Clones

I’ve followed the clone thing for a number of years, actually since the first in-vitro baby, Emily (?) Steptoe about 25 years ago.  Apparently she’s perfectly normal, but at the time, ethicists and scientists were all concerned that she would be odd, or misshapen and have an extraordinary fear or affinity for Pyrex glassware.  

None of the those things turned out to be true.  This clone baby is merely an extension of in-vitro fertilization, except there was no sexual reproduction involved: Nobody laid back on one elbow and said “ahhhhhhh”. 

Dairy cows, who must be pregnant in order give milk, never really get the business end of the bull in most commercial herds.  Oestrus and Insemination are commercial tasks handled by medical intervention and we get cheese out the other end of the concept. 

Same with Genetically Modified Organisms.  Humans have been doing this for thousands of years.  Your tomato on your sandwich at noon is a hybrid, a cross-breed of taste, durability, ripening and ship-ability.  The great, Canadian McIntosh Apple is a GMO.  The Mac does NOT exist in nature. Red Durum Wheat is a hybrid that does not exist in nature.  For that matter, all dogs are hybrids, bred for hunting, retrieving, or companion animals.  So the GMO concept is just a more commercialized version of what we’ve been doing all along.

Cloning, as best I can tell, from the pure science side of the subject, is really just plant grafting with a little more control and some closer monitoring of what will come out the other side.  Reducing the chance of an odd hybrid, so to speak.

Ethically?  Well, that’s a later  post….