This letter is in response to the Jan. 21 article in the opinion page of this newspaper entitled “Cloning: Technology taken too far.” What sort of ridiculous tripe are you people pushing? Whoever wrote this article showed complete ignorance in many areas including, but not limited to, science, economics and military logistics. For instance, the aforementioned article stated that human cloning would lead to, among other things, “armies of identical Iraqis,” “thousands of famine-stricken children” and “pseudo-people.”

Scenario one, suppose Saddam somehow obtained the technology to clone himself up a hundred of murderous soldiers. Suppose he was even able to get ahold of the DNA of O.J. Simpson. It still wouldn’t get him anywhere. All he would end up with, assuming he could pull it off, is a hundred babies who would, in about 25 years or so, grow up to physically resemble The Juice, and probably would not have desires to murder Ron Goldman, much less anyone else. They would not be blood-thirsty soldiers unless they were trained to be. It would be far more efficient for Saddam to train adults who already exist to be his soldiers. We should be more afraid of his chemical and biological weapons, which are a real threat to human well-being and not some cheesy B-grade sci-fi fantasy that some silly, silly people believe in because they don’t know any better.

As for “famine-stricken children,” remember that cloning is a science-intensive procedure that can only be done in a laboratory. People will not, repeat, will not go running around cloning themselves all willy-nilly.

Human cloning (if it ever becomes possible) will be labor intensive, and extremely expensive. Thousands of starving children will certainly not be produced in the near future (at least not through cloning.)

Finally, clones will be just as human as the rest of us. People who think otherwise do not understand what “cloning” truly is. Human cloning (again, if it ever becomes reality) will simply produce babies who are genetic clones of other people. These “clones” will grow and develop on their own (like we all have) and have their own thoughts, feelings and ideas.

They, much like the “identical” twins that are commonplace today, will be as independent and unique as the rest of us who are not members of the greek system (joke).

In the end, I predict that human cloning will end up being just another way for rich, silly people to reproduce. People will calm down about cloning once they realize that it’s really not all that exciting.

So please, to the editors of this paper, read up and do your homework before you start making fantastic claims about the evils of medicine and science.

That kind of sensationalist journalism belongs in the supermarket tabloids alongside stories about carnivorous cabbages and Elvis clones who eat silly newspaper editors.

Elton Wong

Freshman

Philosophy and pre-med