Humanoid Rights

[BridgeTheGap]

A few months ago I watched Moon with a friend who works on public relations for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). The science fiction movie, released in 2009, centers on Sam Bell, a solitary laborer who spends his days extracting helium from moon rocks and drawing comfort from correspondence with his wife on Earth. That is, until he discovers he’s actually one of a series of expendable human clones bred by a mining company for dangerous, repetitive work.

Ultimately, Bell outsmarts the automated systems and escapes on a vessel bound for Earth, where the corporation he worked for gets charged with crimes against humanity. And as the credits rolled, my friend said to me, “I’d like to think that when that guy got to Earth, the ACLU would have taken his case.”

The idea of the ACLU battling a private corporation over whether clones are human beings or pieces of property may seem far-fetched. Almost a decade ago, though, the organization started thinking about how to do it.

James Madison once wrote, “No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.” Yet America is in the midst of a global war with no defined end. Which is why, in the immediate aftermath of September 11, the ACLU began anticipating worst case legal scenarios involving the violation of civil liberties.

Read more: http://www.utne.com/Science-Technology/Humanoid-Rights-Futuristic-Civil-Liberties.aspx#ixzz1BgPORMaK