Sorry. 
Itâs a good point: if killing creatures for food (which is useful) is OK, why would cloning creatures for medical experiments (which is also, allegedly, useful) not be OK? And why do we find it easier to justify experimenting on unintelligent creatures rather than smarter ones (or indeed, cloned or hybrid humans)?
Because of what I stated.Psychological pain can be harder a burden than physical one.
I mean humanity and consciousness are two sides of the same coin.Thatâs what distinguishes us from otehr animals.
It can, though this would only apply to grown humans (or other intelligent creatures) that had some kind of life experience with which to compare their state. From a purely objective point of view, a cloned puppy, a cloned kitten, a cloned monkey and a cloned human baby are all going to experience the same kind of distress if theyâre experimented on in a laboratory - but of course, itâs the cloned human baby thatâs going to cause the uproar.
Not consciousness, but certainly intellectual awareness and comprehension. Though this also comes down to intelligence and learning: and as I say, if weâre talking about cloned entities that have no other experience of life, should their species make a difference? Assuming that theyâre going to be âdestroyedâ in short order like the animals mentioned in this article.
I see where you are going and you are right about the equality (is this even an english word?I think it is. thank god for RomeâŚ) of rights at birth.But morality is something very difficult to discuss.
A human baby can become a beeing who is âaware of his/her surroundingsâ but a fully grown animal never will.Morality must think on all dimensions.
my spidy-sense is tingling with the prospect of actually getting spidy-sense
How can you possibly know that?
Again, how can you possibly know that?
these argument always seem to revolve around wether or not animals have souls. i think something is being overlooked. here are the cases:
the liberal crowd sees behavior in animals that seems to express emotion or thought and they infer that that means that animals have a soul too.
the religious crowd earnestly seeks to set humans apart from animals and they view animals as soul-less organic machines.
now with the philosophical and physiological study i have done, i have come to the following conclusion:
the liberal crowd is entirely wrong.
the religious crowd is right about animals
but the religious crowd is wrong about humans
Sorry if I sounded a bit assumptive, but I only meant that in general their reactions would be similar, which seems to stand to reason. Leaving Megatheriumâs (quite valid) point about the issue of souls to one side for a moment, each of these creatures will be a âblank slateâ of sorts when born - or when created, in this cloning case - and each will be a warm-blooded mammal who probably wonât enjoy pain or extreme captivity as much as they would enjoy the opposite experiences; thatâs really all I meant.
Lance - I see what youâre saying. I didnât mean to sound quite so confrontational, sorry bout that.
Mega - Iâm going to leave the whole concept of a soul to the side, as Iâve never seen or heard of any evidence for or against the existence of such a thing. Biologically, however, humans are animals. The only thing that sets us apart from the rest is that our brains are (slightly, in some cases) larger. There is absolutely no reason to think that animals (not all, mind you, but the more complex ones) do not think or feel emotion, and there is every reason to think that they do. Fear is an emotion. Tell me that no animal besides humans feels fear. Animals learn. If they didnât learn, if they did everything on instinct, a lion cub would be able to hunt just as well as a grown one. But they canât. Learning requires thought.
Crazy.
i think you misunderstood me. the argument is always wether or not animals have souls/freewill but the point i was making is that there is great reason to doubt that humans even have souls/freewill. i personally think we have everything that animals have, nothing more nothing less.
maybe weâre smarter - MAYBE. there isnât a species on earth that imparts nearly as much suffering on themselves and others as humans and none of those other species threaten to annihilate all life on the planet. 
Wow, ok, I COMPLETELY misunderstood you. Jeez. That was one hell of an airball. Sorry bout that.
As for your second paragraph, well, thereâs a difference between âsmartâ and âwise.â
I donât but the point is that even if we are âokâ about harming animals as they are now if they were to possess a superior intelect we wouldnât be anymore right?
The problem is even with a âhuman mindâ we couldnât really know if a mouse had consciousness or not because we wouldnât be able to comunicate.
Iâve seen nothing in this article that I would condone.
[quote=âBluefootâ]
Mega - Iâm going to leave the whole concept of a soul to the side, as Iâve never seen or heard of any evidence for or against the existence of such a thing.[/quote]
Near-death experiences, astral projection, the 23 grams experimentâŚ
[quote=âLance Wayâ]
But people find it easy to justify this because itâs simply thought of as ânaturalâ to kill animals in order to eat them - and, in essence, it is. On the other hand, splicing human genes into an animal in order to create a mutant hybrid thatâs going to be experimented on and killed doesnât really fit into a ânaturalâ cycle at all - I assume thatâs where this problem comes in.[/quote]
Itâs not all that natural, the way it has become - a more natural way is hunting for animals, not growing them especially to taste better for us!
In terms of humansâ dominance over everything in the world, itâs all relative; itâs hard to argue nowadays that some things are still natural.
Iâd have to agree here - I have a lot of respect for all animals, and donât feel the need to exploit them for my comfort or a feeling of superiority.
Well said⌠itâs a shame that the most intelligent race around can be so amazingly stupid. 
[quote=âBluefootâ]
âWhat are we going to do tonight, Brain?â
âThe same thing we do every night, Pinky. Try to take over the world.â[/quote]
Lol, someone on another forum said the exact same thing based off the exact same quote. Unless you ARE that other personâŚdun dun duuuuun
But yes, strange news indeed. Personally, it doesnât really bother me that much any more than other biomodification done to animals, though I do wonder about the scientific relevance of this. Wouldnât normal stem-cell research be more beneficial?
So what is your opinion of this, really? That doesnât really give a lot of insight into what you think. Do you mean that the very thought is crazy, in your opinion? I would have to agree, in that case - this could lead to unnecessary interference, and will probably end up with questionable and harmful things happening.
Anyway, what was said earlier, about humans just being animals with bigger brains - I agree entirely. Intelligence, emotion, consciousness and all of these things may be more prominent in humans, but consider the fact that we also exhibit so many undesirable traits from lowly bacteria - we move somewhere, consume all natural resources, multiply and move on; as was said (rather eloquently) by Agent Smith in The Matrix.
I donât believe that it is really right to view ourselves as better than other creatures, when we can avoid it. The fact that we have intelligence and power should be our best friend, but the more I look at the world, the more I feel as though it is becoming our biggest enemy.
Also, I donât feel that we can truthfully say that we are the only organisms capable of feeling emotion. or the only morally capable ones. Iâm not going to deny the fact that we are the most adept - that would be stupid. But until I have proof that animals are just the dumb creatures which so many people portray them as, Iâll probably have more respect for them than many humans.
Man was given dominion over all things (this includes animals) if you have ever read the Bible, which you should, even if you arenât a Christian. It will clarify a lot of things in this world, religiosity aside.
This does not mean I condone this insane behavior. The ends never justify the means when it comes to mutilating and destroying life in any form. One of the greatest commandments was âThou shall not kill.â We are trying to play God here and itâs only going to end in disaster. Even if they find the cure for cancer or find out how to reverse heart disease/aging one day it wonât be until they have murdered millions of lives.
Similar to Hitler and his cause of purifying the world of a âdiseaseâ.
Thanks for that, but I donât follow the Bible - Iâm not religious, and I donât see it as essential at all. I just see it as a (very) well-written book, but nothing to live my life by. As such, I donât believe that humanity should have such a degree of dominance over its environment as it already does, and I donât think the fact that religion generally holds this view makes it right.
I agree here; I avoid harming things wherever I can, hence my following a vegan diet as much as I can. This is also probably the reason why I get really annoyed on hearing about how much rainforest gets destroyed every day. 