[Defeated; Redrafting] The Cloning Conventions

[La Navasse]

I've written often before in the SC. This may be my first legitimate GA proposal, but it doesn't mean I don't have WA experience.

OOC: In this context, yes it does. SC is about as far removed from GA as you can be and still stay on the site. Just because they're both lumped under the WA banner doesn't mean experience on one side was experience on the other.

Ok then.

I'll likely be waiting some more before submission.

[Araraukar]

Permits the cloning of unconscious, unfeeling organisms from sapient originators, where the clones themselves do not have any sapience and have been proven to not be in locked-in syndrome, for biomedical experimentation and use;

Bans the cloning of conscious, feeling organisms from sapient originators for biomedical experimentation and use, and of any cloning of any sapient originator if the medical professionals who clone cannot reliably confirm, with a high degree of confidence, that the clone is not suffering from locked-in syndrome or any related disability;

OOC: These continue to be the problematic clauses.

The wording "unconscious, unfeeling" is weird. I understand the "unconscious" is an attempt to make it read "nonsapient", but what's "unfeeling"? Are we talking about brainless or nerveless or what?

Also, locked-in-syndrome is impossible to prove until after the fact; likely to be impossible to say with 100% certainty beforehand that any individual from sapient stock that has a functional central nervous system (though why'd you clone one of those for research purposes anyway is beyond me) would not have the syndrome. Hell, you can't say beforehand of a naturally created fetus that they won't be born with the syndrome.

So, given the unreliability of the whole natural fetal development process, this in essence bans the cloning of sapients entirely unless you're a magical or so insanely advanced nation that cloning would likely be unnecessarily messy process to begin with. I'm fairly sure that wasn't your intention, considering how far into the definitions you go to allow offspring-cloning.

Also, I would tag "for the purposes of this resolution" into your "excludes" clause, because confusing though it is, it seems to want to redefine the word "clone" to not mean "clone" when you want a baby version of yourself as your baby. And a clone is a clone whether you want the legislation to treat it as a clone or not. Putting in the "for the purposes of this resolution" excepts the clone baby from being affected by the proposal's contents, without rewriting English.

[La Navasse]

Permits the cloning of unconscious, unfeeling organisms from sapient originators, where the clones themselves do not have any sapience and have been proven to not be in locked-in syndrome, for biomedical experimentation and use;

Bans the cloning of conscious, feeling organisms from sapient originators for biomedical experimentation and use, and of any cloning of any sapient originator if the medical professionals who clone cannot reliably confirm, with a high degree of confidence, that the clone is not suffering from locked-in syndrome or any related disability;

OOC: These continue to be the problematic clauses.

The wording "unconscious, unfeeling" is weird. I understand the "unconscious" is an attempt to make it read "nonsapient", but what's "unfeeling"? Are we talking about brainless or nerveless or what?

Also, locked-in-syndrome is impossible to prove until after the fact; likely to be impossible to say with 100% certainty beforehand that any individual from sapient stock that has a functional central nervous system (though why'd you clone one of those for research purposes anyway is beyond me) would not have the syndrome. Hell, you can't say beforehand of a naturally created fetus that they won't be born with the syndrome.

So, given the unreliability of the whole natural fetal development process, this in essence bans the cloning of sapients entirely unless you're a magical or so insanely advanced nation that cloning would likely be unnecessarily messy process to begin with. I'm fairly sure that wasn't your intention, considering how far into the definitions you go to allow offspring-cloning.

If a clone, with a high degree of confidence, is shown to not have locked-in-syndrome, they can be used. Brain scans (on relatively primitive humans, according to the WA) can show this:

This was the main reason why I had "Authorizes and actively encourages nations to share cloning technology", so that lesser nations could have such technology to clone. Cloning in itself is a very risky and ethically debated process, and I would want to have insanely advanced nations to share such technology that prevent infringements into the ethics behind cloning. Also, what I meant for unconscious, unfeeling organisms are essentially organisms without the area in their nervous system for consciousness, which in turn also removes any possibility for feeling. Since the part of the nervous system for many organisms that controls the consciousness is different, I've decided to write the definition as "unconscious, unfeeling" so as to not anger any "non-human" nations.

