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Friday, December 29, 2006
Much ado about cloning
The FDA in the US has announced that "milk and meat from some cloned farm animals are safe to eat," and this has raised a furore. Odd. The furore, that is.
The way I see it, cloning is just another form of breeding, and there is nothing to tell a cloned animal apart from a real one at any given point of time. And if you find the fact of its being cloned something to protest, what about identical twins? Why is it okay for nature to do something but not for humans?
I would, in fact, extend the same argument in favour of genetically modified foods. Of course, it would be a different matter if they harmed the environment or the people who consumed them. But that should be a matter of scientific demonstration, not of political rhetoric.
(Link via email from Arjun Narayan.)
The way I see it, cloning is just another form of breeding, and there is nothing to tell a cloned animal apart from a real one at any given point of time. And if you find the fact of its being cloned something to protest, what about identical twins? Why is it okay for nature to do something but not for humans?
I would, in fact, extend the same argument in favour of genetically modified foods. Of course, it would be a different matter if they harmed the environment or the people who consumed them. But that should be a matter of scientific demonstration, not of political rhetoric.
(Link via email from Arjun Narayan.)
