Science: Health: Cloning
Presidential Clone   (-7)  [vote for, against]
You know, for spare parts and stuff...

I've never been able to quite figure out why the security of the president is such a big deal to anyone (except for the president themself) but if it's that important why not clone a few copies of the new president in case something horrible happens and then harvest parts as needed out of the clones.
-- dgeiser13, Feb 23 2001

MST3K: "Parts: The Clonus Horror" http://www.scifi.co...00/experiments/811/
Not only is this (for "president" substitute "rich white people") a bad science fiction movie from '78, there's even a Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode about it! [jutta, Feb 23 2001]

Because the clone's body parts would be no older than four (or maybe eight) by the time the president needed them. C'mon, this is almost as bad as the Holographic Toupee in terms of realistic science.

Besides which, Presidents have enough time trying to please everyone without messing with something as touchy as harvesting clone body parts.
-- centauri, Feb 23 2001


I think with the proper hormonal therapy the presidential parts could be force-grown up to a reasonable maturity level in time for them to be of some use. BTW, is this web site only about "realistic science" now?
-- dgeiser13, Feb 23 2001


I think this is another "unelaborated idea from sci-fi".

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned the nature/nurture problem. Genetically identical people, even when exposed to mostly similar stimuli, are not precisely interchangeable. Ask any set of identical twins...
-- egnor, Feb 23 2001


Yes, but the nature/nurture issue isn't a problem in this case in that we are not asking the clone to be the president...just donate body parts as needed. A kidney, a heart, a vein, a lung....blood for the operation... in this case, the genetics would be enough to make them interchangeable. Now, if we needed to transplant the brain (i.e. loss of gray matter due to assassin's bullet....) then the nature/nurture thing would be a problem.
-- Susen, Feb 23 2001


Ignoring the other issues, what becomes of the clones after the President leaves office?
-- centauri, Feb 23 2001


keep around for hip replacements and experiments to cure altzheimers..... (okay, this was in bad taste)
-- Susen, Feb 24 2001


Susen: in the case of Dubya i dont think that anyone would notice even if there was 'loss of gray matter due to assassins bullet'

maybe there already has been?
-- chud, Mar 16 2001


Alfred E. Neumann
-- thumbwax, Mar 16 2001


Wait...you mean there'd be two of them?!!
-- nick_n_uit, Mar 18 2001


You guys didn't know that having a twin brother was a requirement of all presidential hopefuls? Boy, they kept the lid on that one...
-- RayfordSteele, Apr 26 2002



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