could you kill?

[Mjt]

Originally Posted by the_gelf

What if the soldier was the last clone of Carl Sagan, and you knew it was the only existence of his DNA left, and had run out of cloning machines

Now this is interesting ( a little off tangent, but interesting)
Would it matter? Should it matter?
A life is a life, is it not, each of equal value?
Taking our loved ones out of the equation, do we really believe it when we say each human life is of equal value?
Would a clone of Carl Sagan give us the same sense of connection we had with the original Carl sagan, even though we never met him, never knew him? Its the same sort of connection we feel for our favorite musos, or celebrities.
Personally, I have a lot of respect for Van Morrison, love his stuff, but from everything i have seen of him personally, he is not such a nice guy.
But would I pick his life over someone similar in every way except for the fact that I had never heard of them and knew nothing about them? Yes, I probably would, if I'm going to be honest.
Which brings me to a conversation I had with a friend, who is of the belief that the world needs a a good old fashioned plague to reduce the population by 20%
Thats all good and well, and might make sense on economic and environmental levels (well it did to him anyway) but would he be willing to lose 20% of his family? As it turned out, after some harsh pushing, the answer was no. The plague was for "other" people, leaving his world in tact.
Do we really value life if we don't know it and haven't said "hi'?
Or perhaps do we just value it a little less?



Mods feel free to shift or merge if this has been covered somewhere else