There has been a silence on the subject for some time now, but once the next big discovery is made, the debate about cloning will once again be on. But is it unehtical? Or is it holy? Or absolutely horrible?
The most commonly known form of cloning is artificial cloning, which means that humans replicate an organism in the embryial stage or from the cells of an adult specimen to get an exact copy of the original, with identical DNA strings (think Dolly the sheep). Opinions about cloning are generally mixed to negative. I like the idea of cloning.
First, the cloning of animals. Animal rights activist often think the copying of animals equally unethical to the duplicating of humans (more on that later). These animals have already had their rights taken from them, however. Cows, sheeps and pigs on large farms often have no other purpose that to provide us with food (i.e. milk, meat and the like). If they are going to be steaks anyway, why not clone them to get even more steaks? If done right, these methods could greatly increase our food resources.
Then there are always people who will refuse to eat those steaks, simply because they are made artificially. This is a problem a lot of people seem to struggle with. To them artificially enhanced or duplicated food is apparently uneatable, tasteless and bad for your health. This "unreal" meat is still the same as the original. That is what cloning is all about: copying something to the DNA in it. You could say that there is no "original" and no "clone".
When talking about the cloning of humans, it is a different story though. Human clones will have the same feelings as their "originals". They will claim the same house, the same friends, the same life. It is possible to take the clones' memories away, but that would turn them into robots. And robots themselves are much more durable.
If it wasn't for the time it will take to perfect it, cloning would be a great idea. As long as we don't produce something too intelligent...
