Learn about and respect life
Paul Allegra
class of '00
I agree with Shane Hudnall, in his Jan. 22, letter titled, "Clearing up cloning misconceptions," that often too much emphasis is placed on genetics. This is especially true of those who tell us we share 98 percent of our genetic material with monkeys — as "proof" monkeys are our "cousins" — but fail to tell us we share 95 percent with houseflies and 70 percent with yeast.
The rest of what Shane wrote is utterly contemptible. According to him, what makes us human is our ability to reason, talk, laugh, cry and so on.
So humanity is a set of functions and severely retarded persons, for instance, or tiny babies are not really human. Hence they do not have rights as the rest of us do. This is the kind of thing I would expect to hear from Dr. Kevorkian, Peter Singer or maybe Dr. Mengele.
His discussion of the developing unborn child is misleading. This is the same tactic of describing the unborn as more or less tadpoles that abortion advocates. After all, if you can deny the humanity of those children, you are free to kill them — just as the Nazis denied the humanity of Jews. The truth is that at six weeks a child already has a heartbeat and brainwaves, as well as human features.
How Shane can claim when and whether an unborn child has a soul, I have no idea, since he did not support that assertion. His gratuitous and unfunny reference to Bob Dole betrays his own prejudice. Why not mention Al Gore instead? (Gore would seem the obvious choice for a zombie-like public figure.) Gore is pro-abortion, and Shane would hate to insult someone of his own stripe — better to insult a conservative instead. Before you clone yourself, Shane, I suggest you learn what human life really is and respect it.
Paul Allegra
class of '00
Jan. 23, 2002
All Viewpoint Stories for Thursday, January 24, 2002
