Me 1/Me 2/Me 3/
Cloning is child’s play! Sincerely! Dolly the Sheep was cloned with a few strands of DNA from another sheep. You can even clone dogs by taking a small tissue sample and then taking it off to a lab and cooking things up! More specifically and scientifically, a somatic cell from animal A is taken out and then placed into another cell that has had its nucleus and DNA removed. The new DNA begins to be formed in the cell and it starts to replicate just like the cells that made YOU did. One cell divides itself into two and then into four, and the process of building complex, multi-celled organisms begins. Bacteria just says, “Bleh, I love myself as I am. No need to make one giant multi-celled version of me!”. Elephants say, “....”. Everyone knows elephants can’t talk. Are you unhinged?
Why can’t we?
Physically, it is certainly possible to clone practically any living organism as the process to clone a dog or a sheep follows the same principles. You might get some unpredictable DNA mutations when you do it because…well…we are messing with billions of years of evolution and nature. It’ll probably be passable, but you could end up with clones sporting triangular heads. No, the real issue here for humans is that we often feel it is ethically wrong to clone humans. Religiously, people say we shouldn’t because it defies the gods or God (depending on your belief), which is unethical and unnatural. Atheists may say it is still unnatural because it defies the laws of nature. My grandmother would say it’s wrong because it’s a load of nonsense and only nincompoops would do it!
Get to work, clones!
You did it. You cloned yourself and you now have, for starters, two brand-spanking-new versions of yourself sitting in the house looking befuddled. You’ll have to break it to them and explain that you are the alpha and they should therefore follow your orders. You may decide to send out one to do some household chores and the other to go to school….oh…hang on. It took almost your entire life to educate you to this level. Knowledge is not inherent. You are not born with it, you acquire it through experience. Your clones will essentially be babies and you’ll need to wait years for them to mimic you. This cloning business needs time and patience. You’ll also have to hack their genes to speed up ageing until they look just like you and then switch off that gene to let them age normally when they catch up.
It was all going so well
Let’s say you did all of that. You have a throng, a legion of clones who look just like you, are inordinately trained, and think exactly like you. What’s to stop a clone conflict emerging as YOU fight to become the number 1 YOU? YOU may declare to the other YOUs that YOU are the real YOU. YOU may even have a t-shirt saying ’The original YOU’. It may not matter because YOU and the other YOUs will believe that THEY are best placed to lead. An inevitable conclusion, because YOU don’t want to harm or hurt YOU, is that YOU and the various other YOUs will need to divide and live separate lives in different locations and locales around the world. There could be a YOU in every country and YOU may become the president of each nation. The United Nations will become the United YOU and YOU will essentially control the WORLD!
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