Also, I would tag "for the purposes of this resolution" into your "excludes" clause, because confusing though it is, it seems to want to redefine the word "clone" to not mean "clone" when you want a baby version of yourself as your baby. And a clone is a clone whether you want the legislation to treat it as a clone or not. Putting in the "for the purposes of this resolution" excepts the clone baby from being affected by the proposal's contents, without rewriting English.

I fully agree. Edited in.

[Kenmoria]

"The first semicolon, in the first line, should be a comma."

[La Navasse]

"The first semicolon, in the first line, should be a comma."

Acknowledged and corrected.

This resolution has been submitted.

[Araraukar]

This resolution has been submitted.

OOC: Please withdraw it from the submissions, it has several problems. And I'm sorry I didn't get to you sooner. An RP went into "goddess mode" so late last night that it was early enough for the sun to rise (and sun doesn't rise early at this time of year at these latitudes!) and I didn't feel awake enough to come to NS before now.

Issues:

1. You have no preamble. That's not necessarily an error, but the preamble is your way of convincing people that this is something that a) needs international legislation and b) is a good idea to legislate upon. Not having that, you'll have a much harder time defending it.

2. You haven't numbered your clauses. That makes referring to them annoyingly difficult.

3. You completely misunderstood my point about using the "for the purposes of this resolution". You were supposed to put it in the definitions, not the exclusions. Because right now both of your definition clauses are rewriting English, since "genetically altered" does not equal "clone". Something may be cloned first and altered later, but the alteration makes it not-a-clone. Do you understand?

4. Your exclusion clause is very muddled up. You're wanting to do what exactly? I would suggest using better definition clauses instead of a very confusing exclusion. Just don't include things you want to exclude, into your definition.

5. Since you're including "genetically altered", your "grants" clause may contradict existing resolutions, since if you clone a dog but then alter its genes so that it grows up to be a dog with a sapient mind, not granting it human rights (rather only giving it the same rights as a normal dog) would be noncompliance with an existing resolution.

6. The wording "regardless of any disabilities resulting from a failed cloning" sounds very weird and incomplete. A failed cloning what?

7. Your first restricts clause needs to negotiate with your definition and exclusion clauses as to exactly what has to be left for qualified biomed people and what can be done in the garden shed by the dude you found snorting talcum powder in the alley.

8. Your second restricts clause also needs to negotiate with your definition and exclusion clauses as to what all exactly needs a consent for, since I can't tell if parents wanting a genetically altered (faulty gene fixed) version of their child so that the younger child can be a bone marrow donor to their older sibling could do that (ignoring the whole issue about whether they can compel the new child to donate marrow) or if they needed to wait until their existing child reached the age of consent. There is a resolution that allows parents to give consent on their child's behalf for medical procedures, and while I disagree with it being wholesale permission to do whatever to their child that they want, medically, if you require consent from the individual and a reasonable nation would think that a process that needs "qualified biomedical personnel" to complete, is a medical procedure when done on sapient creatures, then there's a clear contradiction.

9. The permits clause is still muddled and weird. You're wanting to do what? If you want to make sure you don't accidentally create a smart mind locked up in a vegetable body, just put in requirement to prevent the formation of the physical organs that are needed for the sapient mind to exist. In RL humans that would mean, "don't put too much brain tissue in the same container, dummy".

10. Once more, from the top, "Given that even the natural process of creating a new individual is very uncertain and prone to errors that result in disabilities, it is ridiculous to require higher rate of success from artificial process of doing the same." Especially with the "or any related disability", since that's an open-ended definition that can be reasonably read to mean any disability to do with the central nervous system.

