Friday, March 18, 2011
House of the Scorpion
The world has the technology NOW to clone not only animals but also humans. In the book "The House of the Scorpion" Matt was a clone, made from the tissue of El Patron. In the book Matt had to deal with a lot of discrimination including being told he was only being grown for spare parts, and being constantly reminded that he was not a "real" human. Do you think that this type of discrimination would happen if we started to make clones from humans? Do you think that clones should be treated as humans thus having the same laws and rights as us?
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The first reaction of many would be the idea that cloned humans are different/separate from what is considered "normal human," meaning normal in the way most humans are conceived/begin and how they are born. It would take some time for people to grasp the concept that these people are indeed human, much like it took time for slaves in America to be considered human. Slavery in America is just one of the many examples where one group of humans considered themselves better than another group of humans. And...there are still people who believe that today. History and a gamut of current events and attitudes are proof, in my opinion, that clones would definitely face discrimination. Awesome question!
ReplyDeleteOh....to answer the other part of your question, I do not see any good reason why human cloning should become an accepted practice. BUT, if it ever did become so, then surely clones would be worthy of the same rights as all humans...because they would BE human. HOWEVER, I am opposed to cloning because I feel that it would be practiced merely to save or prolong lives of so called "real humans." To me, this would be unacceptable because it devalues life and because there are other less controversial, ways to save/prolong lives. Stem cell research (not even including embryonic stem cell research, which is highly controversial) is a worthy alternative. Such research has made leaps and bounds in saving/prolonging lives and will likely continue to do so.
ReplyDeleteThe whole idea of cloning is a total can of worms and not something I hope to see a whole lot of in my life time, at least of people and animals. People have a hard time accepting unknown elements and thing they are frightened of because they don't understand them so I feel there would be discrimination due to fear of the unknown. I personally don't like to see discrimination of any kind but when creating a new role in society that is neither human or animal, I have no idea how we would fill the space for them in society. Clones aren't human, but in the case of Matteo he clearly had feelings, drive, and very human qualities. How do you treat clones that have these emotions and not acknowledge their feelings as beings, yet keep humans in a separate category.
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