Going Extinct? Essay, Research Paper
How could cloning save a species from going EXTINCT?
It has been stated by many scientists, particularly those in the region of Japan, who believe that cloning could be used to save a species from extinction by cloning the dying members of the breed that is going extinct. However, this would pose several problems immediately.
The most apparent is that cloning is indeed a long way off (although our extinction is supposedly farther in time). Although no one knows when cloning will develop into a full-fledged success, most scientists believe that it is at least fifty years off. That’s really not that far away, but then again, it’s a minimum estimate based on very little substance.
The second is argued by ethicists when they say that cloning the dying members of a breed limits cultural and cell diversity. These select survivors would create a whole new population… but the new population would be based solely on their genetic code. This, in turn, would limit further [natural] offspring, and, consequently, the species, once fully restored, would have extremely limited genetic code in comparison to the wide array of it they had before their brush with oblivion.
This ties in with the third reason, which ethicists also argue about; whether it is morally and scientifically just to prolong a dying species through artificial implications. In general, this debate pertains not to all the creatures of Earth, but only us. Humans. Typical.
Ethicists say that if we begin to die out, it would be by the cause of natural evolution, and they state that it would be “wrong in every sense imaginable” to prolong our existence by cloning dying humans and restoring the population. They also revert to their previous arguement of limiting cultural and cell diversity. Scientists argue that, we, humans, are unique, in that we have such a high degree of consciousness, we WANT to survive, no matter what the consequences. And that’s true. We’ll do anything to stay alive, including limiting our genetic code, which is really a loss. But nowhere near as a bad as totally dying out. Scientists continue to defy ethicists’ outcries, saying that cloning may simply modify the evolutionary change imposed by Nature. They also maintain that cloning may come in handy if it is not evolution that endangers us, but ourselves. The general public seems to think that the human race will destroy itself through war (one atomic bomb dropped there, one hydrogen bomb there, and there goes the world, exploding each other to extinction) before evolution begins eliminating us. Thus, we could salvage the remains of the population after a mass war quickly through means of cloning. Ethicists again claim that in such a situation, one should allow the population to restore itself naturally over time.
The general public explains very little in their reasoning for this situation, but generally hoard themselves together with the ethicists and attack cloning for no reason they can legibly explain. The reason is undoubtedly the mass media, with their visions of Hitler armies and organ harvesting. The scientists hold their ground, but yet, they cannot proceed with the development of [human] cloning with such hysterics; arguement is useless if the situational basis for the argument will never arise.
But anyway, as you can probably deduce, I believe that cloning should be used to save a species from going extinct… as would any sane individual.
How Might cloning be used to further expand the organ donation program?
Organ donation is not so efficient at this point in time. It does help, but more often than not, it doesn’t. This is because there are a lot of factors that are taken into account when an organ is replaced with a donated one. If someone dies, and they have signed a paper allowing for their organs to be removed from their corpse and donated to needy people, and the needed organ proves to be healthy and working, and it matches the type of organ that is needed, and it is not rejected by the body of the receiver (which happens quite often), then things work out. If not, things just aren’t so dandy. And the fact that every second more people are born than people that die continues to limit the usefulness of this program. Cloning would undoubtedly remove all these factors, allow corpses to rot away instead of being ripped open, and save thousands, maybe even millions, of lives.
However, people don’t seem to agree.
Many ethicists (again!) and others worried about just how humane humans should be. Having so little reason they can use to prevent cloning, they resort to moaning and droning about organ harvesting.
Pathetic.
Simply pathetic.
“Organ harvesting”, as your favorite newspaper probably calls it, is an entirely fictional proceeding in which healthy, living clones are derived from a source (the source being a human, of course) who has a problem or deficiency in one of (insert unisex pronoun here) organs. This clone is then brutally murdered, and it is harvested for its convenient organs, which are used to replace the defective organs of the original.
I must agree that this doesn’t sound very nice.
But, more importantly, I must disagree by saying that this is not going to happen.
First of all, beginning to clone humans from other humans with impairments in their organs simply to patch up the source human and kill the fresh one, does not sound very realistic. It would never be allowed, except maybe in one of those unheard-of Third World countries in the remote parts of eastern Asia. And they already do nasty stuff there anyway.
