Nuclear threat

My generation has the same fear as my father's generation, but in a different light. When my father was young and in grade school, they practiced hiding under their desks in fear of nuclear attack. We are in the same situation, we are under nuclear attack. Just like my father's generation, we are naive about what the nuclear threat is. When my father was a child, they told him that they would be safe under nuclear attacks if they hid under the desks at school. They knew little about nuclear bombings. Now we face a nuclear threat and again we are uneducated about it. Nuclear threat is the procedure known as cloning.

In the past few weeks, we have heard talk about the potential cloning of humans in the newspaper and in the workplace. The two cloning breakthroughs that we recently have seen have been the cloning of an adult sheep in Scotland and the cloning of two monkeys in Oregon.

According to the Associated Press, President Clinton has announced that there will be no federal funding towards the research of cloning humans.

Current laws prohibit funding for experimentation of human embryos. This law is subject to expire on Sept. 30. Congress is voting to make this ban permanent.

What our government and its citizens do not realize is that this experiment was not just an experiment to clone animals, but to study the stages of the cell through its development process. For now, we do not have to worry about scientists cloning humans for a long time. When the time comes for human cloning, there will be a legitimate reason for it.

When that time comes, then we can start to question its ethical purposes.

From what I have read and understand about cloning, I do not feel that we have the right to play around with human life. Having attended a Catholic school, I was taught that all man is created equal and man was created in His (God's) divine image. I understand that we want to learn about how things work, but the major question I have with experiments like this is, at what point are we willing to stop?

I have been corning up with the

by Gavin Mirigliani assistant perspectives editor

same questions that I ask with the abortion issue. At what point does conception take place or does it with cloning? Can conception occur in a petri dish or is it from the love of a man and woman in sexual intercourse?

I guess you can say I have old fashioned views. The miracle of child birth is an experience that should be shared with a man and a woman because it is an expression of their love. It should not be shared with a scientist and his colleagues in a laboratory.

There are a lot of things that I am ignorant about, but there is a place in this world where we should stop what we are doing and ask ourselves if what we are doing is right. This is one of those topics where no one can really say there is a right or wrong answer. It all depends on your own personal feelings and beliefs. The only way to do this is by looking into your own heart to tell you what is right and wrong.

I do not know all of the scientific reasons why cloning can benefit this world and I would like to know all of the facts about a subject before I can make a judgment on a topic such as this.