11. Your reserves clause, have you checked the existing WA legislation on patients' and biomedical donors' rights to make sure you're not contradicting them? Because you're not restricting the "all sapient clones" to "all sapient clones that were cloned according to this resolution", but rather all sapient clones ever, even ones that are naturally occurring. Oh, the adoption resolution might also be relevant.

12. Your choice of "authorizes" is weird. How are you authorizing something that the nations already could do? Don't you mean "encourages"?

13. The bit about organ cloning not being a part of this all, should be right at the very top, after the definitions.

14. Your committee-related clause, why? Just why do you need committee involvement at all? You were doing so well up to now. If a nation's going to be noncompliant with a resolution, a committee can't make them magically compliant. And in any case, you don't need the wasp to promote the sharing of cloning tech, if you change your "authorizes" into "encourages", as that already has the effect of the WA promoting the sharing of cloning tech.

[Imperium Anglorum]

Campaign is already out.

[La Navasse]

Campaign is already out.

I'm deliberating over the current feedback.

[Moronist Decisions]

I'm going to ask a question. Can contradictions in committee roles lead to illegalities?

In Protection Of Biomedical Research, it specifies that:

Expands the mandate of the Biomedical Innovation Organization of the World Health Authority to include:

Coordination of international efforts at biomedical research,

Development of a set of minimum scientific and ethical standards for biomedical research, to be met by Member-States,

Service as an advisory body for biomedical ethics organizations and biomedical ethics regulatory bodies within Member-States,

Maintenance of an internationally-accessible database of ongoing biomedical research within Member-States, excepting information regarding research efforts which are protected by Member-States as a matter of security,

and in this proposal, it states that

Assigns the World Assembly Scientific Programme the duties of overlooking cloning for biomedical research and use to ensure their accordance with this resolution and the promotion of the sharing of cloning technology.

Would the fact that biomedical research is overseen by the Biomedical Innovation Organization of the WHA contradict the "overlooking" role of the WASP? I'm not sure, but wanted to ask.

[Araraukar]

I'm going to ask a question. Can contradictions in committee roles lead to illegalities?

OOC: Probably not in this case, given that it's only "overlooking". You can have two committees do the same thing, though it's waste of WA money to do that, as long as you don't try to say in the latter proposal that you're restricting such overlooking, or moving all functions under committee B, when an existing resolution assigns the duties to committee A. That would be contradiction in my opinion.

[Auralia]

We are deeply concerned about the implications of this clause:

Permits the cloning of unconscious, unfeeling organisms from sapient originators, where the clones themselves do not have any sapience and have been proven to not be in locked-in syndrome, for biomedical experimentation and use;

We oppose any World Assembly legislation that would require member states to permit the cloning of members of a sapient species, or the use of such clones in biomedical experimentation, under any circumstances whatsoever.

Every member of a sapient species, regardless of whether they temporarily or permanently lack sapience, has the right to be conceived by biological parents and to not be subject to biomedical experimentation.

Martin Russell
Chief Ambassador, Auralian Mission to the World Assembly

[DACOROMANIA]

Approved

[Fauxia]

“We oppose this proposal. This is an issue that should not be legalized internationally, nor should it be an international requirement that clones have the same rights as the originator.”

[La Navasse]

We are deeply concerned about the implications of this clause:

Permits the cloning of unconscious, unfeeling organisms from sapient originators, where the clones themselves do not have any sapience and have been proven to not be in locked-in syndrome, for biomedical experimentation and use;

We oppose any World Assembly legislation that would require member states to permit the cloning of members of a sapient species, or the use of such clones in biomedical experimentation, under any circumstances whatsoever.

Every member of a sapient species, regardless of whether they temporarily or permanently lack sapience, has the right to be conceived by biological parents and to not be subject to biomedical experimentation.

Martin Russell
Chief Ambassador, Auralian Mission to the World Assembly

If a being cannot think, feel, or "be" in a consciousness, what's the point of not allowing their biological experimentation? They, as a person, do not exist.

Campaign is already out.

I'm deliberating over the current feedback.

