I have recently read a newspaper article on the proposed cloning of endangered
species including the Jaguar of Brazil and got to thinking about the
ramifications of the possible results.
We are at a time in human scientific development that we now have the knowledge and means to perform such a procedure. The question (which has been asked many times before) is whether or not we have the intelligence to do so wisely. We have, to
a degree, become gods. This asks the question; will our discernment make us good
ones?
Within a very small space, we can create Noah’s ark all over again. We could
preserve the DNA of most (if not every) creatures now in existence and possibly
even some from long past. What choice would we make of those we would wish to
preserve? Would we bother to keep the common housefly, the mosquito, roaches
and the eternal pestilence pair… the rat and the flea? What would be the
results from choosing to deny the future to these banes of existence?
My grandfather used to say (with quite a bit of truth to it) that what this world
needs is either a good plague or a massive war… and this was at a time when
there were three billion humans less than currently live on this planet.
Population control of not only humans but also every other conceivable being is
a necessity usually left to natural cause. And, contrary to popular as well as
religious belief, humans are every bit a part of nature as any other critter.
The giant ant mounds of central Africa are no more natural than the great
concrete construction of the Empire State building! Even the possibility of our
own self destruction would be a natural event.
What would selective preservation do to the natural order of things like the food
chain? Without the rat, the snake does not survive and with the snake gone what
then is eaten by the hawk? Every species so left in the world would continue to
do what all living things do… fight to survive! What does the “crocodile on the
great green greasy Limpopo river eat when it can’t get elephant’s child”? It is
a known fact the tiger that once has tasted man-flesh forever eschews its other
alternatives.
Now, cloning is only the most recent manipulation of nature done by humans.For millennia human kind has attempted to maximize its control of the food supply by
cross-germination of almost all grains, bred cattle in mixtures to “enhance” the
eatable output and practice animal husbandry to the extent that there are now
far more distinct new species than when man first got involved. Even simply…
there are hundreds of breeds of dogs that bear little resemblance to the wolf or
the dingo.
My line of thinking does not condemn the practice it only questions our level of
“godliness” in determining the future of life on earth. And, it well might be
moot! Everything that has a beginning has an end. The dinosaur, the human, the
earth and all its neighbors… but always something new emerges… maybe finer or
not and yet it is the nature of things and cannot be denied nor prolonged past
its time.