Response to Mary

Mary talked about the movie The Island in her last blog post and then asked
"...will it ever get that bad? And what way of thinking can prevent it?"

I hope things never get to that point. However, I think that history has shown us time and time again the human beings are capable of horrible atrocities. I would hope that if science got so advanced that we could clone people to basically be walking organ farms that we would have also found cures for major diseases and maybe organ transplants will be less necessary. Of course, there will always be heart attacks and car accidents, so there will always be a need for organ transplants.

I think the best way to keep this from happening is to start valuing the worth of each individual equally. This would be a very difficult thing for human beings to accomplish. It seems to be in our nature, if we have one, to be social creatures. Part of that comes with learning to value those close to you more than you value yourself. I don't know about you, but I know that if my mother were dying and needed an organ transplant, I'm not sure if I'd care that it came from some clone I'd never met. I know that this is an unethical way of thinking and it needs to be eradicated. On a deeper level, I strongly believe that everyone is worthy of equal consideration because their interests are just as important as mine, including the cloned walking organ farm.

This leads me to wonder if we were ever be able to truly value the worth of every being, or at least human beings, equally. Do you think we could ever reach this point?