I've decided to go forward with this resolution, and edit if it doesn't pass. There have been no other major objections for edits in form, not topic as of Araraukar's.

[Baizou]

We are deeply concerned about the implications of this clause:


We oppose any World Assembly legislation that would require member states to permit the cloning of members of a sapient species, or the use of such clones in biomedical experimentation, under any circumstances whatsoever.

Every member of a sapient species, regardless of whether they temporarily or permanently lack sapience, has the right to be conceived by biological parents and to not be subject to biomedical experimentation.

Martin Russell
Chief Ambassador, Auralian Mission to the World Assembly

If a being cannot think, feel, or "be" in a consciousness, what's the point of not allowing their biological experimentation? They, as a person, do not exist.

"Hang on, can I just make sure I have this right? Are we saying that the proposal will legalize the cloning of, let's say, humans, or maybe Ursus sapiens, without the consent of the originator so long as the clones that are thereby created have somehow been tinkered with so they aren't at all sapient? And that on top of that, it's alright to use these non-sapient clones of humans or Bears for biomedical experimentation they are, by definition, incapable of consenting to?"

"Uh... some clarification on this would be nice, because that sounds kinda creepy."

- Toyoharu Mizushima and CARRIE

[Gulia]

We are deeply concerned about the implications of this clause:

Permits the cloning of unconscious, unfeeling organisms from sapient originators, where the clones themselves do not have any sapience and have been proven to not be in locked-in syndrome, for biomedical experimentation and use;

We oppose any World Assembly legislation that would require member states to permit the cloning of members of a sapient species, or the use of such clones in biomedical experimentation, under any circumstances whatsoever.

Every member of a sapient species, regardless of whether they temporarily or permanently lack sapience, has the right to be conceived by biological parents and to not be subject to biomedical experimentation.

Martin Russell
Chief Ambassador, Auralian Mission to the World Assembly

I agree with this Chief Ambassador Russell. It is not right, I do not believe the International community should be able to imposed this one other nations. In Legislation and expel this portion is a dangerous and outrages proposal that I will not implicate regardless what the World Assembly does.
The Kingdom go Gulia official opposes this legislation by the world Assembly in regard to cloning and their uses in experimentation.

[La Navasse]

If a being cannot think, feel, or "be" in a consciousness, what's the point of not allowing their biological experimentation? They, as a person, do not exist.

"Hang on, can I just make sure I have this right? Are we saying that the proposal will legalize the cloning of, let's say, humans, or maybe Ursus sapiens, without the consent of the originator so long as the clones that are thereby created have somehow been tinkered with so they aren't at all sapient? And that on top of that, it's alright to use these non-sapient clones of humans or Bears for biomedical experimentation they are, by definition, incapable of consenting to?"

"Uh... some clarification on this would be nice, because that sounds kinda creepy."

- Toyoharu Mizushima and CARRIE

Any cloning requires consent of the originator. Unconscious, unfeeling clones do not have any sense of "being", as they would be permanently unconscious, so they can be experimented with.

[Auralia]

We are deeply concerned about the implications of this clause:


We oppose any World Assembly legislation that would require member states to permit the cloning of members of a sapient species, or the use of such clones in biomedical experimentation, under any circumstances whatsoever.

Every member of a sapient species, regardless of whether they temporarily or permanently lack sapience, has the right to be conceived by biological parents and to not be subject to biomedical experimentation.

Martin Russell
Chief Ambassador, Auralian Mission to the World Assembly

If a being cannot think, feel, or "be" in a consciousness, what's the point of not allowing their biological experimentation? They, as a person, do not exist.

Sapience is not just a property of particular individuals, but of entire species. Accordingly, one can say that sapience is proper to or an inherent capacity of each member of a sapient species, even if a particular member of that species happens not to possess it at a given time due to particular circumstances, such as the individual's current level of development or medical disorders.

