Cloning Charles Darwin Believed That All Organisms,

Cloning Charles Darwin believed that all organisms, including human beings, evolved from a single life form (Darwin 1982) and that each organism's traits varied and passed on from parent to offspring in an accidental, environmental and non-determined way called natural selection. He believed that such traits depended more on environmental than sexual factors and that these traits passed on if they were better suited for survival and successful reproduction.

Through this process, he viewed that original or "maladaptive" traits progressively disappeared as descendants replaced those unfit to survive, thus the selective advantage of traits that could suit environment change. Darwin's theory of evolution was and has been the most widely accepted explanation among many. But German Fuhrer Adolph Hitler believed that nature should not be allowed to proceed aimlessly (1996) but that a particular human stock, called the Aryan race, should be protected from infiltration by inferior strains (Mein Kampf 1933).

He pointed to the contamination of the once-pure blood of the Aryans as the cause of the decay and fall of great civilizations in history and that only this race deserved to be cultivated and protected and had the right to endure (Hitler). His mad idea was the basis for the abominable Holocaust, which temporarily passed out with the termination of the regime.

But the duplication of the first sheep, Dolly, through the new technology, called cloning, in 1999 strongly hinted that human beings could and would be cloned next in another mad man's attempt to realize Hitler's dream. Even then, the market for human clones appeared broad and attractive, especially of human parts would be frozen and cloned only after a lapse years from the donor's death (Dixon 1995) to avoid moral, social and legal complications.

What was a nightmare years back could be the precise solution to incurable diseases, injuries and defects that modern science has only imperfectly handled. More and more parents are taking the option to clone their offspring in guaranteeing that their child would have the desirable level of intelligence, freedom or immunity from genetic disorder, and other disabilities, which they would otherwise inherit through the wayward process of natural selection. Because of its novelty and Hitler's scare, the new technology is not getting understood as it should be.

Genetic engineering is tomorrow's science today and genetic engineers assure worrying sectors that cloning human beings would not entail technical difficulties, as Dolly's experiment success demonstrated in 1996. Whatever difficulties that stand on the way of evolving science in seeking out answers to questions and solutions to newly evolving problems, all trends point in the direction of cloning. Cloning is most tempting in the field of body transplants, although many people may still feel some objection to it for moral reasons.

But defects, accidents and disease continue to point in that clear direction and modern research sustains it. When a particular body organ is transplanted a new body or environment, the cells in the cloned part would begin to recognize their new environment and become more specialized (Dixon). Parents with a history of kidney defects or ailments could decide to submit the mother's fertilized egg for treatment in a laboratory and have it develop into a perfect, kidney disease-free body.

One way is to collect aborted fetuses in a container and to surgically take from them organs and tissues for transplanting to those who need them. Hospitals and clinics, especially abortion clinics, can be contacted or tied-in for these fetuses, for a worthy cause. One thing to remember about obtaining and transplanting spare body parts for defective or severed parts is that transplants can succeed only if these are available at the precise time of the accident or surgery (Dixon) and if these "replacements" work after attachment or transplant.

Many people succumb to kidney, heart or other organ failure because replacements are unavailable at that precise time. The needed organ or tissue must be attached to the diseased or severed part instantaneously and two surgical teams are needed to perform the exchange between two persons - the donor and the recipient - in two adjacent operating rooms (Dixon). Many attempts of this kind fail despite the utmost care when the donated organ dies from loss of circulation or contamination before being attached to the new body (Dixon).

Live kidney transplants, in particular, have highly specific technical and medical requirements. Despite persistent scares and technical failures and difficulties, experiments and research on cloning, using aborted fetal body parts, continue in recent years, especially in the management or treatment of patients with severe combined immunodeficiency disease, a genetic condition that affects only a particular body part. It is not like AIDS. The transplants used are pieces of liver and parts of the bone marrow. In treating the George Syndrome, the transplants come from the thymus gland.

Transplants are also used in treating other immunodeficiency disorders involving blood cell production and metabolic conditions. When transplants fail, that body part can b cloned. There are more and more records of human babies being cloned under the strictest conditions and with the cooperation of a surrogate mother. Many problems still confronted today can be addressed with a greater understanding of how genes operate. Genetic engineering involves the environment in the activity as much as it is involved in natural selection (Institute of Philosophy and Public Policy 1999).

Simplest traits, like height and hair color, are environmentally determined and genetic researchers assure that the passing on of human values, such as intellectual and moral values, is as limited and as indirect in the natural environment as it is when the offspring is cloned (IPPP). Persistent objections to human cloning do not emanate from its failures but precisely from its successes.

Those who oppose it fear that cloned products or by-products would be morally wrong creatures or would be wronged morally (IPPP), if not deprived of the right to an open future like those reproduced naturally. They fear that an imitation child would be often compared with a natural one and that the "duplicated" creature could have only artificial and limited potentials.

The cloned child himself (herself or itself) may be tormented by the realization or awareness of being "only cloned" and thus not develop that sense of worth and self-esteem needed in life. Or else, cloning by itself is viewed as a cruel option. But these can be contained. A cloned child's self-perception can be developed from its cloning parent. It can learn about its family's medical history and, from there, fashion its own future quite the same way its natural siblings would or can.

Its knowledge or understanding of its environment can be as limited or expansive as that of siblings as well. And the fear that parents of a cloned child would go through some suffering in that kind of awareness does not seem to be reason enough not to go.