washingtonpost.com: Cloning Yields Human-Rabbit Hybrid Embryo
Nevertheless, I still think government should stay out of legislating science. Even weird fucked up science that makes bunny people. Evil bunny people like in Donnie Darko.
The powers that be, whether the Catholic church of the 1500s or President Bush and the Christian Right that so often influences his policy making these days, tend to be very reactionary to new science. Sure, we don’t place scientist under house arrest or burn them at the stake any longer (consider the sad story of Giordano Bruno) but many in society who possess a fear of the unknown and fear of what –might- happen are actually lobbying – and many politicians are inclined to agree – that some knowledge should be forbidden. While the morality of cloning is argued in legislatures and in media, I can’t help but notice that seldom is the reality of the situation ever spelled out as: These laws would forbid scientist from conducting some experiments – it would make increasing one’s knowledge in certain areas of science illegal and make the quest for said knowledge and illegal activity.
I know I am not the only one who sees the irony in this. By declaring cloning a “forbidden fruit” – a forbidden “tree of knowledge” – those Xians in favor of such policy are actually playing god themselves, declaring to mankind what things are off limits to know. And not for nothing but I thought playing god was a bad thing in Xian tradition
Evolution has progressed us to the point where we have discovered that we can clone ourselves. Who is to say that the next step in our evolution isn’t a thinking being that can manipulate its own evolution? Mankind is not separate from nature, man is a part of nature too (like an old Love and Rocket’s lyric) so why isn’t our intelligence as valid an a natural environmental factor influencing our evolution as any other geographic, biological, or other factor that has triggered evolutions throughout the ages?
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