Hair Today, Clone Tomorrow

I know all of my readers are waiting with baited breath to find out what I think of cloning.

I caught a little round table discussion on PBS last night and was disappointed to find that that Viera woman from "The View" was on it. I've never understood what she has to offer, but hey, the opinion of regular people is good to hear, too. Seemed that everyone agreed that cloning wouldn't be offered to the average joe who loses a child or can't get pregnant in the near future, but it would someday be a possibility. When the scenario was given to Viera that her child had died and the doctor made the offer of cloning, she responded with the reasonable "Why couldn't we just adopt?" to which some lunkhead said, "But why should you have to?" Aaargh! What a dork.

My take is this: cloning, like in vitro fertilization before it, is unnatural. If you can't get pregnant the old-fashioned way, that's nature's way of balancing. Nature's trying to tell you to adopt, take care of the excess offspring that the overly fertile can't care for. It seems basic to me. Too bad if you can't find a sweet little blond haired, blue eyed baby who looks like your husband. If the only reason you want to have a baby is to continue your bloodline, and you can't do it naturally, nature doesn't want your bloodline. I would think that in an age where bloodline is actually less important that it's ever been, people would be more prone to adopt. If you must have a little baby, get a doll. Raising children shouldn't be a selfish endeavor. Unless you need farmhands, of course. That's a completely different story. Maybe it's my total lack of a maternal instinct working here, but I just don't get why people are so het up about having babies. Yes, it's important to populate (to some extent), but if you can't do it, there are plenty of children who need to be cared for and saved from a life of sociopathic behavior.

Clones are just twins who aren't born at the same time. I think we can all agree that twins are in themselves an aberration, but one that usually turns out okay (except in the case of conjoined twins, which I think proves the aberration theory). Now, an aberration is not necessarily negative, but it's not the optimal result. With fertility drugs and treatments, women are having litters, and not even through cell division, but through multiple embryos. That's just twisted. Of course, I'm also squicked out by organ transplants, so maybe my view is skewed.

To sum up, I'm against human cloning (as I am against in vitro fertilization and other fertility treatments), but I'm also against legislation against it, because I can't see how it could hurt anyone except for the parents and the clone. These kinds of medical issues (read: reproductive issues) shouldn't be legislated as they have less impact on society than they do on personal family dynamics. Genetic selection is a different story, and that just freaks me out. If people start creating more babies that are "perfect," those who aren't will be unjustly persecuted. That's a societal issue and it should be addressed by the government in some way, though I'm not quite sure how at this point. Make sense?