Clones

Well it's hard to write an article about cloning. It's the sort of subject that invites grandiose soul searching--but that's not for me. I vacuum my soul twice a week so its hard to find anything there. But in my attempts to understand cloning I've come to one conclusion. It's very very annoying now, and it will get worse.

Make a list in your head of the people you know who think the most of themselves. Now consider a list of who you think the most likely to clone themselves might be. I stipulate that list A will look a lot like list B. Just what the world needs, more people who are stuck on themselves. (On a related note, Blogspot, which powers my weblog, has just pased the 1,000,000 mark.)

It does pose troubling questions. One position, taken by Jacob Sullum, is largely that if the technology exists it will happen. He cautions against thinking a clone inferior to a human. We already have examples of people with identical DNA in identical twins--many of whom turn out quite different. He states, "As Reason science correspondent Ron Bailey has observed, a person and his clone would in fact be less alike than identical twins, since they would be separated in time, probably by a generation or more, and would therefore have quite different experiences. In any case, there is no question that they would be distinct individuals, each with his own rights and his own life to lead."

James Carroll takes a more pessimistic track--asking what does cloning say about the age old question--what does it mean to be human? Some people might feel that that question is a new one, but it isn't. It goes back to our earliest times, when villages looked at other villages down the river and asked "Ughh Ughhhh Argghhh ughhhhh." Or to put it another way, do those people down the river--are they basically like us? Or are they totally different? Do our laws and accepted mores apply to them? Or, if they aren't human, what does it matter if we cheat them or lie to them or kill them?

Or to shift gears--are Muslims human? Are Iraqis?