I think it is fair to say that people overreacted when it was announced several months ago that a human embryo had been cloned. Sure, we should be suspicious whenever some egghead tells us that this sort of deal will only lead to the betterment of mankind. I’m sure Al Gore was saying the same thing when he invented the Internet, not realizing that its only purpose would soon be to inform people by e-mail about recent sightings of “barely legal teens.”

But in regards to this human cloning breakthrough, why does every moral authority from Pope John Paul II to the Oprah Book Club have to be so quick to condemn, just because this MIGHT lead to the cheapening of human life, eternal damnation and many Michael Jackson clones?

I will admit humans have a tendency to sell their souls for any kind of technological breakthrough, such as cell phones that ring to the tune of “My Heart Will Go On.” But I think we as a society can show SOME restraint when dealing with something as monumental as human cloning. For example, look at the corporate CEOs.

Normally, they would be frantically washing off their Mercedes because in the rush to make a dollar they ran over an entire Girl Scout troop. But instead, they have paused to reflect on important questions about human cloning, such as: If chain saw manufacturers put warnings on their products that say, “Do not attempt to stop chain with hands or genitals,” can people be trusted not to horribly misuse technology as complex as cloning? And, is it wise to introduce cloning in a world where some humans have lost their normal reproductive abilities to a chain saw?

Besides, it is really unfair to attack cloning just because we don’t like the idea of soulless replicas of ourselves running amuck and stealing our money, harassing normal human beings and getting elected into Congress. There are actually many areas of cloning that are ethically fine. For example, the pig cloning industry is just booming because scientists think that pigs with a certain gene will be a source of reliable transplant organs for us. This is a prime example of what is commonly known as the “scientific method”: seeing a disgusting, filthy creature and wanting to put it inside of you.

It reminds me of the pioneers who discovered that licking a certain kind of toad could open doors to fantastic undiscovered worlds such as death. Unfortunately, these magic toads are on the fast track to extinction – just another reason why we need to develop cloning so we don’t lose valuable species like these.

Luckily, though, there is no danger of pigs ever becoming extinct. In fact, new kinds of pigs are being invented ever day. Last week, Japanese scientists did the amazing by inserting spinach genes into pig embryos. Why? So that a pig can be trimmer and healthier until the day it is hauled out of its two-by-two dung-packed pen and ground into sausage. Healthier sausage, that is.

However, only 1 percent of these spinach-pigs survived after being born. They don’t say what caused the other 99 percent to die, although I hope it didn’t involve their mothers mistaking them for salad. However, the scientists say this yield is satisfactory because these spinach-pigs will pass the gene along to their offspring. Call me unschooled in these matters, but I imagine the pig-mating ritual is already difficult enough without one of the partners being part vegetable.

Somewhere, cloning will have to be used to efficiently produce these pigs, especially if someday we want transplant organs that are trimmer and can be used to start a garden with.

By now you’ve probably noticed that the last two paragraphs have little to do with human cloning, my original topic. I’m all for skipping the middleman (middlepig?) and harvesting organs directly from cloned humans.

But apparently, there are some folks – prudes, if you will – who are uncomfortable with the idea of taking apart and tossing away a human clone as if it were a seven-month-old fetus.

As you can see, the road to human cloning is an uphill battle with all these backward-thinking idiots getting in the way. But science and the rest of society must surge ahead and embrace cloning. We can’t afford to waste time on petty moral dilemmas. Certainly not with all the people using chain saws these days.

Dan Nguyen is a senior in computer engineering and journalism and mass communication from Iowa City.