From Clones to Libertarianism

I started today by meeting Mary for breakfast. We continued a discussion started yesterday about cloning. More specifically, she had asked me what all the fuss was about and why it seemed that everyone opposed it. Good questions, but of course I had no answers, so I did a little digging and found that it is indeed a complex topic.

What she was seeing I believe is the “general public” and its knee jerk reaction to the idea of cloning. The man on the street only knows cloning through science fiction, and it’s always a Bad Thing in the movies. “Attack of the Clones”, “Stepford Wives”, “Boys from Brazil” and “Jurassic Park”. How many of those films leave you with warm fuzzies when it comes to cloning?

Immediately following the man on the street come the politicians. George W. calling for a ban on all cloning, and cloning research for crying out loud.

The academics seem to be divided only on when cloning should be done, not necessarily if it should be done.

And the religious folks of course consider cloning to be playing god, as if god had nothing at all to do with human beings learning how to clone.

I’ll try and keep you posted on where this all leads. The interesting thing is that at some point I took a little quiz that determined that I’m actually a dead-center Libertarian. (Not a Liberal, that’s something else entirely of course).

Something to think about.