Copyright 2001 The Columbus Dispatch Columbus
Dispatch (Ohio)
July 17, 2001, Tuesday
SECTION: EDITORIAL & COMMENT, Pg. 8A
LENGTH: 187 words
HEADLINE:
MISCONCEPTIONS LEAD TO FEARS OF HUMAN CLONING
BODY: Cloning whole beings for organ harvesting is
fine for science and apocalyptic Christian or Muslim fiction. In real life,
however, it is most unlikely.
If an adult needs a new
liver, kidney or heart, can that person really wait the 15 or so years needed
for a clone to grow to the age where his organs are large enough to support the
patient's needs? Clones don't grow any faster than normal people and, if they
did, then I doubt that a person would want their rapidly aging organs.
As for genetic engineering, why should we fear it any more
in clones than in the in- vitro and in-vivo engineering that we will eventually
employ?
In the end, some mediocre reasons exist for
cloning a person and a very few good ones. If we can bring birth-defect rates
below their occurrence in normal conception -- remember, an estimated 50 percent
of conceptions result in spontaneous abortions -- then we should accept it as
the very expensive and rather eccentric extension of normal conception that it
is.
After all, a clone is not its original and, in the
end, a baby is a baby is a baby.
Document 507 of 750. 