Send in the clones 8.10.01

A subject on many people's minds this week is cloning, the process by which DNA can be taken from one person and used to create a genetically identical copy.
It freaks people out, quite frankly, to think that scientists might one day be able to make a copy of a human being just as easily as they Xerox dirty jokes around the office. "They're tampering in God's domain," the public cries. "It's just plain wrong or at least it feels pretty hinky when they make clones in all those science fiction movies."
Well, the truth is that cloning, while creepy, is no less creepy than many other scientific and medical advances we consider routine, but just don't worry about.
Personally, I find those potato/tomato plants disturbing. I mean, my God, it's tomatoes up top and potatoes down below all on the same plant! That's not according to God's plan. Who needs that anyway?
If you want tomatoes, plant tomatoes. If you want potatoes, buy them, they aren't worth planting.
I'm not a big fan of tangeloes either. You tell me oranges and tangerines were both lacking something so intangible that only combining the two could solve the problem? When you take two decent fruits and combine them into one mediocre fruit, that is not only bizarre, it is pointless as well. Why not combine bananas and strawberries into one perfect potassium rich super fruit. Makers of smoothies around the world will thank you for that one.
I don't remember seeing broccoflowers in the Bible anywhere either. Nor do I remember Jesus traipsing around Galilee with any number of the absolutely freaky varieties of dogs that exist today only because man decided to play God. I've seen all Jesus's movies - not one poodle.
No, chances are if we, as a race, were ever to anger God with our science, it happened when we split the atom just to make a bigger bomb. Tampering with the fabric of the universe to find a way to kill a lot more people faster strikes me as "on God's list of thou shalt nots" somehow.
People seem to pick and choose when they let things that may be immoral, unethical or against God's will affect them. Morality and ethics are complicated issues, after all.
Sometimes you fell like a nut, sometimes you don't.
God said "Be fruitful and multiply," but the caveat was "if you are able." If you want to breed and are unable to do so, you have my sympathy, but maybe that is just God's way of saying he doesn't think you should.
Fertility drugs bring hope to millions of infertile couples who turn around and pop out five, six or even seven babies. In a world of over 6 billion human beings, is it really wise to veto God by having a litter of humans?
Yet we routinely call that kind of tampering a miracle.
When I was a kid, if you got cancer, you died. Today, people beat cancer all the time. The same goes for any number of diseases and I am sure AIDS will be next on the hit list. Again, we call the scientifically derived cures miracles.
Some of these cures involve transplanting organs from one person to another, radiation, blood transfusion and technologies I could not begin to describe.
Stem cell research is the next huge step in curing everything from diabetes to Parkinson's Disease to paralysis. Can you imagine? Paralysis wasn't even on the list of hopefuls five years ago and now anything is possible.
We praise many of these cures and techniques that change our fates, fates God may or may not have had in store for us.
Telling God when you trump one of his decisions that it is a miracle sounds like sacrilege, but I don't think we should turn back the clock.
Why not just call these things what they are, man's attempt to do what he can to improve his quality of life and if that means cloning new organs instead of taking them from dead people, baboons or pigs, so be it.
Cloning is not Pandora's Box. If at some point cloning proves to be a bad idea, aspects of it can easily be banned.
Right now, the potential for human achievement is too great to be slamming the door on cloning.
But don't worry, no one is going to be making copies of you any time soon. Your genetic material is yours and that right extends to whatever person is created from your DNA. Mad scientists are not going to be creating armies of slaves to do their bidding and you can't be replaced by your clone even if people like him better than you.
There are already people running around with your DNA, they're called kids and chances are that even if you did make a clone of yourself, it would be as dissimilar from you as they are.
Because while scientists could copy you, they couldn't copy your life experience, education and memories. But give them a decade or two - anything's possible.
-Greg Jerrett is a Nonpareil staff writer. He can be contacted at 328-1811 Ext. 279 or by e-mail at gjerrett@nonpareilonline.com.