CLONING + GRAFTING + SEX + LANGUAGE BARRIER

CLONING

The imminent prospect of the successful cloning. or duplicating the embryonic stage of an existing human, has alarmed many individuals and organizations. Many reasons for alarm stem from a misunderstanding of the basic concept, which is rather simple.

A cloned infant is born in the usual way and can be best described as the belated twin of the more mature individual. Normally occurring identical twins can each be thought of as a natural, concurrent clone of the other. Although not due to a division of the egg and the DNA content of its nucleus, as in the natural instance, the cloned egg is just like the egg that formed the donor, or like that of another, identical egg which would have existed if the donor had been one of a pair of twins. While producing a twin of another at a later date requires sophisticated equipment, meticulous manipulation and inordinate skill as well as luck, the clone is merely a young twin born in the usual way, but long after the birth of the older twin. Possible, but unsubstantiated, undesirable differences have been mentioned; that the cloned individual might exhibit characteristics that reflect the age of the cell donor or give some indication that the donor's DNA may have suffered damage. Time and close observation may put these suspicions to rest.

There is no artificially created life in cloning. There is still a mother, but there is no father required for fertilization. Perhaps this has led to a fear that the male could become obsolete. Instead of the egg being fertilized by sperm which results in a combining of DNA from the birth mother and a father, the DNA in the egg is that of the cloning donor and represents the combining of DNA from the donor's mother and father. While this infers that a sperm donor could become unnecessary, it is assumed that traditional, hormone driven mating of males and females will remain a desirable option for the foreseeable future.

The only real question regarding the cloning procedure, if so perfected as to be readily available when desired, is who would be cloned, and why?

It is apparent that some would be cloned because they have personal characteristics that have made them seem to be of exceptional value to other humans, perhaps those of society in general, who could benefit greatly from their reproduction, in either a material or emotional way.

It is also apparent that some would like to see themselves continued into the future with more accuracy and personal satisfaction than progeny can provide.

At first only a few might be able to pay for it, but as processes become more refined and reliable, the procedure is likely to become more affordable. In regard to world population, it is not reasonable to assume that adding another means of procreation to our list will result in the over-production of humans.

Birth rates were burgeoning out of control for a recent period of time, and the traditional means of conception was the perpetrator. However, a decline in world birthrates has been recently reported, which appears to have resulted from both mandated population control and the availability of improved contraceptive methods.

Perhaps the most controversial issue, other than cloning to produce another source of stem cells, is cloning to produce body parts for transplantation. This is a definite probability and poses a substantial human rights problem. A clone (belated twin) could provide organs, limbs etc. that would not be rejected by the recipients who would therefore avoid the need to suffer a drug induced loss of immunity that would leave them open to infection. Theoretically the clone would be kept alive, in a coma-like state, deprived of self-awareness, while parts would be harvested as needed to give the recipient a greatly extended life span. If this is done, would the mature cell donor be inclined to feel an empathy with their youthful sleeping twin, perhaps intensified by their intimate kinship, and thereby have an appreciation of its plight. Perhaps instead, the mature cell donor would succeed in blocking such inclinations to empathy or even sympathy, when inspired by the prospect of great personal benefit.

The rights of the cloned twin would have to be legally suspended, or the clone maintained in a clandestine manner. Some feel that never achieving a conscious state means that the twin would be non-existent as an individual who could claim such rights. Others feel that human rights are inherent at birth and that denying a born clone a consciousness and all that it implies, is a denial of such rights.

The moral issues raised by the possibilities created by science are not particularly unusual. Modern abortionists employ modern equipment which protects the mother, but abortions have been performed for thousands of years, often resulting in the death of the mother as well as that of the fetus, but gradually acquiring more reliable procedures. Is it the advancements in procedure that make abortion a safer choice and a more attractive option that are being protested? When do human rights begin? When do human rights of choice end? If we were to finally concur that life begins at conception, would we then eventually feel the need to legalize the killing of our children in order to continue our current practices? Those are questions for church and state to decide and find an applicable level of common agreement that will permit regulatory decisions.

