Dodger Logic: #24: Does That Sheep Have Three Heads???

A lot of people say genetic engineering is defying God. I guess I won't worry about arguing for or against that, even though that's a legitimate argument. I mean, I'm not so much for all of today's technology that makes us lazy and unhealthy, but that's not my huge concern with genetic engineering.

What is genetic engineering for? Its purposes include medicine, research, food, etc. Obviously, genetic engineering is doing a lot of good, in that it creates a lot of medicines and vaccines that protect us today. It's the reason we can take a virus, kill it, and put it into a vaccine, so that our body will get used to figuring out how to kill the virus, in case the live virus ever invades the body. But there are controversial issues with genetic engineering. For instance, some people are against cloning. Cloning is not what people make it out to be; actually, it is not the creation of the exact same animal just by waving a laser beam around. No, it's more scientific than that, so don't get too excited. What scientists do is take the DNA from the original animal, modify it, and take bits and pieces of the original DNA, put the DNA into a surrogate animal, and have that animal give birth to the cloned animal that will have DNA that is identical to the original animal. However, the two animals will not look exactly alike or be the same physically; they will simply contain the same DNA. I've included a visual to help explain at the end of this note. It's picture #4 below. Dolly, the sheep (picture #7 below,) was the first mammal to be successfully cloned; however, bacteria, plants, and insects were the first things to be cloned. Since then, the Philippines has supposedly cloned a water buffalo, and I'm pretty sure we may have cloned some more mammals. We have used cloning for medicinal purposes (in particular, stem cell research, which has contributed to curing diseases,) and for food.

Yes, that's right. Genetic engineers genetically modify our food; they clone meat, and it is FDA approved to serve that food to us. It sounds like a good idea, right? That way, we can produce way more food, without killing off so many animals. Well, not really, because the actual meat isn't cloned; the animals are the ones that are cloned, and then the meat is taken from the animals and used for food. The "Compassion in World Farming" group says farmers get to pick their strongest, fastest-growing animals, and then they clone those, so that they have the best animals to sell for food. Well, these cloned, strong, fast-growing animals are also the animals that are the most highly susceptible to disease and health issues. Remember how everyone always says you should never have a kid with your cousin, or the baby will come out with crazy mutations? Well, that pertains to cloned animals, as well, since they have the tampered-with DNA of another animal. So these cloned animals are susceptible to disease, which is torturous to the cloned animals. This is because the animals are often "pushed to their physical limits" (direct quote from http://www.ciwf.org.uk/). Picture #6 below is a picture of a couple of cloned mice, once of which ended up with a crooked tail. The cloning was done in an experiment to cure Parkinson's Disease. More than this cruelty, consuming animals that are diseased can be dangerous for humans. (There are also some other health-related issues that people have with genetically modified food.) So now we have issues of health for humans and health for animals.

So cloning may not actually be the healthiest or safest (for humans and animals) form of food production. It's great for the mass meat production industry, because it helps create more food in a smaller amount of time, to keep up with the growing population of hungry, fat Americans. But you all should know, by now, if you've read my notes, how I feel about the mass meat production industry. Genetic engineering seems to have done a lot for medicine, which is great, but maybe it's best that we stay away from genetically modifying our food.
On another related note, if anyone wants to make a clone of me, so that I can hang out with my friends, while my clone does my school work, please name a price.

On yet another related note that is actually serious, there's this movie about clones called "Never Let Me Go." It was pretty good, but I was more interested in the scientific and social questions that the movie raises. For all you Kiera Knightley fans out there, she's in the movie, so maybe that will make you want to see it. Anyway, the movie is about 3 kids who are raised in a special school and are not allowed to ever leave. They don't know their parents, because they don't have any. Well, not really. They have an "original." They were cloned after real human beings and sent to a school to grow up until their bodies were ready to donate their vital organs to "real" people who need them in order to survive. So they go through usually 3 donations before they "complete" or die. Their soul purpose is to save other people's lives. They don't live for anything else, not for themselves, nothing else. After the movie was over, my mom said to me "That makes no sense. They may be clones, but they're real people too." Yes, they're real people. They were genetically engineered on purpose by other human beings, but their genetic information was put into another person's body, and that person gave birth to those little clone babies. They were born, they live, and they die, just like everyone else. Obviously, socially, this would never happen...At least, not in this day and age. At least, I hope not. Cloned people are people too, and everybody is protected by law, so the social aspects of this movie are unrealistic, at least as the law stands today. However, is the scientific idea behind the movie realistic? Well, we haven't yet cloned a human being, and if we have, then the government hasn't released that information to the public yet. So can we clone humans? Probably yes, since we can clone animals. If it were socially possible to do so, then could we possibly give clones' organs to humans? I should think so. Could clones give other clones their organs? I should think so. So, theoretically, I think the idea of this movie would work, even though no one would ever let it happen. And, to add more to it, I'm thinking these clones would end up being highly-susceptible to disease. Some of them may even come out mutated, strange-looking, and/or diseased. But who knows? Maybe the next movie we hear about will be "When Clones Attack!" or "The Pandemic That Started with the Clones." That's actually the huge thing I'd be worried about if we started cloning people: not the idea that clones might take over, but that there might be really bad mutations that come about from cloning that may end up causing a pandemic or something of the sort. Clones would inevitably procreate with humans, and then there would be half human/half clones, quarter human/three-quarter clones, quarter clones/three-quarter humans, etc. walking around. All this interbreeding would very likely cause illnesses, and possibly a pandemic. But, hey, this is just me free-balling.