ion. The second risk is that a limited genetic pool is also much more vulnerable to having all its lines wiped by some virus or infection, as happened with the potato famine of Ireland, many years ago. (Klug, 1996) Supposedly, embryo freezing and gene banks could offset this, but the fact that this type of gene storage would need to be used indicates that we would be doing something wrong. (Morisson, 1996) Thus, I think that even animal production has its own limits on how far cloning would be worthwhile, as the Roslin Institute pointed out (Campbell, 1996). Is cloning contrary to something fundamental about life? For the Christian, the world around us is God's creation, filled with variety. Throughout the Bible, in commandments and stories, the overall theme is of diverse creation. I begin to wonder if we are not simply reducing ourselves to genetic blueprints. The very fact that selective breeding has its limits reflects something about the need for natural diversity of things (Basker, 1994). I do believe that cloning is acceptable in limited research, where the main intention was not the clone but rather growing an animal, where natural methods would not work. What would be unacceptable would be its use in routine production, where natural methods could be used but have been side-stepped on the bases of economics or convenience. What would be ethically wrong with this, you might ask, since we already intervene in nature with selective breeding? After all, we already selectively breed using methods like artificial insemination and embryo transfer. If there was a clear benefit to the farmer to start off with prime livestock, to produce the best beef or pork, this might be good. But raw food products have very little specialization and can not be separated on such a scale, making superior animals no more valuable than normal livestock. (Uhl, 1997)What should we do with animals? Most of us eat them. Quite of a lot of us enjoy them as pet...