The kind of thinking that considers life to arbitrarily begin with an emergence from the womb and allows an abortionist to legally kill a baby just before it is ready to leave the womb and after partly passing through the birth canal, might be used to completely avoid the condition of birth. The fetus might be transferred from the mother's womb into a nurturing tank or bed-like support that could be represented as having a function similar to the pouch of a marsupial in providing an environment for continuing growth and development, outside the womb. This gambit might be employed to indefinitely delay the occasion of a legal birth. If it could be used to avoid the acquiring of the rights conferred upon birth, maintenance of a comatose clone might become legally permitted. When the technology for this is in place, we can expect it to occur, whether it becomes legal or not. The prospect of an extended life span will be irresistible.

Many have said that cloning is "playing God". Remember, that in our perspective, a clone is a belated twin. Is mankind playing God in fertilization enhancement, which often causes multiple births in a concurrent twinning?

Is mankind playing God in employing in-vitro fertilization to enable couples to have children, who otherwise could not?

While the foregoing procedures involve unnatural man-created equipment that might be used to help define them as "man playing God", mankind is not always so sophisticated.

Is mankind "playing God" in the historically time-honored practice of selectively breeding pets and farm animals to obtain more desirable creatures?

Are the males and females, that comprise mankind, "playing God" when they arbitrarily determine the DNA of their progeny, by the even more historically time-honored process of selecting a mate?

Perhaps mankind, in the ambitious exercise of intelligence, could always be considered to be "playing God" whenever natural materials and forces are manipulated to obtain needs and wants. However, an assumption of supernatural powers, such as would make mankind truly guilty of God-like pretentions, has never been needed to accomplish these feats, only the very natural powers of intellect.

Lawrence Edward Bodkin, Sr.

GRAFTING

More desirable genetic qualities of individual adult plants, not fully transmittable by means of the seed, have been continued by a more time-honored means than cloning. This is called grafting.

While it is technically achieved by a much different process, botanical grafting has served us well for many years and in precisely the same way that cloning could serve us in the Zoological world.

Cloning has been more closely scrutinized, perhaps because we may be directly affected, in a very personal way, and because only a few can accomplish the feat. In contrast, anyone with a sharp penknife, masking tape and a relatively rudimentary amount of skill can have some success in such grafting. Perhaps this difference in practice and practitioners is fortunate in many ways, but it also sets the cloning people apart as a group as opposed to any large sector of the general public and when this occurs a long period of unrelenting and ill-informed criticism is the usual result.

Contrary to popular belief, most advantages in plant development are not so often the result of the crossbreeding craft as they are due to the discovery and continuation of natural variations which are most likely generated by mutation. Of course, we have learned ways to encourage more frequent mutations and thus more rapidly generate variations from which we could select the ones most beneficial to humans for continuance.

Once a desirable variety is observed to occur, it is simply maintained by cutting limb buds away from the original plant, surgically adding them to the root stock of hardy varieties with less desirable fruit and once the transplanted buds have grown sufficiently, by eliminating all but the root of the original plant. For our purposes, we have duplicated the more desirable plant, yet no real duplication has occurred, as in cloning, we are simply widely and separately spreading the growth of the original plant.

Each of the large and delicious varieties of apples, pears etc., that we enjoy all come from the same original tree that was found. It has simply been cut into many parts and the parts separately cultivated.

As each of the separate parts become sufficiently developed, they may also be cut apart and used to further spread the variety. Perhaps comparing the results of cloning to grafting can provide a more practical perspective to the consideration of the possible uses of cloning and counterbalance the more popularly entertained possibility of its abuses.

There is a more recently introduced form of grafting called gene-splicing, in which a snippet of one DNA double-helix can be added to another to create a recombinant plasmid and alter the characteristics of a particular life form. Once the public understood the implications, it seemed that many monster-movie plots were being realized. Fears of accidentally bizarre results or criminally intentional misuse now seemed realistically imminent. Not all of these fears are unfounded, but nearly all of mankind's devising is capable of inflicting accidental injury or of being misused, given sufficient motive and opportunity. It takes a period of time without major mishaps to make people feel comfortable with a new technology. We have learned to accept much change in the last century, and we have not been overly quick to abandon anything good without good reason. There have been exceptions, such as failing to further develop the dirigible, because of the disaster involving the hydrogen-filled Hindenburg, just as the use Helium was making it safe.

