It’s been three years since the birth of Dolly, the world’s first successfully cloned animal. The announcement of her birth brought about much ado and sparked many debates concerning the morality of cloning. In the three years since Dolly was created, the debate over cloning has swelled and receded, but has never been put to rest. A compelling issue that has come into focus in the past several years is the idea of human cloning. Many scientists believe that it is inevitable because the technology is there, and anything that can be done eventually will be done. They preach the value of human clones, dropping phrases like ‘cure for disease’ and ‘prolonged life’ to entice the public into supporting their cause. Though these concepts seem beguiling, the notion of human cloning, when looked at as a whole, has serious repercussions and should not be entertained lightly.From a strictly scientific point of view, we are just not ready to attempt the cloning of a human being. Our scientific knowledge of cloning has been compared to Mr. Ford’s knowledge of the automobile just after the introduction of the Model A. The dangers of producing human clones with disabilities and disfigurements are high because of our low level of understanding of cloning and of human genetics in general. Even if the probabilities of disfigurement were low, human cloning could not be justified. What rationalization could be given to a child who would spend the rest of his life in horrible disfigurement? Even one person forced to spend his life in pain should be reason enough to avoid human cloning.An area that has apparently been overlooked by the scientific community in their race for the gold is world population. This is an issue that they have been screaming over for years, and yet scientists are looking the other way where the issue of cloning is involved. Many countries are overflowing with people, and the United S...
