Are We trying to become God?

By Sabina Rizwan Khan

Few weeks back, I was strolling down my email subscribed newsletters from different universities world wide, when I came across an advertisement, of a US local University newsletter, which stated: “Needs an egg-donor, for a sterile couple, the candidate must be aged between 20-25, 5’6’’, pleasant looking, dark straight hair, intelligent, with a GP score of an average 3.9, creative, nationality no barrier, will receive $ 40,000/-“

Reading that advertisement, I took about a minute to compose back my jumbled possible thoughts and raised my eye brow to the maximum height it could reach so. Being an addition to my bewildered world of knowledge, on the other hand, my mind flashed back to the headline of Scottish scientists cloning “Dolly” the Sheep, in 1996,. From there a new world of desire came into being, where under privileged people in their own way, asked ‘Can you help us?’ and the medical specialists anticipated, ‘Yes, We can!’

The era of cloning which is not unknown to us, came as whole vibrant ray of optimism to infertile couples who longed for their own child. Also, chances of finding cures of ailments like Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimer’s cancer rose. The basic idea was to celebrate the gift of life given by nature and to over rule its amendments…but was it that easy?

With the talk of human cloning, ethicists eventually advocated about how much man should mess with the order of nature. Whether life is a gift of nature or an industrial product was the concern raised. It surely became the talk of the town, a topic that made its way to kitchen tables to media places, pulpits to politician’s desks.
However, from the medicinal perspective, an infertility expert at Bayer College of Medicine, Houston suggested that the whole issue is not ethical but medical, giving joys to many. Its always gives a feeling of accomplishment and contentment, when you see a sad couple smile again when they know they can finally have their own child.

So rewarding as this may seem, it’s important to also understand that how much is this all true. So far attempts made for animal cloning has 98% failure rate or survival with multiple deformation risk. The realistic question remains, are we ready to take in such horror of human cloning? It reportedly took 104 attempts before the first in-vitro (test tube) baby, Louis Brown, was born. Are we pragmatically ready to kill thousands of embryos because they are just experimental failures? And should we be wrong if in matter of fact way, we call it a Mass murder?

I believe, all these questions are easy to rise but hard to answer. Well there are majority of people who view the prospect as a vague alaram with an un easy sense of an insight that science is dragging us into dark woods with no way back. To what extent do we want to go down the path of using reproduction technologies to shape our children genetically?

Now, coming all the way back to advertisement, it came in a university’s newsletter, which can be viewed in many campus’s newspapers and newsletters. In fact, Yale University, a renowned institute in USA, is quite known for such practices. Students in need of money for their semester fee and other expenditures are always available as donors. Amazingly, Yale’s donor’s list majorly comprises of Asians having high IQ level as some couples wants their kids to be geniuses. This actually leads to huge variety of choices you choose for your future to be baby. Whether the child will have black or white, curly or straight hair, you decide whether your kid could be next Tom cruise or Latin version of Angelina Jolie, or be a knock out brainy like Einstein.

Also, in Europe, people have started to save genetical matter of their loved ones, like their nails or hair, so that when they die, they can clone them in near future possible.

Here, now what is needed to understand is that we, with our limited knowledge have no idea regarding cloning’s consequences. We can’t overlook the fact such technology can be immorally used. What if the cloned person born with an evil perspective? Should we look forward to a society where criminals can easily clone themselves and run away as now shown in movies? It is absolutely possible that the clone may come up with modifications that are deformations due to technical disorder, will he be loved as its originator was, I mean its human psychology we are dealing here which is as intriguing as this whole matter is.

Messing with the God’s order of nature is not a good game to play, at least when you are not aware of the risks involved. It’s just a meager question but holds a lot of depth on which maybe our next generation and its ideology stands, by choosing our human race, are we trying to become God?

This power of producing replicas is a door way to a real illusion world with unexplainable dimensions. We must choose our destiny wisely, we must accept that life is an optimum mixture of havs and hav nots, we must realize that no matter what, we are mortal. It is the infused sense of materialism which has penetrated in us that we are valuing what is bound to go to dust some day. Our body has no value. We must acknowledge the fact that it is fine if you are not born, and it is fine if you die, if only you know how to live in this world, you will not need your own clone to live forever. Its compassion that surpasses our material existence, which enables us to live in others hearts and memories forever.