We all have to make choices in life, so suppose you had to make one like this-
You haven't eaten in four days. You know you will soon starve to death, but you only have one option to prevent this from happening. You have to eat fruit, vegetables, and grain products, and you have quite a wide variety to choose from. There is also a vast selection of meat, prepared in a variety of ways. The one caveat to all this?
The meat is from cloned animals. They were fed from genetically modified grains. By the way, all the other food that you have been offered has also been genetically modified.
Your choice? Yeah, mine too.
I look at it like this. If I were a member of some savage tribe that lived in some remote primeval area, one that practiced cannibalism on a regular basis, and one day I found myself, as usual, partaking of human flesh, I seriously doubt I would have any qualms about eating my victims twin brother/sister.
For that reason, I would have no immediate qualms about eating a cloned animal. Nor would I feel any discomfort at the thought of eating genetically modified food.
To be sure, there are good reasons for concern about both of these issues. There also bad ones. The good reasons can probably be summed up as follows:
The health of the animals. And, true enough, in the early days of cloning, some animals suffered unduly, from arthritis, from heart and lung ailments, and other abnormalities that generally caused their deaths before birth, or a few days after. This was generally thought due in part to the clones being derived from adult animals, and also seems to have been a problem with the animals mothers placenta.
This problem has evidently been brought under control. There are of course other problems. Ethical ones. But these problems are to some degree evidenced among those who in a great many cases are against eating meat under any circumstances, or have some other kind of religious sensibilities to cloning or with tampering with the natural way in which foods are produced.
Genetically modified foods especially are feared to contain potential health risks to the consumer, as well as environmental consequences.
As I said, these are all valid reasons, on at least an individual level. There are other reasons that are valid to a point, such as the concerns among farmers that the growth, production, distribution, and sale of food might one day be controlled by a cartel made up of a relative few big business entities who might corner the market and drive smaller farms and businesses into bankruptcy. They would then control the market, and prices, which they could easily do by underselling smaller farmers who are not in a position to compete.
Then, of course, they would have carte blanc to sell for as low or high a price as they wished.
However, market forces demand adjustment and adaptation. Some degree of government intervention might prove to be vital and necessary, which of course would be a libertarians nightmare. So you are presented with yet another concern.
Then, of course, there are those who would use food distribution as a means of controlling populations.
By and large, though, if this is managed correctly, there should really be no need for starvation in the world. Once this technology is perfected, as it eventually will be, there can be a limitless supply of agricultural products and livestock to feed a continually growing population on fruits, grains, and vegetables that, while their taste may for now not be the best, can at least ward off starvation and malnutrition, with it's associated diseases, in lieu of the simple fact that most genetically modified foods can be grown in any kind of climate or terrain, at least theoretically.
In vast enough amounts, to be sure, to feed the increased livestock population as well as the humans who, in great parts of the world, such as Africa, Asia, and parts of South and Central America-and, sad to say, in parts of the West as well-would not be moved by any objections to the process that would prevent the starvation and misery of themselves and their families.
Of course, starvation and poverty would be one less tool for leverage to be exercised by not only third world dictators, but by charitable organizations who depend on human misery as a vital aspect of their appeal for donations on humanitarian grounds.
This might include in many cases some organizations based out of the United Nations, as well as government agencies from the US and other countries, in addition to foundations that receive a great lot of money by way of grants from these same government and/or UN agencies. And then there are charitable organizations and foundations that are all but dependent on donations from private citizens. When you think about the very considerable amount of money all these entities are engaged in competition for, you have to wonder, in the cases where they are on record as being in opposition to these scientific advances, just how self-serving their concerns really are.
And, for that matter, this would not be limited merely to private charities, or government funded foundations, or UN chartered or other such groups, but, unfortunately, religious organizations as well. They, too, are just as much a part as all the rest, of the mad scramble for position, influence, and money that has become the mega-big business of the Aquarian Age-the Era of the Non-Profit Charitable Organizations.
Unfortunately for all of them, the steady advances of science may in at least this regard threaten to render them obsolete. And that might be just as true of the religious based charities as the private, government, or UN sanctioned ones. In their cases, they might have to find some other way to win savage souls to Christ, or Allah, if the organizations head honchos wanted to keep drawing those big salaries and bonus checks in return for their "non-profit" endeavors. Maybe if they concentrated their efforts to the fields of education.
Whoops! Maybe not.
You, however, should take the time to educate yourself thoroughly on this issue. Like I said, there are concerns, and everyone should watch closely, but with an open mind, to insure that science proceeds in an ethical way, in a humane manner, and with common sense-but not shackled by superstition.
The following links would be two good places to start.
The USDA Cloned Risk Assessment
Genetically Modified Foods
If that is all a little much to digest, might I suggest you do it in a fun way. Read Ira Levin's 1975 novel, The Boys From Brazil.
It contains as good a description of what cloning actually is as any you will read anywhere. It's also a great read, one of my favorite novels of all time. Of course, the more fantastical and horrific parts might give you pause, but on the other hand, that is exactly why this science should be regulated, and monitored. And the only way that can be done is to let science, and progress-and nature-take it's course.