The beneficial potential is immense. We are already reaping the benefits of gene-splicing in the mass production of human insulin.

There are enough desirable possibilities to fill the imagination. While all earth-life is related, we tend to find our killing and eating of other forms the least objectionable when the relationship is the most distant.

If we will one day produce a vegetable that has the flavor, texture and amino acid complement of beef or pork, its consumption will circumvent many religious and ethical obstacles.

It has been recently shown that human tissue can be grown on another organism, such as a mouse. It seems to me that much if not all of the general objections to involvement of non-human hosts could be circumvented by simply growing new bone, skin or even a new organ on or in the body of the recipient. This could be inconvenient during the growth-to-near-maturity period but would be a small price to pay. The new, young tissue or organ, attached to the old organism, as comfortably as possible, would already be considered a part of the old organism and would simply be relocated to a usefully functioning position when ready. However, this procedure could involve the implantation or grafting of fetal limb or other organ buds. These could be perfectly matched to the host by obtaining them through an invitro cloning which could possibly give rise to all the old objections.

However, like stem cell harvesting, the work might be easily cloaked since this part of the work could be accomplished rapidly and perhaps before any readily recognizable organism developed. It is not so much the process but the public perception of it that matters in the practical use of these breakthrough discoveries. For many there is still the question of whether or not our life spans should be extended. Those who are given additional years of healthy, fully functional existence would not be expected to object, but those younger people waiting to take their place in the world might wish them to be subject to a natural limitation.

Once again, we have opportunistic processes that can only be successfully utilized by a relative few and, like the practitioners engaged in the full cloning of an organism, they are sufficiently set apart by their knowledge to invite the same lengthy period of unrelenting and ill-informed criticism. Revealed abuses and ill-founded rumors of abuses will undoubtedly continue to fuel a negative public attitude and initially result in attempts to exact an excessive degree of control through hastily considered and poorly advised legislation.

It will be most interesting to observe the convolutions in public consensus regarding both cloning and gene-splicing that will develop over the next few years, before a more stable public attitude emerges and attempts at framing reasonably beneficial and effective controls begin to appear. All designs for control should be tempered by a recognition that, lacking some magical means of universal control, what can be done, and what is desired to be done, will be done and somewhere soon. The least restrictive controls, focusing only on establishment of the most realistically important safeguards, are likely to be the more effective, since they will encourage more open, less surreptitious practicing of these crafts.

Lawrence Edward Bodkin, Sr.

SEX AND CIVILIZATION

There is a procreational difference that helps makes the human animal superior. It is the complete lack of a mating season. This may be as important a cause for our development as standing erect to free our forelimbs for tasks, or the possession of a fully opposable thumb. Somewhere in the long span of our development we became superior in intellect. We became imaginative and able to envision possibilities, sufficiently to prepare for them. This enabled us to survive even when we were inferior in most other aspects. We were weak, relative to our size, we couldn't run particularly fast, we had no appreciable hairy protection for our skin, our teeth and nails were of little use in defense or offense and our reaction time was comparatively slow. All we really had, in addition to our intellect and ability to handle tools, were two other things which worked to make them more valuable. One was an increased life span which seems to be related to a fortuitous extension of our infantile state and the other was the matter of a difference in our sex life. The former permits us to accumulate experiences more extensively and the latter gives us the ability to function continuously as a group.

Civilization is a complex accumulation of accomplishment. Like a living organism, it is kept alive by constant, continuous, interactivity of its parts. It can suffer no more than very brief lapses in support from its member units without risk of dissolution.

