I would like to respond to the article by Ben Jones in the Jan. 22 issue of the Daily entitled, “Playing God with human life.” I would like to point out just a few factual and logical problems I had with the article.

First, Mr. Jones asked, “Who would have thought one hundred years ago that every member of humankind would be able to travel [in cars]?” Perhaps the several people who were already manufacturing automobiles by this time would have come up with this one. Mr. Jones goes on to accuse Albert Einstein of “creating a weapon so powerful that it could destroy every living thing on Earth…” Albert Einstein, to my knowledge, never created anything of the sort,or even conceived of that application of his famous equation.

Mr. Jones then writes this sentence: “Recently, a physicist named Richard Seed announced that he could clone human sheep[sic].” Is he referring to geneticist Dr. Ian Wilmut, who cloned Dolly the sheep, or Richard Seed, the Chicago doctor who announced that he plans to pursue human cloning?

The logic of Mr. Jones’ argument betrays the fact that he has little understanding of what a “clone” really is; perhaps he would have benefited from reading the letter above his article on the same page. To refresh him, I will explain again. Clones could be best likened to identical twins; while they have exactly the same genetic material, they are still separate entities with distinct personalities and souls. Clones would be no less human than identical twins. Another problem with Mr. Jones’ and the Daily’s word pictures of the menacing clones: If an “evil scientist” (as all scientists and people with outstanding intellects are indeed evil and should be feared) were to clone himself, the clone would not be the same age! It would take 20 years to grow an adult clone, and by that time, Dr. Evil is no longer a spring chicken himself.

These two contradictory statements are made in different parts of his article:

“I can only think of one good reason why we should clone human beings — to create a stockpile of good organs to replace failing ones in humans,” and “They [evil scientists] could use these clones for testing various products that the … FDA won’t allow to test on regular humans.” Why is one use different than the other? What makes one a good idea and the other an evil scientific plot?

Mr. Jones feels that having clones would “introduce new stereotypes into our society.” The only reason clones would be discriminated against would be because of the misleading propaganda the media (including Mr. Jones) is trying to trick us into believing with statements like “…cloning is an idea sent directly from Satan.”

Jill Bigley

Sophomore

Computer engineering