Medical Grade

While people usually rant about the ethical part of cloning, I am yet to come across any conclusions on the psychological and physiological implications of creating a human clone. There are people presume that cloning would produce replicas of any person. What this implies is that if we clone Newton or Einstein, we could be reproducing the genius that they really were. However, if we study the psychological aspect of a human being’s development, the concept becomes invalid.

What you are today is directly linked with the life you spent over the span of your existence. From the day you were born till today you have undergone a series of events and experiences. All of them are the factors that determine your mind and psyche. They make what you are today. All these events took place in a certain time continuum and affected in a number of ways the environment around you.

What I am today is because I grew up with a certain family that interacted with me in a certain way. It’s because I went to a school, having certain specific characteristics, where I was taught by a certain group of teachers and made certain specific friends. Why I became fond of aviation and computers was because of certain motivation I felt at some stage in life, and because I was exposed to aviation in a certain constant manner. Why I ended up in mechanical engineering despite being obsessed with computers was because a certain chain of events determined how my life would go about. From the fear of being trapped back at school due to a heavy thunderstorm in grade six to the excitement of going to university, all events big and small play their role in developing my mind or in that case any human into what they are today.

If scientists had made my genetic copy today, would they have a replica of my physical structure along with the whole set of my personal feelings and experiences? I think my replica would look like me, sound like me, even feel like me. But it won’t be the real me. I have developed my emotions over the many years of my existence and those years have long passed. Those specific moments in time are gone and they won’t come back. My clone would not know the special care from my parents. He would grow up in a lab with people who are not his family. When I look at things around me, I like some and dislike others; what my clone would see at a different time place won’t be the same. He would not develop the same feelings that I would. I wear glasses and hence am unable to join the air force, my clone may get his eyes laser treated and might join the air force and go on a completely different life path. Perhaps he would get certain ideal conditions in life that I did not get and that would make him a much more successful man than I am.

Life is not just about what you are; it’s about what made you into what you are. All the things big and small shaped you into what you are today and determine the life that you would spend. Yesterday’s Newton or Einstein was geniuses because they got certain ideas and inspirations about things that happened in their lifetime. They may be very brilliant if we recreate their physical self today but the spark that ignited their imaginations would be missing and they might pass of an ordinary life into oblivion during our time.

Thinking on these lines one can conclude that my clone would be a different person having the same physiology but with different personal experiences. It seems that it is here that God’s principle of diversity comes into play. One begins to understand how every one of us has been created to fulfill a specific function in a specific time continuum.