Cloning Tech Racing Forward

By having exploited the earth’s resources in unbridled manner, for our needs (and greed), we have placed the numbers and very existence of several other life forms in jeopardy. We have aggrandized more land, used up more water, exploited more plants and animals, and produced more waste (much of which will not go away). This has upset nature’s fragile equilibrium. One direct result of this is the endangerment of some life forms. A few examples are the Amazon rain forest, the panda, the great apes, cheetah, Asiatic lion and even the common Indian vulture. Some such as the dodo bird and the great American bison have been lost forever. Fortunately, realization of the folly has dawned on us, even if late in the day. And several groups and international agencies are putting together contingency plans using new ideas of resurrection. Advances in biology in the last decades have come into use in this welcome move. How does one repopulate an endangered species? By making more of them using the biological steps involved in reproduction. The method of in vitro fertilization (making test tube babies) is one such. Indeed, it has become so standard by now that it is hard to believe that it was only thirty years ago that Drs. Patrick Steptoe and Robert Edwards helped produce Louise Brown, the first test tube human baby. With animals, we have gone one step...............

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