Who wants a cloned world?
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01/24/2003
The Raelian Movement that believes the human race was created by aliens announced the birth of what it called the world's first human clone to an American woman on December 27 last year. The Japan branch of the group said on Monday that the sect's third cloned infant - a Japanese - was expected to be born later in the day.All these news announcements, though not yet confirmed scientifically, have caused panic in many countries around the world, some of which want to make regulations prohibiting human cloning. There was even a call for a UN resolution banning human cloning. I believe that the majority of those who oppose human cloning do so because it will create huge ethical problems and would compromise freedom and individuality. But I also believe that there are people who have been dreaming of cloning human beings that have no individuality, are submissive and never rebel, more like a sort of machine. Police certainly hope that if human beings were cloned according to certain gene programmes, there would not be criminals anymore. Some company chiefs would also like to have their employees cloned, so these workers only know how to work 24 hours a day and never talk about their rights and benefits. Many teachers would probably like to clone students so all of them would become "Three Good Students" and succeed in endless tests and exams. Politicians and crooked officials would like everybody else to be cloned, so that you would only think what you are supposed to think and never question them. However absurd this might sound. It reflects the reality in many parts of our society. As a one-time biology student, I know that you are unique and I am unique because everybody is a different combination of genes. So is human thinking. People should be different and independent and there is no need to force them to think the same. The frequent complaints that Chinese students who achieve straight As in Western universities lack creativity compared with most Western classmates is a bad result of some efforts by people around them to "clone" their thinking in their early lives in China. Li Dazhao (1889-1927), a well-known Chinese scholar during the New Culture Movement in the late 1910s, once said it is absolutely impossible to ban thinking, because thinking has the power beyond anything else. Prison, physical punishment, poverty and even murder cannot prohibit thinking. Thinking has not a slice of danger. It is ignorance and hypocrisy that are the most dangerous thing and prohibiting thinking is the most dangerous behaviour. So unless cloned human beings take over this world, I think teachers, company chiefs and officials should not expect everybody to have the same thinking. And don't even try to spend futile efforts to eliminate differences. A good diversity is the beauty of our world.
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