Cloning: The wave of our future

The future is here, and quite frankly, I'm a little disappointed. It's 2001 and things haven't turned out for mankind as I'd hoped. Don't get me wrong, I couldn't care less about flying cars and meals in pills, but I do want to know what went wrong. I was supposed to be driving around in a hot rod, wearing dirty leather pants, eating dog food out of a can and shooting motorcycle gangs over gasoline. Where's the bleak future I was promised?\nI think it's obvious I'm a pessimist. There are those who say the glass is half full, those who say the glass is half empty, and then there's me, who'll drink what's left and then smash the glass over your head. It's because I'm such a deep cynic that I spent my elementary and high school years stockpiling dog food and rolling around in the back yard, shooting at targets with a semi automatic. \n"Suckers," I'd say to the kids who studied, "don't you know the commies are gonna start a nuclear war, and in the aftermath the only way to survive will be to wear cool black clothes and shoot everybody you meet on the this wasteland we will call Earth? Ha, ha, ha, what good will your GPAs do you then?" \nI didn't get laid a lot in high school.\nDespite the "election" of George W. Bush (It's just as well; Al Gore might very well have become the first president to be assassinated by a woodpecker.), it has dawned on me that we're probably not going to have utter anarchy for a while. But that doesn't mean we don't have "futuristic" issues to deal with. The most explosive of these issues has to do with cloning and the fears that come with the possibility of creating human clones.\nPeople worry that cloning technology will be used for bad purposes. My response to this is -- yeah, it probably will. But, what other type of new technology has mankind come up with that hasn't been used for bad purposes? Cloning will likely be a tremendous help to many people -- amputees, for example -- but that's not to say the government won't try to make cloned and programmed soldiers for war. Folks, if there is ever another big war in which the United States is involved, you'd better believe we will throw every bit of new technology at the enemy, regardless of ethics. Every country has done it in every war. Still, I believe many of the fears regarding cloning are overwrought at best.\nSome are afraid of the creation of a "worker class" of clones, like the ones in Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World," where the author envisioned a future in which mindless and expressionless workers are grown in labs and forced to wear khaki to distinguish themselves. \nI wonder if he ever stood outside the Kelley School of Business. \nAnyway, this won't happen, simply because it's not good for the economy. We're still a democracy, and people will get upset if they lose their jobs to worker clones. In fact, the same argument will be true for the military, as well. It makes no sense to have a standing army of clones that take jobs from other military personnel. The economy and its fragile inner clockwork will handle most of these problems and fears associated with cloning. \nPeople were upset when Copernicus claimed that the Earth revolved around the sun. Some of the great minds of the 19th century worried that if a human being traveled faster than 30 miles per hour in a car, his blood might boil. There is a long precedent of fear of new technologies. \nWe as humans like to think there is something special about us. We like to think the act of sexual reproduction has some sort of significance in our lives. So the question of whether cloned individuals will have a soul comes up, but it's unfounded.\nWe will clone people. Scientists have never found a way to do something that they haven't done, but don't worry. The first time a cloned person picks up a pen or a paintbrush, and articulates what it is like to be a cloned person, then we'll all get our humanity back. There is more to human beings than cells and DNA; most scientists don't understand that. They spend so much time staring at the tiny building blocks of human cells that they miss the point. It's like going to the Sistine Chapel and examining the carpet fibers in the lobby. \nWe're all going to be fine. Well, except for me. What am I going to do with all this dog food and these leather pants?