The reasons people want to clone themselves range from pure self-interest to desperation.
While some people want to be cloned for the sheer sake of laughing in the face of death, imagine what it would be like knowing that for either you or your spouse having children was physically impossible. Envision that your child died and that you would give anything to hold her again. The scenarios that may support cloning seem endless and for many of the situations, it is the only procedure that would provide an actual answer.
There is, however, a problem with this. Despite one’s freedom of choice, by cloning are we not devaluing the living human beings on this earth by permitting advancements in technology to duplicate them? Cloning will only strip everyone of individuality, resulting in a population of confused identities and problems.
Take for example those who want to outlive everyone. To triumph over death by cloning does nothing for the dead person involved. The cloned “human” will be another personality-a new life-there are no guarantees that it will have anything more than its looks in common with its original copy. Cloning after death in no way extends life.
My heartfelt sympathy goes out toward those who have difficulties bearing children. However, cloning a baby, can be a rather strange procedure. For couples who want no strangers involved in the cloning, they must choose between the two of them, who will be cloned. So if I choose my husband, then I must be impregnated with the clone of my husband-meaning I carry in my womb my husband’s carbon copy. And I will proceed to raise a miniature version of him. Do people not imagine how eerie it will be later when my teenager looks exactly like my husband did when I met him or the fact that if I divorce my husband, that I am still destined to see his face daily in every glance I take at our child?
For the parents who want to bring their children back from the dead, human clones are usually born with many maladies and many die. It seems to be such an obvious link to heartache for those parents, who in attempting to duplicate their dead child, will mostly see in result another dead child.
How will society act when the first cloned baby is born dead or with deformities? I doubt Americans will shrug and point scientists back to their DNA drawing boards.
For the people who wish to clone themselves for spare organs, what happens when that organ is actually needed? Would I take my clone out of the closet and make her die to save my life? If pro-lifers talk too much now, imagine the uproar they will raise over that “value of life” debate.
What strikes me as amusing is the fact that no one considers the clones involved. A generation of cloned children, who are raised to be living versions of dead people, will more than likely grow up never feeling adequate. What about the clones that are created for medical wonders that decide they do not want to die in order to save their original copy’s life? Perhaps they will earn themselves their own Amendment and have constitutional rights like the rest of us. An even more overpopulated society is also promised, after all what will happen when a clone wishes to be cloned? Perhaps a limit of once, 10 or 1,000 times will be set providing how many times a person (or a clone) may be cloned.
All the while, the same problems will remain. Duplicates of people will never bring back the dead or change the grieving process. Parent cloning will not guarantee a better person in result. And death is not something to be avoided or mocked. There is a timeline to this thing called life, which provides people with reasons why they should live today and not tomorrow. Cloning will end that. What is even more frightening about the popularity of cloning is the fact that people do not seem to value their own souls or minds. They feel that the only thing that makes their presence known is their physical being, which is by all means, the least important. There are many ways to leave a legacy. Xeroxing oneself should not be one of them.
Alisha Rosas, a junior journalism major, is editor in chief of the Campus Times. She can be reached by e-mail at rosasa@ulv.edu.
