Microsoft Word Kurzweil, Ray The Singularity Is Near doc

Human Cloning: The Least Interesting Application of Cloning Technology 
One of the most powerful methods of applying life's machinery involves harnessing biology's own reproductive 
mechanisms in the form of cloning. Cloning will be a key technology—not for cloning actual humans but for life-
extension purposes, in the form of "therapeutic cloning." This process creates new tissues with "young" telomere-
extended and DNA-corrected cells to replace without surgery defective tissues or organs. 
All responsible ethicists, including myself, consider human cloning at the present time to be unethical. The 
reasons, however, for me have little to do with the slippery-slope issues of manipulating human life. Rather, the 
technology today simply does not yet work reliably. The current technique of fusing a cell nucleus from a donor to an 
egg cell using an electric spark simply causes a high level of genetic errors.
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This is the primary reason that most of 
the fetuses created by this method do not make it to term. Even those that do make it have genetic defects. Dolly the 
Sheep developed an obesity problem in adulthood, and the majority of cloned animals produced thus far have had 
unpredictable health problems.
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Scientists have a number of ideas for perfecting cloning, including alternative ways of fusing the nucleus and egg 
cell without use of a destructive electrical spark, but until the technology is demonstrably safe, it would be unethical to 
create a human life with such a high likelihood of severe health problems. There is no doubt that human cloning will 
occur, and occur soon, driven by all the usual reasons, ranging from its publicity value to its utility as a very weak 
form of immortality. The methods that are demonstrable in advanced animals will work quite well in humans. Once 
the technology is perfected in terms of safety, the ethical barriers will be feeble if they exist at an. 
Cloning is a significant technology, but the cloning of humans is not its most noteworthy usage. Let's first address 
its most valuable applications and then return to its most controversial one.