Think of what would result if we were to behave as most lower animals do in producing our offspring. For the major portion of the year, such animals give no thought to sex. Then, for a brief period, they devote their entire attention to it. Many do not even seek food during this time. Fortunately for civilization, we humans, while seldom without sex related thoughts for any appreciable period, are also never fully devoted to it for any appreciable period. We also vary widely in the timing and duration of our individual attention to sexual matters. As a result, there is always someone able to attend to the business of keeping our support systems operational.

If humans behaved like other animals and did have a mating season, it would be a time when electric power would cease to be produced, petroleum wouldn't be refined for your car, and no food would be produced for your table. Of course, you might not be inclined to notice, but there would be no police to regulate and restrain any unusually avid attentions, since they would be fully occupied with their own affairs. When the general pandemonium passed, and we were assured of having another generation of our kind, it would take time to repair the damage, quite likely more time than would be available before the advent of another mating season.

Perhaps our sexual behavior had to predate our other human qualities. Without it, we would have had little time between mating to do much more than use our brain power to help us obtain immediate sources of food. We would have had little time to accumulate the developmental trappings that qualify a superior intellect for extended survival. Larger projects requiring extended periods of continuous effort and certainly those requiring concentrated thought, directed toward the solution of complex problems, would be irreparably interrupted. Having to substantially restart a civilization each year, may well have ensured our eventual demise and relegated our curiously greater intellect to the evolutionary trash heap.

There is reason to rejoice and revel in this fortuitous characteristic that has saved us from extinction. Take a moment to reflect upon and celebrate our human sexuality.

Lawrence Edward Bodkin, Sr.

LANGUAGE BARRIER

It seems considerate to provide instructions and advisements in more than one language, in deference to the languages of immigrants, who were once required to demonstrate a proficiency in English. However, there are important downside effects that have far reaching ramifications. Those in authority must certainly recognize and appreciate them, but apparently choose to ignore them.

Instructions have to be repeated and crowded in condensed form onto limited label spaces, using nearly unreadable type sizes. Booklets of instruction that accompany purchased devices are several times the length a single language printing would require. When this is done to simplify matters for a manufacturer who sells internationally, it seems more justifiable but still has the enabling effect on those who resist learning the language of the country they have obviously preferred to their homeland. The complications of bi-lingual telephone services have become the normal expectation.

When there is less reason to learn English, there is less learning of English. It makes it difficult for immigrants to engage in meaningful conversation with the established residents of our country who cannot be expected to have acquired the ability to converse in all foreign languages. This tends to maintain a source of separation where acceptance is the stated desire. New peoples entering a country and expecting residents to learn their language are more typically the occupation forces after a war, not those fleeing one country and asking refuge in another that they prefer. This expectation appears audacious and aggressive and established residents are likely to be more than just a little resentful.

Fear of the unfamiliar can drive people to move to a country they have found preferable to their own and then seek to isolate themselves with a language barrier and try to preserve all of the aspects of the abandoned culture they are seeking to escape. To miss many things about the homeland of their youth is normal, but it is counterproductive to their aims in life to re-establish too many of the conditions that gave them reason to leave.

English is rapidly becoming the universal language. It is unusual to find any country in which reasonably educated people do not possess some ability to use English in conversation. In occupied Germany, about 60 years ago, I found that young Germans could speak English that was typically more grammatically correct than that used by American soldiers.

Despite all of this, authorities in this country seem to embrace a form of casual regression in order to avoid complaints from immigrants and those who facilitate their ready entry into the U.S. They bend easily to the language requirements of incoming peoples, instead of making requirements. To make matters worse, many immigrants are illiterate and limited to the spoken word in their own language.

It will require more than the present level of effort, but there is a definite need for some legislated movement in the direction of requiring the use of English, in order to promote a universal ability to understand each other, at least within the borders we can legally influence. It was once a requirement, and not without reason. It needs to be again. If immigrants need to know English in order to function in their new country they will learn it, as so many have done in earlier years. If we have not already achieved this label, we will soon be known as the only country that has actually introduced and promoted the use of differing languages among the people that we attempt to unite. Those who compare this action to a willful recreation of the biblical "Tower of Babel" would appear to be amply justified.

Lawrence Edward Bodkin, Sr.