"Columbus Dispatch" Letters To The Editor
Don't clone Rissing or his leftist dogma
Sunday, December 30, 2001
In the Dec. 9 "Biology and Society'' column, Steve Rissing states:
"Reproductive cloning is stupid because you really don't want an exact copy
of your genome around. . . . We gave up such asexual methods of reproduction
a billion years ago; only lowlifes, such as bacteria, still prefer them.''
Asexual reproduction, or budding, is ubiquitous throughout the plant kingdom
and the invertebrate world.
Behold your front lawn. The asexually reproducing monocotyledonous
angiosperm, or grass, is considered phylogenetically advanced and not
primitive. What is stupid is telling nature what reproductive strategies
so-called higher and lower lifeforms should follow.
As long as Rissing is in charge of introductory biology, the OSU College of
Biological Sciences ought not bother me with solicitations for alumni
contributions. The opinions in his column are always standard leftist
academic dogma and never scientifically interesting. As the philosopher
David Hume conclusively demonstrated a few centuries ago and Richard J.
Rolwing pointed out in his Dec. 18 letter: At its best, science can tell us
what is, but it can never tell us what ought to be.
Erik Morrice
Columbus
POWRÓT