IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/socmed/v63y2006i10p2739-2752.html

Twins: A cloning experience

Author

Listed:
  • Prainsack, Barbara
  • Spector, Tim D.

Abstract

Drawing upon qualitative interviews with monozygotic (identical) twins sharing 100% of their genes, and with dizygotic (fraternal) twins and singletons as control groups, this paper explores what it means to be genetically identical. (The twins interviewed were from the TwinsUK register in London.) In the context of the ongoing debate on human reproductive cloning, it examines questions such as: To what extent do identical twins perceive their emotional and physical bond to be a result of their genetic makeup? What would they think if they had been deliberately created genetically identical? How would they feel about being genetically identical to a person who was born a few years earlier or later? First, our respondents ascribed no great significance to the role of genes in their understanding of what it means to be identical twins. Second, the opinion that human reproductive cloning would "interfere with nature", or "contradict God's will", was expressed by our respondents exclusively on the abstract level. The more our respondents were able to relate a particular invented cloning scenario to their own life-worlds, the lower the prevalence of the argument. Third, for all three groups of respondents, the scenario of having been born in one of the other groups was perceived as strange. Fourth, the aspect that our respondents disliked about cloning scenarios was the potential motives of the cloners. Without equating monozygotic twins directly with "clones", these results from "naturally" genetically identical individuals add a new dimension to what a future cloning situation could entail: The cloned person might possibly (a) perceive a close physical and emotional connection to the progenitor as a blessing; (b) suffer from preconceptions of people who regard physical likeness as a sign of incomplete individuality; and (c) perceive the idea of not having been born a clone of a particular person as unpleasant.

Suggested Citation

  • Prainsack, Barbara & Spector, Tim D., 2006. "Twins: A cloning experience," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 63(10), pages 2739-2752, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:63:y:2006:i:10:p:2739-2752
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277-9536(06)00334-0
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to

    for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Calnan, Michael & Montaner, David & Horne, Rob, 2005. "How acceptable are innovative health-care technologies? A survey of public beliefs and attitudes in England and Wales," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 60(9), pages 1937-1948, May.
    2. Steffen Huck & Georg Kirchsteiger & Jörg Oechssler, 2005. "Learning to like what you have - explaining the endowment effect," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 115(505), pages 689-702, July.
    3. Ian Wilmut, 2001. "Finding the right questions to ask about the lives of human clones," Nature, Nature, vol. 412(6847), pages 583-583, August.
    4. Carol Napolitano & Oladele Ogunseitan, 1999. "Gender Differences in the Perception of Genetic Engineering Applied to Human Reproduction," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 46(2), pages 191-204, February.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Hashiloni-Dolev, Yael & Shkedi, Shiri, 2007. "On new reproductive technologies and family ethics: Pre-implantation genetic diagnosis for sibling donor in Israel and Germany," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 65(10), pages 2081-2092, November.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Florian Englmaier & Arno Schmöller, 2008. "Reserve Price Formation in Online Auctions," CESifo Working Paper Series 2374, CESifo.
    2. Schunk, Daniel, 2009. "Behavioral heterogeneity in dynamic search situations: Theory and experimental evidence," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 33(9), pages 1719-1738, September.
    3. Norman, Thomas W.L., 2012. "Equilibrium selection and the dynamic evolution of preferences," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 74(1), pages 311-320.
    4. Heifetz, Aviad & Segev, Ella & Talley, Eric, 2007. "Market design with endogenous preferences," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 58(1), pages 121-153, January.
    5. Jose Apesteguia & Miguel Ballester, 2009. "A theory of reference-dependent behavior," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 40(3), pages 427-455, September.
    6. Andrea Isoni & Graham Loomes & Robert Sugden, 2011. "The Willingness to Pay—Willingness to Accept Gap, the "Endowment Effect," Subject Misconceptions, and Experimental Procedures for Eliciting Valuations: Comment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 101(2), pages 991-1011, April.
    7. Fehr, Dietmar & Hakimov, Rustamdjan & Kübler, Dorothea, 2015. "The willingness to pay–willingness to accept gap: A failed replication of Plott and Zeiler," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 78(C), pages 120-128.
    8. Sousa, Yannick Ferreira De & Munro, Alistair, 2012. "Truck, barter and exchange versus the endowment effect: Virtual field experiments in an online game environment," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 33(3), pages 482-493.
    9. Khan, Abhimanyu, 2022. "Expected utility versus cumulative prospect theory in an evolutionary model of bargaining," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 137(C).
    10. Tang, Honghong & Li, Lin & Su, Song, 2022. "Experiencing less leads to the use of more: The effect of a scarcity mindset on product usage," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 149(C), pages 139-148.
    11. van Winden Frans A.A.M. & Ash Elliott, 2012. "On the Behavioral Economics of Crime," Review of Law & Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 8(1), pages 181-213, June.
    12. Burkhard C. Schipper, 2021. "The evolutionary stability of optimism, pessimism, and complete ignorance," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 90(3), pages 417-454, May.
    13. Monaghan, Conal & Bizumic, Boris & Van Rooy, Dirk, 2020. "An analysis of public attitudes in Australia towards applications of biotechnology to humans: Kinds, causes, and effects," Technology in Society, Elsevier, vol. 63(C).
    14. Werner Güth & Loreto Erviti & Anthony Ziegelmeyer, 2011. "Asymmetric information without common priors: an indirect evolutionary analysis of quantity competition," Journal of Evolutionary Economics, Springer, vol. 21(5), pages 843-852, December.
    15. Andrea Isoni, 2011. "The willingness-to-accept/willingness-to-pay disparity in repeated markets: loss aversion or ‘bad-deal’ aversion?," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 71(3), pages 409-430, September.
    16. Sandholm,W.H., 1998. "The evolution of preferences and rapid social change," Working papers 28, Wisconsin Madison - Social Systems.
    17. Roee Teper, 2014. "The Endowment Effect as a Blessing," Working Paper 5862, Department of Economics, University of Pittsburgh.
    18. Werner Güth & Matteo Ploner & Ivan Soraperra, 2013. "Buying and Selling Risk - An Experiment Investigating Evaluation Asymmetries," Jena Economics Research Papers 2013-047, Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena.
    19. Simon Gächter & Eric J. Johnson & Andreas Herrmann, 2022. "Individual-level loss aversion in riskless and risky choices," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 92(3), pages 599-624, April.
    20. Frenkel, Sivan & Heller, Yuval & Teper, Roee, 2012. "Endowment as a blessing," MPRA Paper 39430, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 30 Apr 2012.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:63:y:2006:i:10:p:2739-2752. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/315/description#description .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.