One of the conclusions that can be drawn from the passage is that the writer is firm in his conviction that
Directions: Answer the given question based on the following passage:
Like the geography of the planet, the human body has, until now, represented a fixed point in human experience, a ‘given’. Today we are fast approaching the day when the body can no longer be regarded as fixed. Man will be able, within a reasonably short period, to redesign not merely individual bodies, but the entire human race.
In 1962 Drs. J.D. Watson and F.H.C. Crick received the Nobel Prize for describing the DNA molecules. Since then advances in genetics have come tripping over one another at a rapid pace. Molecular biology is now about to explode from the laboratories. New genetic knowledge will permit us to tinker with human heredity and manipulate the genes to create altogether new versions of man.
One of the more fantastic possibilities is that man will be able to make biological carbon copies of himself. Through a process called ‘cloning’ it will be possible to grow from the nucleus of an adult cell a new organism that has the same genetic characteristics of the person contributing the cell nucleus. The resultant human ‘copy’ would start life with a genetic endowment identical to that of the donor, although cultural differences might thereafter alter the personality or physical development of the clone.
Cloning will make it possible for people to see themselves born anew, to fill the world with twins of themselves. Cloning would, among other things, provide us with solid empirical evidence to help us resolve, once and for all, the ancient controversy over ‘nature v nurture’ or ‘heredity v environment’. The solution of this problem, through the determination of the role played by each, would be one of the greatest milestones of human intellectual development. Whole libraries of philosophical speculation could, by a single stroke, be rendered irrelevant. An answer to this question would open the way for speedy, qualitative advances in psychology, moral philosophy and a dozen other fields.
But cloning could also create undreamed of complications for the race. There is a certain charm to the idea of Albert Einstein bequeathing copies of himself to posterity. But what of Adolf Hitler? Should there be laws to regulate cloning? Nobel Laureate Joshua Lederberg, a scientist who takes his social responsibility very seriously, believes it conceivable that those most likely to replicate themselves will be those who are most narcissistic, and that the clones they produce will also be narcissists.
Even if narcissism, however, is culturally rather than biologically transmitted, there are other eerie difficulties. Thus Lederberg raises a question as to whether human cloning, if permitted, might not ‘go critical.’ ‘I use that phrase,’ he told me, ‘in almost exactly the same sense that is involved in nuclear energy. It will go critical if there is a sufficient positive advantage to doing so....This has to do with whether the efficiency of communication, particularly along educational lines, is increased as between identical genotypes or not. The similarity of neurological hardware might make it easier for identical copies to transmit technical and other insights from one generation to the next.’