Within the realm of modern science technologies are expanding and advancing at exponential rates, leading to further understanding of the building blocks of our universe. One of these advancements in technologies is flourishing in the field of Human Reproduction. In some ways it is like In Vitro Fertilization, but instead of implanting pre-fertilized eggs, the building blocks of life, stem cells and their nuclei, are used instead (Human Cloning). Cloning is something that is quite possible today in animal testing but is still at an odd stage for humans. It is common knowledge that a sheep clone named “Dolly” is living a happy life roaming meadows not knowing any meaning of where life is supposed to come from. This one sheep already has caused way too many political issues though. The National Bioethics Advisory Commission recommended a five-year moratorium on trying to make a human child through the same process used to make dolly (The Ethics). Legislation is being made over things we don’t even know to be completely possible yet. Although these advancements do hint at dangerous outcomes, sometimes letting these outcomes happen is what actually brings about the true advancement. Although the government creates walls to stop scientists from experimenting within, scientists will always find a way around it, or over it, or any other way. Scientists solve problems, why wouldn’t they solve one created for them by the government? In order to solve the issue of radical scientists playing god in laboratories, scientists must be secluded, regulated with an iron fist covered in just the right amount of sprinkles and required to clean up after themselves.
Alexis de Tocqueville speaks of Tyranny of the majority in an essay he wrote in the young democratic years of the U.S. In this document he discusses how the masses tend to be the people easiest swayed. These individuals may not be the most intelligent though. Knowledge is something that must be worked for. This could be directly translated to the problem of cloning. Say that cloning dumbs down human intelligence and leaves the majority to be become increasingly less able to live for themselves and be self-sufficient. When considering cloning we have to think about the development of human thought itself, and where it actually comes from. Thought comes from pure curiosity and experimentation and from that comes the conclusions we know to be true to us at least. Without the same childhood experiences, a clone of a person would never actually be the person expected. The development of humans is what makes cloning such a big issue.
Humans will always experiment, it is in our nature to do so; we create individual scientific methods and hypotheses to draw conclusions from what we observe to continue to learn more. If we are to stop experimentation it would halt progress, but if we allow experimentation it could always have the same result and there lies the problem; The halt of human progression. This is a problem for humanity as a whole, and if we truly live in a world that is attempting to have democracy people should be able to speak their minds on whether it is right or wrong. Science being halted by the government is absurd. With the right money and supplies an island can be home base for an entire human cloning community that exists as a false reality of the real world. This off shore facility would house ‘the most insane of the criminally insane’. The public will see this as just another creepy thing, even though they don’t know how creepy it actually getting there with the cloning.
People that might not actually consider cloning a problem are the nasty persuasive people that would love to get their hands on a group of people that are easy to sway. Governments and some religious groups would thrive on the mindless clones that would be the outcome of the re-creation of man. The government would do all they could to regulate everything they can, eventually this would lead to the regulation of clones themselves and the way they are to be used properly. In Life, Liberty, and Human Cloning, John A. Robertson says, “Unscrupulous dictators could clone a subject class, as in Huxley's Brave New World, or create an army of genetically engineered brutes to do their bidding,” (Robertson). This is a very clear threat that cloning presents and when government tangles its long fingers into things it doesn’t understand, corruption is immanent. Besides tyrannical government leaders, there is also the habitually obsessive churchgoer and the slightly more peculiar old men telling everyone the difference between good and bad.
Wayne Jackson from the Christian Courier makes it clear how easy religious people are to persuade based on the foundation of their beliefs. He says, “There is a God who exercises sovereignty over the human family. He has revealed his will to man in that series of documents called the Bible. Those inspired pieces of literature contain the principles by which the morality of human actions are to be either approved or condemned,” (Wayne). People of religion know how symbols can control the general public, that’s why religious cults start and snowball into disturbing news flashes down the line. Religious cults could form based on the notion that stock piling organs can make you live forever. Individuals could stitch in organ after organ until they were just pieces of clones and not even truly humans anymore. What makes this problem negligible is the pure thought of suspended life roaming Earth harvesting clone tissues and organs.