Second of all, cloning, at least, if it is developed using the methods now being implemented, wi
My third reason is the easiest to reason with (reason… reason with??? Get it? Ha ha ha…); why would someone clone an entire human for organ extraction when one could simply clone just an organ? That makes sense, doesn’t it? I mean, scientists are not only cloning entire organisms, but, for those of you who have been living under a rock for the past few years, scientists are also proficiently cloning organs and organ tissue by keeping them inside select subjects (the “incubators”, as they like to call them). It’s just that you don’t hear about that because no one can find anything to argue against it with. And that’s true, isn’t it? Cloning organs isn’t a sin. Heck, it’s practically a good deed. And, for any extremely confused readers, organs do happen to have no self-generated intelligence, awareness, or consciousness of their existence. So it’s okay to clone them instead of entire humans and use them to replace defective organs .
Besides, we already have natural clones roaming around on Planet Earth. We call them “identical twins” (what a concept). They do have one difference from artificial clones, which is that they are both the same age, as a synthetic clone would start all over as a baby while his/her source human continued to age. But I really don’t see how this changes the ethical implications in any way. And, as far as I know, I have never seen or heard of one identical twin being harvested for organs to be used for the other (except in cannibalistic families, I guess).
So cloning would indeed dramatically improve the organ donation program beyond all imagination.
How can Cloning Improve Agriculture?
“I am hungry, but we have no food. Not my family, I mean. I’m talking about this town.”
-Anon
Visiting a primitive development in Northern Africa
Source = Anonymous Quotes- Volume II
People throughout the world are constantly starving. Not you, of course. But others like you. Even here in the US, we’ve got food problems. It’s not that we don’t have enough food, which is a huge problem in many other places, including portions of Africa, but we have those who just can’t afford it. And some of those “other places” not only don’t have enough food, they don’t have enough money to produce sufficient food even if they have the resources to do it.
Now, how could a very devoted hunger-prevention fanatic go about solving a problem of such enormity?
Well, there are many ways. Establishing farms, donating food, donating cash for others to use to buy food, etc…
But that barely helps the problem at all from a global perspective. So you delay fifty people from starving to death for a day or two. Big deal.
Well, there is a possible solution. And it comes from an unexpected place- science. The fact is, it comes from an even more unexpected place of science- cloning. “Cloning?!!” you exclaim, raving ludicrously. “What nonsense is this??”
It’s not nonsense. Nowadays, thanks to all the media, who know less about what they are talking about than the reader himself/herself and those stupid ethicists who have to keep a job somehow, when people hear the word cloning, they scream and shout and rave on about armies of Hitlers taking over the world. Well, cloning, believe it or not, is not a term that was developed just for application to the human race. It also refers to other living things, like plants, for example. I mention plants because they, along with trees, are the solution to the global hunger problem. So someone clones a weed. Wonderful. Just another small inconvenience added to the world. So someone clones a dandelion. Wonderful. Just another small enjoyment added to the world. So someone clones an apple tree. Big deal. Just a few more apples added to the world. So someone clones a thousand apple trees, bean plants, and corn stalks. Wonderful! Just a few hundred thousand more appetizing pieces of food added to the world…
See what I’m getting at? If we divert more private and federal funding to agricultural cloning research, we could, in a reasonable amount of time, develop a highly effective solution to the global hunger dilemma. And we could make farming and other agricultural processes far cheaper. This is because in this way plants and trees could quickly be mass produced and planted in places where there were hunger problems. This could also be done when planting crops, supposedly reducing agricultural costs, as mentioned above, and making the farmed food cheaper. This would allow people with financial difficulties to get more bang, er, I mean food, for the buck..
And what about meat? We all like that (vegetarians not included, of course). We all want that. But sometimes, that pre-cooked frozen duck is just too expensive for our liking. Well, it’s always too expensive for our liking, but sometimes it’s bearable, and sometimes, you decide to get the chicken livers in broth resting in aisle 3 instead. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could get that duck every day? Or how about being real cheap and being able to get a burger at half the price it costs now? A 99 cent BK cheeseburger now costs about 49 cents… Oh yay.
…Cloning does have its advantages, you see. And it appears ethicists can’t find anything to argue about yet in this topic area, yet still, progress is slow (if at all existent).
One must realize that this wouldn’t completely solve the problem (not that anything besides killing the starving people really could), but it would help TREMENDOUSLY…