Un-natural Revolution

It's a brilliant scientific discovery with incredible implications in the medical field: helping people live longer, healthier lives, and allowing humans a nearly omnipotent power over the future of life on our planet.

Cloning is not yet an exact science: actually, out of every 1000 cloning attempts, 970 to 999 are failures. There is only a 0.1 to 3 per cent success rate; but scientists are working to improve those numbers daily, and when they do, it's affect on the flow of nature will be phenomenal.

There is a natural cycle that has not been interrupted since life first appeared on earth. Creatures are born; they live, and then die. Entire species evolve into being, adapt to their changing surroundings, and eventually face extinction. Rapidly advancing cloning technology has the potential to radically alter this established cycle through medical research and species planning.

This raises questions about what else can be cloned: the answer is anything. Is it possible to clone a dinosaur? Absolutely. Is it realistic? No.  In order to clone a dinosaur, scientists would need well preserved cells--not many of which exist after millions of years. But in Spain, researchers have tried to clone the bucardo mountain goat-the last of which died in January 2000. The goat is thought to have become extinct because of the principles of Darwinism; inability to compete with other animals for food, becoming susceptible to infection and disease, and poaching.

The same technique can be used for repopulating endangered animals. In the most recent successful cloning attempt, a guar was born (a rare animal resembling an ox from Southeast Asia), but only lived for two days. After more research, there may be attempts to clone African bongo antelope, Sumatran tigers, and giant pandas.

These species have become endangered or extinct because the flow of nature has deemed it: like the bucaro mountain goat and the guar, these animals have not been able to overcome the obstacles in their surroundings. Repopulating them through cloning will only discard a delicate ecological balance.

Cloning has also made significant progress in human medicine. Through a combination of stem cell research and cloning, researchers could create perfect match donation tissue using the beneficiary's cells. This means that bone marrow transplant recipients would not need to wait for a matching donor, but instead have healthy marrow cloned from their own body, eliminating the risk of rejection. In the future, it is hoped that advances will be made in cloning entire organs, like hearts, lungs, livers, and kidneys.

The discovery of cloning will cause the fiercest disruption in the flow of nature since the ice age-and even that was part of natural progression. Not only can humans eliminate extinction, but theoretically, we will be able to drastically prolong our own lives through 100 per cent safe organ and tissue transplants. Societal benefits, dangers, ethics, and law aside, this discovery will cause a revolution in nature.

Sources:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/859672.stm

http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/units/cloning/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bucardo