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![]() ![]() First, it would destabilize the human condition, disrupting our faith in the sanctity of life and the high and separate positions we humans hold over all other species. As one who would like to see humans "get over themselves," the need to clone at least one human seems essential. I realize that exposing Jesus Christ's writings as mostly myth, proving the world is not flat and we are not the center of the universe, and that we evolved from apes several million years ago has done little to dissuade the humans from believing in their own beneficence. But every little insult to their egos that advances science over mythology seems worth the effort. Second, cloning humans will allow additional research into human behavior, education, crime prevention, and the overall condition of mankind. The recent Minnesota Twin Studies have shown conclusively that such human traits such as intelligence, religiosity, and conscientiousness have a predominantly genetic basis and any one human is limited by this genetic potentiality. Knowing this we need to further define how malleable humans are. Cloning is the next step in environmental experimentation, where donors can have themselves duplicated genetically and their clones placed in alternative environments to see how they develop. One clone can be raised in environment X and another in environment Y and the results compared a generation later. This type of controlled experimentation can lead to the final resolution of what makes us what we are, our genes or something else. ![]() ![]() The famous race horse Secretariat is thought to have possessed such emergent abilities. Secretariat won the Triple Crown in 1973. To say that Secretariat 'broke' course records is an understatement: he smashed them. Most of Secretariat's racing achievements, such as winning the Belmont stakes by 31 lengths, have never been approached to this day. Of Secretariat's 400-odd foals, only one (Risen Star) came close to matching Secretariat's racing abilities. Risen Star won two of the three contests that make up the Triple Crown, but even in these victories he was several seconds behind his sire's record-setting paces. For horse owners who paid handsomely for Secretariat's stud services, the problem was simple: once genetically scrambled, half of Secretariat was never really half. One reason why identical twins have such similar personalities is their possession of the same emergent traits. This circumstance explains why identical twins reared apart often exhibit strikingly similar behavioral quirks, including unusual habits and hobbies. Even though some of these similarities would be expected by chance, they are significantly more common when twins are identical than when they are fraternal. ![]() Cloning is the only way to do this, to enhance and expand the number of people that were lucky enough to receive that unique combination of genes that make up what we all recognize and geniuses, those who can push the envelope of knowledge and understanding through discovery beyond what most people can barely come understand. Cloning is the only way of increasing the number of gifted geniuses aside from rigorous breeding programs that still cannot guarantee the results desired. Cloning can increase 100 or 1000 fold the number of scientists who are truly exceptional, into the future, for as long as we want. In the cloning debate, you will hear over and over again how people are more than their genes, that environment is equally important. The problem is this is no longer true. The Board of Scientific Affairs (BSA) of the American Psychological Association released a report titled, Intelligence: Knowns and Unknowns, in 1995, in response to the highly controversial 1994 book by Herrnstein and Murray, The Bell Curve: Intelligence and class structure in American life . In the report the BSA concludes, "Across the ordinary range of environments in modern Western societies, a sizable part of the variation in intelligence test scores is associated with genetic differences among individuals. We now know that the heritability of IQ changes with age: heritability goes up and between-family variance goes down from infancy to adulthood. In childhood heritability and between-family variance for IQ are of the order of .45 and .35; by late adolescence heritability is around .75 and between-family variance is quite low (zero in some studies). Substantial environmental variance remains, but it primarily reflects within-family rather than between-family differences. ![]() So now, when the educators and the media tell you that environment, not genes are primarily responsible for who grows up to be a genius, you can set them straight. Their dogma is about 30 years behind the science and is meant to cover up the realities of good breeding and the enduring contribution that genes make. They want you to think they can make you smart, through education, when in fact your own genes will guide you to realize your own unique potential. If this wasn't true we could make chimpanzees into scientists. The final argument against cloning humans is that it is not ethical or moral to do so. Of course, this is always the fall-back defense when people want to turn back scientific progress and have no other means to do so. The reason why so many people are afraid of cloning is simple, it is one more blow against vitalism, the belief that there is more to humans than there is to other primates or mammals. We are in some unique way above all the other species, we have a soul. But of course they can't really say that, especially other scientists that have given up the superstition of religion, but can't give up the hope and aspiration that we are more than just the latest permutation of a very different species, one that can selectively breed itself in a conscious manner. Several billion years ago, the early species did in fact reproduce asexually, the same process genetically as cloning. There are many higher species today that still breed asexually and some that can switch, depending on the circumstances, between asexual and sexual reproduction. Are the offspring of these asexual reproductions any more or less real than any other? ![]() Unless you can prove that humans are not just another variation of the primate line of species that have learned to use their intellect and language for survival, unless you can prove without a doubt that somewhere lurking inside of us is a soul that no other species harbors, then there is no logical reason why cloning a sheep is any different than cloning a human. Cloning, in fact, is just another step in our evolutionary journey where randomness has been supplanted by the collective will of culture and has changed the way we are. About 10,000 years ago, we left the hunter gatherer tribalism for an agrarian way of life leading to larger social units. Soon, reproductive sex was being influenced by Judaism and Catholicism in the West (primogeniture and celibacy), concubines in the East, and numerous other deviations from the tribal unit. Today, many people consciously select a mate with forethought for traits they want to enhance in their children (beauty, intelligence, athleticism, etc.). Assortative mating is just another form of selective breeding, as is cloning. So any arguments against cloning have already been obviated by the facts of the evolutionary march from the single-cell to the multi-cell organisms and now is entering a new phase of intelligent, directed, evolutionary progress. The only question with regards to cloning is do I want to be cloned and can it be accomplished. It is as are all reproductive decisions, up to the reproducer. And for the first time that decision lies in the hands of one person, and the well-being of the cloned offspring rests on the parent, pure and simple. Just as the state should not step in and make a couple abort a child with a genetic disease, they should not step in and prevent someone from cloning themselves on the pretense that they are concerned with the cloned child. That is not what the moral/ethical debate is about. ![]() 04/08/01 |
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