Caution advocated for human clonings
by Brian Shults, SE News Editor

    Have you ever received a compliment that made you feel good about yourself?

    The compliment is a confidence booster. The genetic code, or DNA, that gives a person his specific physical characteristics, save identical twins, is solely his own. So why not be able to do as one wishes with his own DNA?

    An adage says possession is nine-tenths of the law. One thing an individual can prove beyond a shadow of doubt belongs to him is his DNA.

    I should be able to do as I wish with my own DNA, be it create embryos for therapeutic cloning or a human clone.

    Human cloning is a civil rights issue. It would be egregious of the government to impose restrictions on my genetic code.

    While I have no desire to clone myself, I should not be restricted from doing so.

    More realistically though, one day I might succumb to a tragic turn of fate, such as breaking my neck.

    I would be paralyzed from the head down. Employing the benefits of therapeutic cloning, I could use my DNA to create embryos from which I could extract stem-cells and use those cells to repair the damage to my spine and walk again.

    Banning cloning is paradoxical. To ban cloning, the government would have to say that an individual's DNA, which is encrypted in every cell of his body and nowhere outside of that body, has rights separate from the person who carries it with them.

    It is a peculiar thing to argue that what makes you does not belong to you.

    If I cloned myself now, the clone would have human and civil rights once created, but not before. That makes sense.

    Arguing it had rights before creation would be tantamount to saying that if a child fell off his bike and skinned his knee on the pavement, the blood left behind had human rights because it had his DNA. Ludicrous!

    Human cloning as of right now should not be pursued because technology has not advanced enough to ensure the clone would be healthy, which is a genuine moral concern.

    But humans will clone a human being. No law, no amount of discourse or repugnance to the idea will change that fact.

    And what morally concerns me the most is society's acceptance or non-acceptance of that human being.

    A clone will, after all, be human, have its own thoughts and emotions, its own heartbreaks and joys.

    Yet, the vehement public outcry of late makes me skeptical of society's ability to tolerate and accept a cloned human.

    History shows we do not handle issues of race, ethnicity and dissimilarity well.

    A clone's dissimilarities, nonexistent or existent, could potentially create a new brand of racism. We must take heed. The attitudes we create today become the prejudices and epithets of tomorrow.

    As for the paranoid cries of "we will all be replaced by clones that will take over the world," I do not expect laboratory cloning will replace old-fashioned procreation. My advice is to bet against it.

    And as for the voices that wail, "we must not be so prideful as to play God," it's hubris to think that such a flawed animal as man could place himself on such a level.

    We should be careful not to give ourselves so much credit and simply proceed with caution as we create an inevitable brave new world.