Carbon Copies

  Would you duplicate your favorite pet?

When I was a kid I heard that two and two makes four. During my teens, my dad told me to be careful because one and one makes three. We replicate ourselves over and over and in each case, we get a concoction of DNA that describes an entirely new and different human. Our genes are image carriers, like baggage, but these get all mixed up in transit and no one gets the exact same luggage ever again. It is an amazing system. It we look at our genotype will see a wonderful creation that has never before faced life on this earth. Think of it as a combination lock tumbler with sixty-four entry possibilities and the combinations are endless. That alone does not make it work so beautifully, because with each birth you have removed the previous combination and have created a new one. It is no wonder the code is so hard to crack.

Back to the title of carbon copy: None of us are an exact copy of either one of our parents and due to this changing key with every birth, we are not even an exact replica of any other sibling which gives us the factor that each sibling will also alter and pass on the combination of genes even farther. You might think that with so many people in the world, we would find two alike. Well, not so and for a variety of reasons with only one just stated.

I feel you are about to introduce the cloning of humans as proof that carbon copies are possible. To some extent you would think that is an accurate statement, but the proof is in the pudding. If you chose to clone your six year old, the production unit would be about seven years younger, see age alone is a single factor that negates cloning exacts. We develop at different rates at different ages and in cloning that would be true too. That is only if we are discussing carbon copies from an original. Let us assume we cloned you or a six year old. Would the two products be carbon copies even if they were not an exact copy? Good question, I am glad you asked that one.

We know that twins are not the same person even though some sets of twins actually are from the same egg. Fraternal twins are not exact carbon copies which is the closest proof I can think of for saying that a double cloning would not produce two people exactly the same. In body looks and structure, possibly, but there is something a little more added to every human and animal on the face of the earth that gives us our uniqueness. We know from naturally contrived humans there are no two exactly alike. But I have yet to find a mother that can’t tell one identical twin from the other.

This is interesting to think about in this modern age where we are experimenting with present life and future life. I would like to yield the floor to any of you who might want to offer an opinion. Try not to give an off of the cuff remark, but think about it, study the idea, look for examples and let’s see what you think about making carbon copies of ourselves. Oh, by the way, we really don’t want any scientific information here; we are not scientists, but philosophers in our quest for answers.

If we were to find one perfect human, would we want everyone to be made just like that person? Keep in mind what inbreeding does to animal life. Good luck, I chuckle at all of the wonderful possibilities we have facing us today. I can’t imagine what the world is going to be like in one-hundred years. Just like my grandfather said when he saw an first airplane for the first time, “What will they think of next?”

Dr Robert E McGinnis – Author of: — In Search Of Paradise