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Illegal Beings: Human Clones
The Real Clone Wars
SC ( 10/15/2003, 03:49:27 )Ever see the Star Trek episode with the holodeck gangster who is always polite to people before he shoots them? It's okay to apologise, and I have certainly traded words with plenty of people who are far less agreeable than you. However, I wasn't looking for an apology so much as an explanation, because it could shed a lot of light on why people talk about cloning the way they do. For the most part, people's stated "reasons" to be against cloning are quite irrational. It's very hard to get at the root of what is really bothering them, either because they keep their real motivations hidden (perhaps out of shame or concern for their privacy), or because they just don't know themselves. If you can discover what it truly is that makes you afraid of cloning, you may be able to help a lot of people who feel the same way.When I was in junior high school, another boy in my grade suddenly picked a fight with me. He had never shown any signs of liking me or disliking me before. Our gym teacher stopped the fight before anyone was hurt, and talked to us afterward, but couldn't learn any reason why the other boy had started it. When I told my parents about it, however, they told me that the other boy's father had just died. I think there a lot of people like that boy.Erin, when you talked about losing your uncle and then said that your message had nothing to do with cloning, I think you really showed what's missing in the debate. If someone close to you has just died, and research related to cloning could have saved him, that has everything to do with it! Your feelings about your uncle are definitely important.Currently, there's ultimately little we can do to fight death. Somehow, when people object to cloning, I think there's often a voice inside them saying "I've suffered a terrible loss, or I will someday, and I may not have the best method of coping with it, but it's all I've got, and you want to take it away from me!"The problem with this sort of defense mechanism is that it keeps people from coping with their grief in more effective ways, such as sharing it with other people and working to see that they and other people will not have to suffer the same way again.In "Attack of the Clones," the movie makers induce fear in their audience by presenting Anniken and the audience with a false lack of choice. No one ever points out that a civilisation that had perfected cloning could also use it to preserve and restore life, including the life of Anniken's mother. So Anniken is shown as believing, and we are expected to believe with him, that he and his mother are more vulnerable than they should be, and that if he loses her, no one will ever love him again. That leads to fear, and you probably know what Yoda said about fear. That much of the movie I agree with.Ironically, the fear generated by the movie has indeed led to anger, hatred, and suffering. Star Wars is more fantasy than science fiction; technology is put into the movie to make dazzling special effects, rather than to show what the most likely version of the future will be. Space travel is more likely to be achieved by living long enough to travel great distances, rather than by building hyperspace vehicles. A clone army is visually impressive, but it would be easily defeated in real life (ignoring, for the moment, that it would be too expensive to create in the first place). Once you knew how to defeat one cloned soldier, you could defeat all the rest the same way. For instance, a biological warfare team could design a virus to work specifically against one person and nobody else, let it loose among the army, and kill all of them with no damage to civilians. Any group of people that works as a team derives strength not only from a common sense of purpose but from diversity, from a combination of different strengths, skills, interests, and personalities. The Star Wars clones wouldn't make a good team because they were made from one bounty hunter who preferred to work on his own.You have mentioned overpopulation as an issue, but cloning is unlikely to overpopulate the world, not so much because living longer would make it easier to travel to other planets, but because the longer people expect to live, the fewer children they have. The vast majority of the world's children are born in the poorest countries, where there is no social security system to take care of people in their old age. If these people didn't have to worry about growing old with no one to care for them, they wouldn't have children.Being afraid that cloning will cause overpopulation is one way in which people are less than heroic. In Star Wars, as in many other stories, the basis of the hero principle is that the hero is successful when he realises that in order to help himself, he must help others as well. Heroes fail when they think only of themselves. As far as cloning is concerned, this tendency manifests itself when people condemn cloning, when they condemn cloning while researching how to do it themselves, or when they say, "I approve of the sort of cloning that will be of benefit to me." In other words, people are saying, "Cloning is right for me but wrong for you."This sort of denial of other people's right to exist is exactly what the real clone wars are all about. Once cloning becomes possible, it's no longer necessary to send out an army to kill your enemies. All you have to do is secretly develop cloning for yourself, use it to lengthen your lifespan, keep your enemies from doing the same thing, and wait for them to die. The powers who are manipulating public opinion against cloning, even while some of them are engaging in cloning research are, in essence, waging war on humanity. They will ultimately lose, but in the meantime, the number of casualties could make this war of words the most costly in human history.There are too many otherwise good people who oppose cloning for me to believe that they are all aiding "the dark side" on purpose. There are definitely a few who have done the full Vader, but almost all them are probably Annikens.Unfortunately, whether people are vicious or afraid, vital research is still being held back. There comes a time when attacking something that could save millions of lives and then apologising afterwards just isn't good enough anymore. When public opinion finally turns, the people who live long enough to see the results of the research they fought against are going to have a tough time living with themselves, not to mention the people they tried to hurt and destroy.If you are really thirteen, John, you're going to have to live with yourself, and people like libfemme, for a long time. People have wanted to live longer since before the pyramids were built, and one way or another, they'll find a way to do it.
This Message is being posted for educational purposes, as well as for comment and criticism, by the visitors to the HumanCloning.org Foundation website (www.HumanCloning.org ).
Disclaimer: Information provided on this web site is for educatonal purposes only. It is not a substitute for, nor can it replace advice from your own physician.
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