News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on Human reproductive cloning: The curious incident of the dog in the night-time. Parent comment

Re:Human reproductive cloning: The curious incident of the d... by hombre_fatal on Wednesday February 26, 2020 @11:51AM (#22424736)
Kennedy told only 6 people that he accepted Khrushchev's deal to remove missiles from Cuba and Turkey which was one of the most powerful secrets in the world to disarm WW3, possibly one of the many decisions that saved the human race from nuclear annihilation. His vice president didn't even know. And the thought that Kennedy just stared down Khrushchev until Khrushchev gave in remained a core part of US international negotiation ever since. The deal was only declassified 20 years ago.

So I don't really buy this common internet "if it happened, we'd know about it" meme that secrets are so hard to keep.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Human reproductive cloning: The curious incident of the d... by gnulinux on Wednesday February 26, 2020 @12:07PM (#22424913)
Facts are easy to keep as secret. Organization is hard to keep as a secret since it involves an entire supply chain. If the secret you mentioned really required 6 people knowing it, then it can be easy to keep. Hypothetically, cloning a human requires a lot of materials that needs to be provided, so it may be harder to keep as a secret.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Human reproductive cloning: The curious incident of the d... by duncan-donuts on Wednesday February 26, 2020 @12:27PM (#22425105)
But what if only a portion of the information is a secret? Couldn't you run a lab and be pretty open that you're doing research cloning animals and just conveniently leave out that the animals are human? That's not meant to trivialize your point at all, but it also seems like the entire supply chain doesn't actually need to know what's going on.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Human reproductive cloning: The curious incident of the d... by arbitrage on Wednesday February 26, 2020 @12:45PM (#22425300)
> So I don't really buy this common internet "if it happened, we'd know about it" meme that secrets are so hard to keep.

Another data point: The Manhattan Project. It was large, involved a ton of people, and still managed to keep a lot of secrecy around itself for some time.

Likewise, the Guatemala syphilis experiments: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guatemala_syphilis_experiments

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Human reproductive cloning: The curious incident of the d... by philipkglass on Wednesday February 26, 2020 @04:50PM (#22427742)
The Manhattan Project started in 1942, was penetrated by Soviet spies no later than 1943 (Klaus Fuchs), and was known to the whole world by 1945. It's not a great example of extended secret-keeping.
[ Parent | on HN ]