Since it’s Friday and after five PM, here are some creepy thoughts that make for great barroom conversation:
If you have a clone, is it OK to have sex with them? Does that count as masturbation, or incest? Probably incest, since they’d be like an identical twin. But what if you had a body part, like an arm, cloned and grafted to you– would it be OK to use that for sex? How about if it wasn’t attached to you– just a spare organ poking out of a nutrient-delivery system?
Many people refuse to eat meat because the animals cannot consent to it. Even if the animal flesh were grown in some sort of a vat, the animal would not have consented to the use of its genetic material. But if you could give a few stem cells, and grow your own human-steaks in a vat, and then eat your own legs for dinner, that would not involve any violation of rights or taking of lives. Is that the most ethical meat-eating possible, or is it cannibalism?
What is the line between the commonly accepted practice of veterinary artificial insemination and bestiality? If you are a veterinarian specialising in artificial insemination technology, at what point do you enjoy your career a little too much? From the legal point of view my guess is that masturbating horses is not a crime as long as you have the permission of the horse’s owner and you plan to freeze the semen in liquid nitrogen.
Secretly Ironic 