The pollsters said that this week’s Presidential election was decided by “Moral Values,”…. how we see our day to day lives and what kind of changes to it we are willing to accept. Yet, underneath the surface I see a more revealing question….what is the value of human life? That answer will surely be determined over the next few years.

Valuation, you may ask? what do I mean by that? Well, some people look upon age as a devaluing apparatus…others look at it as an ongoing accumulation of knowledge, where the value of a person is increased with time. Still, some see all of life as sacred, and of equal value. In the eyes of God, I do believe we are all of equal value….but unfortunately, as we will learn moving forward, mankind has a totally different scale.

Slowly disseminating through the culture is the question of what we are willing to accept regarding the subject of cloning. The line between mankind and machine is radically blurring. How many people do you know who already have plastic kneecaps, and reconstructed hips? Already many have man-made components within their bodies, and as you may know, these replacements do not come cheap. Over 50 years ago Henry Ford had an assembly plant where he manufactured cars at will, for the average member of the public, at affordable prices. Dare I say, could it be possible that one day the Henry Ford model could be turned to include manufactured embryos where body parts could be grown and disregarded at will? At that point does the body become nothing more than another component? There are those out there who would like for this to become a reality. Will we see a world where a piece of human flesh will be looked upon as nothing more than another semiconductor chip? There are so many raging questions on both sides of the issue. For example, what if I needed a new heart, and a doctor presented me with a solution to my problem, which would be the manufacturing of an identical replication, or clone, of myself, where the heart would be removed and the rest of the body used for research? At that point, would I forfeit something that I once considered immoral, for a longer life? or, would I want to replicate a lost loved one and see them grow up in front of my eyes? To quote a line from the movie Jurassic Park, “Just because you can, should you do it?”

As you can see my friends, going forward we are going to have a lot more choices to contemplate on our plates. Rest assured, at some point “valuation” of the human being will come into play. The human clone will become the next frontier…the question will be, should we enter it? Is space the final frontier, or are we?

Value the space you occupy,

love, Jennifer Avalon
© 2004 Jennifer Avalon