Redefining Reality - The Intellectual Implications of Modern Science

to do, pages get ripped out and the instructions are unable to be
followed. This may be indicative of the cloning process, or it may
just be a technological speed bump that can be navigated.
Some people contend that even if the wrinkles are ironed out, there
is something inherently problematic with cloning. The process
removes the chance associated with the combining of genetic
information from parents. It refuses unique genetic identity to the
offspring, and some believe that we have a right to be genetically
unique. To refuse this is to play God in some way, to dictate the
terms of life to a being who should have the right to determine his
or her own path.
Although these arguments may or may not be cogent in the end,
there remains a most interesting case: What about situations
in which humans have made it impossible for some animals to
reproduce without our assistance? What about animals that are
extinct? If there are animals that are genetically similar enough to
animals that have gone extinct, should we use cloning to reintroduce
them into the ecosystems in which they had been embedded and
which developed to include them?
The dodo, the auk, and the wooly mammoth were all hunted
by humans to extinction, but the systems of which they were
a natural part—their prey, predators, and so on—still exist.
Do we owe it to the larger system to replace the part we
carelessly subtracted?
Do we have a responsibility to restore species and, thereby,
complete the deprived ecosystems of their missing parts if we
were the ones who caused the destruction? We surely think
so when it is simply a matter of conservation, as with the
American bison, but is re-creating a species a step too far?
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