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Cloning
Jaguars
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.