spans the entire childhood. This method's main objective is to teach your clone as much as possible about yourself and basically brainwash it to be as close as possible to you in terms of beliefs, value, education, goals in life etc… This method is very effective and a properly "trained" clone will really almost be like a copy of yourself.

My question is what do you think would be the economic impact of such a technology?

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  • $\begingroup$ In Western free market democraties, I don't see any drawbacks to such a reproductive method from an economic point of view. It might actually generate more economic activity as this "unnatural" process will create a new type of Industry. Cloning geniuses like nobel prize winners also has some rational appeal. If you ignore the ethical and biodiversity issue, it s really not clear why this should be banned. $\endgroup$
    – Fred
    Oct 16, 2017 at 3:54
  • $\begingroup$ This is both too broad and opinion-based. Societal impact is always in danger of being too broad. Can you narrow down what kind of societal impact you are after? Economical? Political? This is opinion based because "do you think..." invites people to discuss, not give a specific answer. $\endgroup$
    – Vylix
    Oct 16, 2017 at 4:00
  • $\begingroup$ Do you have an answer to the question posed in the Ship of Theseus? Practically speaking, I find the vast majority of these sorts of philosophical questions are resolved by having an answer to that historically-unanswered problem. In your case, you are building a new ship from new timber, never using any of the original beams, but copying over some charts and books from the Theseus. Can one christen the new ship Theseus as well? $\endgroup$
    – Cort Ammon
    Oct 16, 2017 at 4:28
  • $\begingroup$ the problem is that the DNA are usually extracted from cells that are not meant to create embryo... see that's the BIG ISSUES! (I sincerely apologize for the cap because the scientist would have to reprogram everything before cloning process can start which leads to the many issues like ethical and moral, etc) $\endgroup$
    – user6760
    Oct 16, 2017 at 5:03
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    $\begingroup$ Maybe this question would be viable if we knew about the religious movement. Since this is just a more stupid way to have kids, there are plenty of reasons to ban it (for example too expensive just like surrogacy has been banned in some countries), but if you have a religious movement, how do you expect people to answer the question based on the information given ? $\endgroup$
    – Raditz_35
    Oct 16, 2017 at 6:43

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There was a Hugo-winning novel on this concept.

It may or may not be outlawed, depending on the views on human genetic engineering. Quite a lot of people feel that human genes should not be altered except for clear medical need.

Some people might reject it because they see it as romantic to have children with their partner, and to have those children the "natural" mix of their DNA. "See, she has your nose and eyes." "But the chin is yours."

BTW, consider how different "identical" twins end up. Wouldn't the clones be at least as different?

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  • $\begingroup$ It s true that who you are is heavily defined by your life experience. It s a difficult question to answer what really defines "you". Is it just your DNA, is it the configuration of your brain or the configuration of each atom in your body+brain? It didn't want to incude that discussion in my question to prevent the "too broad question" p (is there a soul ?) b but that s defintively an interesting thing to think about. $\endgroup$
    – Fred
    Oct 16, 2017 at 5:14

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