Is the opposite of murder ethical?

Discussion in 'Ethics, Morality, & Justice' started by spidergoat, Jul 29, 2016.

  1. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    If murder is unethical and immoral, and the murder of millions among the worst crimes imaginable, what about the opposite? Assume you have the technology to split every adult human being into two, one original, and another a variation of the original, but an independent being. Would it be ethical to double the population?
     
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  3. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

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    Virtually every pathway I'm seeing on first perusal leads straight to some manner of ethical catastrophe.

    How does human civilization intend to account for these people is one basic question.

    The blunt version, I suppose, would be to suggest that if we ask, "Why would anyone do that?" we generally are not hopeful that a functional answer will emerge.
     
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  5. cluelusshusbund + Public Dilemma + Valued Senior Member

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    Woud wakin up tomorrow wit the population doubled be benificial to anybody???... i dont thank so... an i thank it woud soon be very harmful for most people... so i see it as very unethical.!!!
     
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  7. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    As bad as genocide?
     
  8. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

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    Yes, no, or maybe? Doesn't that answer depend on the actual outcome?
     
  9. cluelusshusbund + Public Dilemma + Valued Senior Member

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    If humans was suddenly doubled... compaired to humans bein suddenly wiped out... id say genocide was less ethical.!!!
     
  10. wegs Matter and Pixie Dust Valued Senior Member

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    I don't think it's wise nor ethical to ''play'' with nature, to change it for our benefit. Murdering life or ''doubling'' it really are concepts cut from the same cloth - selfishness.
     
  11. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

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    Doubling people is not, in a meaningful sense, the opposite of murder.

    The meaningfulness of murder is not the integer value of persons removed from the planet - the meanfulness of murder is a life taken.
    If there were any meaningful opposite of murder, it would be birth - the creation of a new life.
     
  12. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    We do that pretty regularly the old fashioned way (procreation.) People seem to consider it ethical.
     
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  13. Daecon Kiwi fruit Valued Senior Member

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    Is it ethical to keep someone alive who really doesn't want to be? That seems more like an "opposite of murder" thing than duplicating people. For example, I'm sure that there are some extreme anti-suicide (assisted or not) viewpoints that could be considered unethical.
     
  14. The God Valued Senior Member

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    It is certainly not considered ethical to duplicate, make a copy of human beings, the way you are suggesting. The morality, criminality associated after duplication can be unfathomable.
     
  15. The God Valued Senior Member

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    Now let's see what could be opposite of murder, that is going beyond OP.

    Murder is defined as unlawful premeditated killing of X by Y against the wishes of X....(This against the wishes is not explicitly there in definition, but will help)

    So few possible opposite options are..

    1. Lawful premeditated killing of X by Y.
    2. Unlawful premeditated saving of X by Y.
    3. Unlawful premeditated killing of X by Y, but for willing X.

    Option #1 is capital punishment and war killings.......open for discussion on morality and ethics.

    Option #2 is unlawful saving by friends/relatives/group members of a person who is condemned, by supporting him.in escape etc.

    Option #3 is assisted suicide.
     
  16. paddoboy Valued Senior Member

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    If a person is in such incurable pain as to have his/her quality of life as non existent and he/she requests that it be ended, then I'm all for assisted suicide/s.
    I first thought of Dolly the Sheep....
    http://www.animalresearch.info/en/medical-advances/timeline/cloning-dolly-the-sheep/
    How Dolly was cloned
    Animal cloning from an adult cell is much more difficult than from an embryonic cell. So when scientists working at the Roslin Institute in Scotland produced Dolly, the only lamb born from 277 attempts, it was a major news story around the world.

    To produce Dolly, scientists used an udder cell from a six-year-old Finn Dorset white sheep. They had to find a way to 'reprogram' the udder cells - to keep them alive but stop them growing – which they achieved by altering the growth medium (the ‘soup’ in which the cells were kept alive). Then they injected the cell into an unfertilised egg cell which had had its nucleus removed, and made the cells fuse by using electrical pulses. The unfertilised egg cell came from a Scottish Blackface ewe. When the research team had managed to fuse the nucleus from the adult white sheep cell with the egg cell from the black-faced sheep, they needed to make sure that the resulting cell would develop into an embryo. They cultured it for six or seven days to see if it divided and developed normally, before implanting it into a surrogate mother, another Scottish Blackface ewe. Dolly had a white face.

    From 277 cell fusions, 29 early embryos developed and were implanted into 13 surrogate mothers. But only one pregnancy went to full term, and the 6.6 kg Finn Dorset lamb 6LLS (alias Dolly) was born after 148 days.

    What happened to Dolly?

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!


    Dolly and her lamb, Bonnie© The Roslin institute

    Dolly lived a pampered existence at the Roslin Institute. She mated and produced normal offspring in the normal way, showing that such cloned animals can reproduce. Born on 5 July 1996, she was euthanased on 14 February 2003, aged six and a half. Sheep can live to age 11 or 12, but Dolly suffered from arthritis in a hind leg joint and from sheep pulmonary adenomatosis, a virus-induced lungtumour that is common among sheep which are raised indoors.

    The DNA in the nucleus is wrapped up into chromosomes, which shorten each time the cell replicates. This meant that Dolly’s chromosomes were a little shorter than those of other sheep her age and her early ageing may reflect that she was raised from the nucleus of a 6-year old sheep. Dolly was also not entirely identical to her genetic mother because the mitochondria, the power plants of the cell that are kept outside the nucleus, were inherited from Dolly’s egg donor mother.


    Why clone sheep?
    Dolly the sheep was produced at the Roslin Institute as part of research into producing medicines in the milk of farm animals. Researchers have managed to transfer human genes that produce useful proteins into sheep and cows, so that they can produce, for instance, the blood clotting agent factor IX to treat haemophilia or alpha-1-antitrypsin to treat cystic fibrosis and other lung conditions. Inserting these genes into animals is a difficult and laborious process; cloning allows researchers to only do this once and clone the resulting transgenic animal to build up a breeding stock.

    The development of cloning technology has led to new ways to produce medicines and is improving our understanding of development and genetics.

    Since Dolly
    Since 1996, when Dolly was born, other sheep have been cloned from adult cells, as have cats, rabbits, horses and donkeys, pigs, goats and cattle. In 2004 a mouse was cloned using a nucleus from an olfactory neuron, showing that the donor nucleus can come from a tissue of the body that does not normally divide.

    Improvements in the technique have meant that the cloning of animals is becoming cheaper and more reliable. This has created a market for commercial services offering to clone pets or elite breeding livestock, but still with a $100,000 price-tag.

    The advances made through cloning animals have led to a potential new therapy to prevent mitochondrial diseases in humans being passed from mother to child. About 1 in 6000 people is born with faulty mitochondria, which can result in diseases like muscular dystrophy. To prevent this, genetic material from the embryo is extracted and placed in an egg cell donated by another woman, which contains functioning mitochondria. This is the same process as used in cloning of embryonic cells of animals. Without this intervention, the faulty mitochondria are certain to pass on to the next generation.

    The treatment is currently not permitted for use in humans. However, the Human Fertilisation & Embryology Authority in the UK has reported that there is general support in the public for legalising the therapy and making it available to patients.

    Read about more breakthrough advances in science made through animal research in our timeline
     
  17. cluelusshusbund + Public Dilemma + Valued Senior Member

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    Spidergoat is talkin about doublin the population... woud you also consider it unethical to make a copy of just 1 person.???
     

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