Friday, April 11, 2008

Are Designer Humans in Our Future?

Blog 11 Draft
James Hamblin

With great power comes great responsibility. In our ever changing world we are once again challenged to become more than we were before. Throughout history we have continually discovered new things which we must first learn to wield and then master. The invention of the automobile propelled our civilization into a new era, with it came the added responsibility to provide for our health. Guns allow us to ponder personal freedom issues, while planes question our security. On and on our journey goes and now we ponder the question, should we create life itself?

The science of cloning has made leaps and bounds. Starting with in vitro fertilization, then gene mapping, we have gained the tools necessary to make copies of living beings(Stock). If we, as a world community, decide to travel down this road, what exactly will cloning do for us? Cloning may give us the ability to not only make copies of ourselves, but may allow us to clone specific organs as well. Many people may consider these things good in certain situations, unfortunately every good side has a bad as well. Consider if you will, the dangers we now face with overpopulation or infectious disease. Cloning may help us to alleviate these problems but it could aggravate them as well.

Therefore I believe it would be best to weigh our options carefully. In our advanced society we embrace every new toy that comes along, half of the time we don’t even wait for the paint to dry. The truth is, every new idea or invention is usually utilized by our world in some way. For better or worse, cloning is here to stay. Therefore it would be in our best interest if we traveled down this road slowly, before we do something that we can’t un-due.


Work Cited

Stock, Gregory. "The Last Human." Goshgarian, Gary. What Matters in America. New York: Pearson Educational, Inc., 2007. 227-233

No comments: