Are cloned humans like us?

In this blog post, we’ll look at the question of whether cloned humans are human beings like us.

 

In the movie Blade Runner, a company produces and sells replicants for various purposes, such as combat, sexual fulfillment, and general work. They are implanted with fabricated memories, and if they deviate from their purpose, they are killed by special police officers called Blade Runners. No, they’re not killed, they’re just “eliminated”. But is this right? I believe that replicants are human beings and that it is wrong to treat them as tools.
Before we can discuss this, we must first discuss whether we can call them human beings at all. If we consider them to be tools, like computers, then it would not be wrong to “get rid” of them when they break down and malfunction. In fact, in the movie Blade Runner, the replicants are considered stolen and eliminated. But can we really call them non-human?
To consider whether replicants should be called human beings, we must first define what a human being is. What distinguishes humans as human is their high intellectual capacity, rich emotions, upright walking, and social behavior. Humans walk upright, use tools, and have developed a high level of civilization that makes them different from other animals. They think and act rationally, rather than instinctively, using their high intellectual abilities. Rich emotions, which are different from computers and robots, are also an important characteristic of humans. Robots built by humans can think and make judgments according to their programming, but they cannot feel emotions such as anger, sadness, joy, and love.
Let’s look at replicants in movies. These so-called replicants are not the perfect replicas of a single individual’s genes as you might think, but rather humans created through human-designed genes that mimic human genes. They are physically identical to humans, except that they are born as adults and have a four-year lifespan. In other words, in a physical sense, they are exactly like humans, except that they were created by humans.
What about the mental aspect? The method used in movies to differentiate between replicants and humans is the use of the mind, or emotions. It’s called the Beutkamp test, and it involves asking a series of questions and watching their eyes to see how their emotions change. A clone with a smaller range of emotions will have fewer pupil changes, and this is how we can tell them apart. However, Tyrell’s explanation that replicants also develop emotions over time makes me wonder if this method is correct. The reason this test can distinguish replicants is simply because of their short lifespan. If they had a longer lifespan, with the emotions and memories that come with years of experience, this test would no longer be able to distinguish them. In fact, in the movie, the replicants act on their desires and seem to feel sadness at the death of their fellow replicants. Rachel’s falling in love with Deckard and Roy’s rescue of Deckard at the end cannot be explained without emotion.
Many real human emotions are also generated by memory and experience. The fact that women in indigenous villages can go about their lives with their breasts exposed shows that shame is a learned emotion. In 2001, a boy was found in Chile who had lived with stray dogs for 11 years shortly after birth. He didn’t speak well and behaved similarly to the dogs. In other words, even people born normally don’t develop human-like emotions unless they live among people.
In the end, the only difference between a replicant and a human is a shorter lifespan, being born as an adult, and being created by humans. However, the problem of lifespan and age of birth can be solved with the development of technology, so in the end, the only thing that remains is that they were created by humans as a means to an end.
If we look at the Middle Ages in the West, Goryeo in Korea, and Joseon Dynasty in Korea, we can see that many humans lived lives similar to these replicants. Called slaves, they were treated as property rather than human beings, lived a life worse than that of livestock, and had no recourse if they were killed at any time. They were literally the tools of high status people, the tools of nobility. But no one would call them less than human. They were just as human as the humans who ruled them. They just had a different status at birth, so they were raised differently, treated differently, and taught differently, and that’s what they were taught to do. Depending on your education, you can become an aristocrat, and if you receive the same education as modern people from an early age, you will be indistinguishable from them when you come to modern society.
The best way to determine whether they are human or not is to let them live among humans we think are human. If they have the same education as humans and can blend in with them, they should be considered human. If it is not human, it will not be able to live in human society, no matter how much education it receives. For example, if a monkey is given the same education as a human being and placed in human society, it will not become a human being.
Cloned humans are physically and mentally identical to humans. They may have some abilities, but these will depend on the technology and will not be beyond the limits of human potential. Therefore, if they are raised from birth with the same education as humans, no one will be able to tell that they are replicants. Therefore, I believe they are human beings.
An opposing view might argue that they are not human because they were created as a means to a special end. However, whether they are created as a means to an end or an end is not important in determining whether they are human or not. The first thing to determine is whether they are human, and if they are, then the person who created them as a means is at fault.
There are a number of characteristics that are unique to cloned humans, such as their short lifespan, lack of emotion, and so on, that make them not human. I think it depends on the severity of the traits. In fact, my assumption is that if they are indistinguishable from humans when they are raised among humans, they should be considered human. In other words, if they lack science and technology and are significantly inferior to the humans who created them, then they should not be considered human.
In conclusion, I think it is right to say that if a clone is created with such sophistication that there is no difference between it and a human being, then it is a human being. It would also be wrong to produce them as a means to an end, and that should not happen.