There are really two directions humanity can go with this problem. Banning experimentation in this field and cause many scientists to withdraw from their own personal studies, dreams and aspirations. The scientists researching cloning are a gutsy group that have already decided weather it is moral and ethical or not. If their country decides to ban research in cloning for 10 years they will move to another country and continue their studies. “Asia offers researchers, new labs, fewer restrictions and a different view of divinity and the afterlife. In South Korea, when Hwang Woo Suk reported creating human embryonic stem cells through cloning, he did not apologize for offending religious taboos. He justified cloning by citing his Buddhist belief in recycling life through reincarnation,” (Tierney). Thus we can see the other solution to the issue. Allow humans to do what they have always done; experiment, argue, and conclude. Most learning comes out of tragedy and mistakes. If the scientists mess up, mankind will learn from past mistakes just as we always have. It may take a clone war, or clone organ thirsty half alive humans to show that something like this should be left alone. This solution may not be the best, generally because I am not an expert in the field I am discussing, it is just a suggestion for a proposed problem.
In order to understand life and humanity, sometimes life and humanity needs to be lost. For this reason, the facility must be off shore just to stop the public that isn’t strong enough to accept the truths of life from hearing. The seclusion of this island is key to diluting the aftermath of the scientist’s mistakes. Also, a world government with a collective human law that ensures moral and ethics must regulate this island as smoothly as possible. They must treat this island like a developing child. They must let it grow as they would let their own children grow and flourish. With this in mind experimentation will have fewer barriers too overcome before figuring out the questions of life. The knowledge that comes with creation could be overwhelming to some, but intimidatingly illuminating to some. The regulation is necessary to keep influential people from making peoples minds think in the wrong way with this new knowledge. A revolution will be caused by the invention of cloning, and where the revolution goes will rely on the regulation in place to begin with. The regulation is the structure of the revolution, without it in place chaos could consume the world and with that comes the final aspect of the solution. The clone island is required to clean up any of the messes it makes in creating the clones of humans. Whatever the outcome is, they must know the risk in the beginning and try to keep the operation as clean as possible.
Opposition to this solution would come from anyone that already disagrees with the scientists themselves, and finds cloning to not be ethical or moral. They see cloning as a disgrace or just something that needs to be left alone all together. This is why I say the operation must be out of the public eye altogether. It won’t stir up any unwanted attention from the people who feel strongly about stopping experimentation entirely. Some people don’t accept change and aren’t innovative. They get stuck in redundant loops that they think is life when really they are experiencing nothing over and over again. These people will oppose the advancement of human intelligence. They will hold back generations to come just because of their own insecurities with humanity. Being insecure about humanity lies the biggest problem having to do with cloning. Once humanity gets itself all messed up from the inside out, people will understand that nature is something that is just always happening and is something that we cant influence without destroying all together. The opposition will be opposed to humanity falling down and scraping its knee, because it is humiliating to do so. The humiliation is what is necessary to overcome the atrocities of human nature and without it nothing would come from scientists cleaning up their own messes after the dawning of organ loving zombies and fascist clone wars.
In the end it comes down to weather or not mankind is willing to take off the training wheels and face the fact that you either will fall or keep going on looking awfully cool just on a cooler piece of technology than you were traveling with before. The world needs to know that advancement is completely normal and it is something that we should take when it is given to us. Without advancements modern society wouldn’t be where it is today, we would still be throwing poop out of our windows. Instead now, were trying to figure out weather or not we should do something, when we should just be doing it because we can. Cloning will lead to growth no matter what direction it takes, a destructive one or a nice responsible growth. If we stay in an in-between area of knowledge we will get stuck, and that is the last thing I want to see happen to humanity. Cloning is a force that humans don’t understand because it is almost impossible for a human to understand another while living. The risks that tag along to cloning are known and the outcomes have been assessed. Now I say it is time to keep humanity going to its fullest. Let the scientists do their work, but let them do it in their own little experimental world as to keep the rest of the world out of it. They will be locked in debate still by the time the research draws to conclusion, and the knowledge that will come with these scientific discoveries will leave the debaters debating about historical events while human intelligence rapidly increases.
No comments:
Post a Comment