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Tuesday, January 21, 2003

Unethics Of Cloning
So what's wrong with cloning? Lot of things. To clone a person, from genetic point of view, is to like learning absolutely nothing from your experiences. It's an effective stop to evolution of a living being. But fortunately, the Vatican church and many other religious people don't have to exercise with reasoning. Their objection to cloning and almost everything else could be put in same old one liner: It's unethical. But why cloning scares lots of people? Imagine, what if you and me could be mass-produced like TV sets in your home? What if we are not really more then complex bio-chemical machines made out of organic mater that could be just as easily produced in factory? Will clone's soul too be mass-produced? Could clone be considered as rebirth of some other person 50 years ago? Would s/he have rebirth? And what about his or her sins? And can clone go to heaven or hell? Apparently religions all over the world are going have tough time again to re-align themselves with reality. But what if we, as Bible says the one who would rule over everything that moves on land, water and sky, are not really the center of the universe? For fans of historical scientific stories this is nothing new. In 1600s, The Catholic Church had put Galileo in the court for making announcement that the Earth is not really at the center of universe. It was shocking that nothing really revolves around us except poor old moon. Finally Galileo decided to concede rather the church burn him for making entire human race so insignificant. It was funny though when I saw a press release few years back when Vatican publicly apologized to Galileo for that 300 year old mistake. Apparently Bible was easier to bend then truth. And as far as I can see, time is coming back with more dosage of insignificancy. This century is going to be the century of genetics and artificial intelligence. These are the two fields that's still unexplored and where growth is raging at exponential rates. Both have possibilities to come up with better "beings" then we are, of course you can't afford to say that publicly. Just like Galileo's announcement, it's socking and "unethical". May be that's impossible or may be that's what evolution destined to or may be we would be end up being a father of smarter kids. But this time the things that should move out of the center seems to be us rather then Earth. And I just keep wishing if I could be just as blunt all mighty Q when he tells Pickard, "you are not that significant".