Here, much to everyone’s surprise, is yet another piece written on cloning. However, I’m not against it. I’d really like to know why people are so upset by this ridiculously impractical invention. I’ve read moral objections and fears of cloning being used as a weapon, and that was just in this Wednesday’s (1/21/98) issue of the daily.

Cloning is a process by which the DNA of one animal is used to make a ‘copy’ animal. Ok, that’s really boiled down, though. You can’t just Xerox sheep ’til the cows come home. Clones still have to go through the gestation period, and then they have to grow up. Also, that gestation period, unless I am sorely mistaken, requires a member of that species to act as a mother to the clone.

That’s where I start having trouble with the whole concept of cloning as a weapon. In order to make an army of clones, a country would have to impregnate a whole bunch of women, wait nine months, raise the babies, and then put them in boot camp training. Where exactly is the advantage over the ‘normal’ method of acquiring troops?

Also, cloning is a bit impractical for other reasons. First, it is expensive. It involves about the same procedure as artificial insemination, only they do a little surgery in the middle. Artificial insemination is not cheap, or terribly accurate, as it has only a 20% chance of success.

Suppose a country did try making an army of clones. There are at least three obvious problems with having a large number of individuals that are identical. First, if any of them are vulnerable to a given virus, they all are. Genetic diversity is what keeps plagues from wiping out the species. Second, identity issues. How are you going to tell these soldiers apart? Branding them might be effective, but won’t do much for morale. Third, who wants to hang around someone exactly like themselves? These soldiers would drive each other nuts! Think how irritating siblings can be, then picture a few hundred of them.

Ok, there are still the moral issues to discuss, right? Ok, what’s morally wrong about this form of genetic manipulation? Technology can’t make a clone even appear to be the same age as the original. I mean, nine years after cloning, you have the original subject, and a nine year old kid. Who, exactly, is going to get the two confused?

I’ve read a complaint that “only God should create life.” Well, technically, it’s copying, not creating, but that’s just quibbling. It is different from ‘normal’ conception, involving a surgery to change the genetic code. How, exactly, does this infringe on the almighty’s universal copyright? Last I checked, the big guy still had the final say on whether a life gets born or not. Of course, where exactly is it written, “thou shalt not mess with genetics?” Back when I was interested in religion, my copy of the Bible stopped a bit short.

The bottom line, for me, is that this is only really useful for producing identical twins, and we all know what the demand for another set of the Olsen twins has been, right?

Dan Nicholson

Sophomore

Pre-electrical engineering