Because sapience is proper to each member of a sapient species, every such member possesses the rights associated with sapience, even if they do not happen to be sapient at any given time. Consider that prenatal children, sleeping persons, persons in a coma, and persons in a persistent vegetative state would not be considered persons if we only cared about present capacity for sapience rather than inherent capacity.

Martin Russell
Chief Ambassador, Auralian Mission to the World Assembly

[Winterstar]

Ban conscious organisms from being cloned? It would be a real shame is this legislation was to pass, especially considering that we don't even have enough research to know for certain what makes an organism conscious.

[Baizou]

Any cloning requires consent of the originator.

"I figured you didn't intend the opposite."

"Unfortunately, I'm not sure if it reads that way in the proposal."

...

Restricts the cloning of sapient organisms only to originators who fully consent to being cloned;

Permits the cloning of unconscious, unfeeling organisms from sapient originators, where the clones themselves do not have any sapience and have been proven to not be in locked-in syndrome, for biomedical experimentation and use;

...

"Given the parallel structure, reading the text straightforwardly it sounds as if the quoted restriction ('only to originators who fully consent...') applies only to the 'cloning of sapient organisms', ergo the making of clones that are organisms that are sapient. Therefore, the 'cloning of unconscious, unfeeling organisms' would not seem to apply."

"At the very least, that's how the draft has read to us, so I hope you can understand our concern. In order to read as you intended, it would seem to need to be phrased as follows:

Restricts cloning from sapient organisms only to originators who fully consent to being cloned

---

Unconscious, unfeeling clones do not have any sense of "being", as they would be permanently unconscious, so they can be experimented with.

"I'm... gonna need to think about this a little more before I make up my mind. The clone may not have any sense of 'being,' but... I don't know. I guess the idea of creating a thing while intentionally gutting all that which would give it a sense of being or personality feels a little wonky, even from the premise that it makes no difference when done from, even before, the beginning of the thing's life. As if... it deteriorates what makes a species sapient."

"Churning out living things like so much flesh does seem like the sort of thing your squishy human sensibility would feel uncomfortable with.

"Please, CARRIE, that's not helping. And yes, I'm well aware that what I said is maybe very fuzzy, even moralistic - and I still haven't decided on how this would affect how I'd vote - but I figure it's most fair to you to be honest about my hangups.

- Ambassador Toyoharu Mizushima and CARRIE

[Wolfhawk]

what is lock down syndrome?

[Uan aa Boa]

The Boani delegation is concerned about the implications of this proposal. If there is to be no contradiction between (a) clones have the same rights as other members of their species and (b) "unconscious, unfeeling" clones may be used for medical experimentation does it not follow that (c) any "unconscious, unfeeling" member of the species may be used for experimentation? Is the Assembly sure that it wishes to see medical experiments performed on the victims of accident and illness prior to their death?

[Araraukar]

The Boani delegation is concerned about the implications of this proposal. If there is to be no contradiction between (a) clones have the same rights as other members of their species and (b) "unconscious, unfeeling" clones may be used for medical experimentation does it not follow that (c) any "unconscious, unfeeling" member of the species may be used for experimentation? Is the Assembly sure that it wishes to see medical experiments performed on the victims of accident and illness prior to their death?

OOC: Taken together with Patients' Rights, Legal Competence, Rights of Sapient Species, Biomedical Donor/Recipient Rights and Charter of Civil Rights I think there's a pretty good case for a contradiction challenge. If it looks like it's in any danger of passing, I may have to find some time to write one up. I really had hoped the author would be sensible enough to withdraw, but eh, not this time.

[Sakaryata]

I fail to understand what is the purpose of using the term 'sapient' here. The tone and provisions of the resolution suggest that the meaning of sapient here the ability to have subjective experiences rather than just non-feeling objective signals as found in say, leeches or mosquitoes. I suggest the word 'sapient' be changed to 'mammalian' as in science because most mammals have subjective experiences and needs or, simply 'subjectively feeling'.

[Jabberwocky]

That fails to take into account nonterrestrials, which might be sapient without being mammalian