We’re Cloned!

A day after I read that we can expect to eat meat and food products from cloned animals, NBC news reports that a scientist has cloned himself in the name of medical research. I believe that science and research is the salvation of the civilized world, and I would want my kids to be cured with stem cells if need be. But I believe they have been successful using cells that were not taken from an embryo. The scientist destroyed his cloned cells after only a few cell divisions, but even he admitted that it was like looking at himself a long long time ago. Creepy, huh? I feel like a criminal every year just buying and using a poor Christmas tree, only to decorate and discard it after a couple of weeks. (My husband insists on a real tree–you have to pick your battles). Imagine creating a viable or even potentially viable human being just to pick some cells off of it, use some of its skin for grafting, etc. Parts factory of the macabre? Now, maybe if they wanted to clone ME, and then let ME raise myself knowing everything that I know today, THAT would be an awesome experiment! The perfect child, being raised by the perfect parent, now that has some real potential. (Don’t roll your eyes, kids–I’m a great mamacita). And about that cloned food, it would be nice if they would let us know which is the original stuff and which is not. But they won’t. Which may solve the problem of needing to clone ourselves for spare parts, when we’re walking around with 3 eyes and 5 ears.