Well. I don't see the point of this study, but I suppose there are people who need to be clubbed about the head with the obvious who would be well-served by reading it…I see PZ’s sarcasm, and raise him one grouse about the unspoken word at the center of this study: Soul.
We can stop worrying about the clone armies full of self-loathing bodies with a single mind between them, I guess. I wonder if they also pursued the question of why, in any pair of twins, one individual gets all the good qualities, and the other is always pure evil?
One doesn’t have to spend much time on Google (or one’s search engine of choice) to find articles on conservative websites that take up the important question of whether clones have souls—and the assertion that it’s a question science can’t answer. Certainly this study is some attempt to dispute that claim; it’s not just that clones don’t share a mind with the DNA-providing body from whence they came, but that they would be wholly unique individuals. Evidence of a soul, natch.
What else could be the point of the study? The Religious Right wrings their hands with worry that clones aren’t imbued with God’s greatest gift, and, hence, the capacity to be saved. One soul per genome, they fear. Just like every other study that emanates from the Department of Obviousness—gay people can be good parents, kids raised by gay parents aren’t machete-wielding gay psychos, abstinence-only education doesn’t work, girls can have an aptitude for science, too!—it’s designed to counter the inane rumblings of the anti-science brigade.
They will, however, remain unconvinced—which is probably the best reason not to bother in the first place.
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