The human race came one step closer to disaster last May. Many of you probably missed the news.

No, it wasn’t the discovery of another lethal virus, the manufacturing of more nuclear weapons or another environmental disaster.

This time it was something that will create thousands of new lives. Something that should be celebrated, not condemned. Yet, the fact still remains that the news is not entirely good.

Last May, a baby girl was born. This should surprise no one. Babies are born every day.

But this infant girl is different than all of the rest. She is the result of a cloning procedure designed to cure infertility.

I’m not going to describe this process in great detail. Part of this is because I don’t have a firm understanding of the various factors involved. After all, I’m majoring in psychedelics and anarchy, not genetics.

The procedure, to make a very complicated process rather brief, involves taking cytoplasm from a donor and layering it with genetic information.

This data is used to give an embryo its parents’ characteristics. The embryo is, for all effects, a clone because of its genetic manufacturing.

Why would I consider this to be bad news? Biological laws dictate that only a certain amount of living things can be sustained by the resources in their environment.

This is known as a species’ carrying capacity. The circumstances that enact the carrying capacity are called limiting factors.

Humankind constantly has battled its own carrying capacity and limiting factors. Whether it is a disease like the black plague running rampant across Europe, the challenge of relocation or trying to produce enough food to feed the entire population, humankind has always triumphed.

The discovery of agriculture, the ability to adapt to numerous environments, the medical revolution and the development of new fuel sources are just a few of many ways that humankind has learned to bypass its carrying capacity.

But our own existence is quickly becoming challenged.

There are currently more than 7.5 billion people living on Earth. Judging by the current growth ratio, that number will more than double in the next 25 years.

This signals the beginning of a very large problem. The governments of the world already cannot feed, provide adequate housing or allocate proper health care for all of their people. Only 10 percent of Earth’s surface is currently available for human life.

Once the population doubles, or perhaps even before then, our carrying capacity will be reached, and more limiting factors will set out to reduce our population. This could be the result of AIDS, ebola, cancer or the common cold. Or, it could be a damaged environment that ultimately does us in.

Not that it truly matters. The challenge is not guessing how we will be destroyed. There are too many possibilities.

The true challenge is trying to prevent as many as possible from ever occurring.

This means further advancing medical expertise to include cures for AIDS, ebola, cancer and other viruses and illnesses. It means we must safeguard ourselves against environmental disasters.

We must build our food reserves for the day when we can no longer get food. We also must limit human reproduction.

This has become a fairly common practice in foreign countries. For example, China has strict control over how a couple can conceive and the number of children they can raise. Birth control is mandatory and provided by the government.

But government regulations create problems in and of themselves. It instills within the population a distrust for their rulers.

It also raises the question of how much control over population governments should be allowed to wield. Is it morally right for anyone to tell you that you cannot have children?

So other avenues must be investigated.

Some people believe that the Mars exploration may hold the answer. If we can somehow change the red planet’s environment so it is hospitable to humankind, we might be able to colonize the planet and thus reduce Earth’s population.

However, this would probably take too long. In all actuality, it is too late for a lot of things. But we cannot just stand still and bemoan our upcoming fate of death and destruction.

We must start planning today.

That is why I don’t consider a cure of infertility as something to cheer about.

It is nice that a lot of men and women who couldn’t have children before now will have the opportunity. But they have to realize they are signing humankind’s death warrant in the process.

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Ben Jones is a sophomore in English from Des Moines.