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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Cloning Offers Hope, Not Evil Don’t Be Afraid Cloning Research Offers Hope To Solve Genetic Mysteries.

Chances are good that Dolly, the cloned sheep, will show up on a poster with a red line drawn through her. The two cloned monkeys will also become cultural symbols of doom.

Some look at Dolly and the monkeys and see humankind’s destruction looming in the future. They are just the beginning, some argue, of the end to decent reproduction practices. Soon, evil scientists working in secret government labs in Nevada (next to the UFO labs) will clone superhumans and send them into our culture to destroy. Little Hitlers everywhere.

This is the stuff of B-movies, not reality. And the overreaction to the cloning announcements, from the president’s hysteria to the pope’s condemnation, is shortsighted.

Others in our society looked at Dolly and the two monkeys and felt hope. Cloning of animals makes it much easier to study the genetic defects that whip through families like wildfires.

Families with Alzheimer’s disease lose the wisdom of their elders. Families with Huntington’s lose their loved ones in body and mind by middle age. Families with cystic fibrosis watch their young ones struggle for breath and then die young. Families with breast cancer watch as the cancer invades the generations like a bad house guest who will not leave.

These are tragedies. Costly tragedies, emotionally, physically and financially. And the cloning research on animals offers some hope to solve these genetic mysteries. The research is worth pursuing.

Government leaders are wise to recommend caution. The opportunity for abuse is there, but certainly not as ominous and as inevitable as many predict. Science is costly and almost impossible to do in secret anymore. Human cloning is a giant step away from animal cloning and who is that interested in it, anyway?

And we must not give up so easily on the complexity of human beings. Our souls are part of us, too, and impossible to clone. The environment we’re brought up in matters as well. So if you could clone Hitler, big deal. This time, he’d get a father who didn’t beat him and a mother who didn’t belittle him. His soul would thrive and grow, instead of wither. And that’s another reason why we shouldn’t fear Dolly and the monkeys too much.

, DataTimes MEMO: For opposing view, see headline: Cloning tempts our darker sides

The following fields overflowed: SUPCAT = EDITORIAL, COLUMN - From both sides CREDIT = Rebecca Nappi/For the Editorial Board

For opposing view, see headline: Cloning tempts our darker sides

The following fields overflowed: SUPCAT = EDITORIAL, COLUMN - From both sides CREDIT = Rebecca Nappi/For the Editorial Board