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Remember when cloning human beings was science fiction? Well, not
anymore. Let's make ourselves a million Michael Jordans... or how
about bringing back Elvis?
Jordan ver1.76 unfortunately was born with
his tongue grafted to his chin |
What is a clone? and would this clone live up to the expectations
that we would put on him/her? I think not... Life is just a bunch of
random events chained together to create a unique human being. What
if Elvis ver2.1 gets stage anxiety, develops severe hip strain, or is
allergic to sequins?
You can be sure that Elvis2.1 would not have that southern Elvis accent we
all are accustomed to. What if our clone Jordan is afraid of heights
and has a real affinity for Hostess Ding Dongs and balloons to 350
pounds? We'd call him Freight Jordan for sure.
Anyhow, I digress. That's all way in the future. For the
present, we must decide on the morality of the cloning issue... Is it
right or isn't it? 2 camps here, one scientific and one moral. |
First the scientific viewpoint: Ever got a new toy, or learned a new
'trick' at a hobby you excelled at? Then you know the feeling of
wanting to explore and create further. It's an unquenchable thirst
for furthering knowledge... a totally human trait that creates drive and
promotes new ideas and creativity. It's very true that some 'mad
scientist' is going to take the 'Honolulu technique' of cloning to
fruition... in some unknown lab in some unknown location. We'll
never know until the scientist perfects his creation.
Next the moral viewpoint: Our perfect little glowing green Jordan clone
isn't gonna just appear overnight. Ryuzo Yanagimachi, one of
the UH lab creators of the original glowing green clones, stated that he
experienced years of failed experiments before getting viable
subjects. That means that in order for us to create a decent Jordan
clone, we would have dozens if not hundreds of malformed, incomplete,
psychotic, demented, transgendered Jordan replicas. Or worse, some
little green Jordans may be created without a descent turn around
jumper. What do we do with these 'failed' Jordans? Destroy
them, put 'em away someplace where they can get special care, send 'em to
basketball camp? Seems to me that it would be cruel any way you
handle these miscreations.
There in fact have been many clone experiments, right under our
noses... Michael Jackson and the Lady Chimp from Planet of the
Apes, Jodi Leong and Shari Shima, Chelsea Clinton and Carrot-top,
and Ben Cayetano and his bulldog. And you thought cloning
was new technology.
So, bringing back Elvis and
Jordan may seem like a grand idea... until you get right down to
the morality of it. I say don't mess with mother
nature. That seems like a over simplistic end all to this
question, but when you get down to it, playing God when you don't
know what you're doing is a horrific thing. Even though I
oppose human cloning, I realistically know that scientists are
going to go ahead with their experiments in some secret laboratory
to satisfy the natural quest for knowledge enhancement. Go
right ahead... just don't let me know about or see any of your lab
failures. Hell, I try to make a pot roast and it goes bad...
Just see how many factors can screw up creating a human life.
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Elvis V1.5 included a gene deficient in both
a fat fighter enzyme and good taste. He unfortunately had to
be put down.
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