Three weeks ago, a team of South Korean researchers announced their success in creating 30 healthy human embryos. The group also extracted the stem cells of one of these embryos, another step towards making an eventual clone. This threat of a human clone is not only unethical, but also unpractical, and unjust. As the future generation of this knowledge, its fate lies in our hands.

The researchers who denied any attempt of reproductive cloning—a process that duplicates an existing animal—justified their actions by claiming they had made a breakthrough in therapeutic cloning, a process in which a healthy copy of a sick person's tissue or organ can be made. “We are against reproductive cloning and we have to ask all countries or the United Nations for a law to prevent it,” said Shin Yong Moon, a member of the team of Korean researchers that created embryos. Nonetheless, should therapeutic cloning be legalized throughout the world, any “mad scientist” could potentially create a human duplicate, since the technique of making a cloned baby is similar to that of making a cloned embryo. And it seems rather risky duplicating human life just for certain body parts. Sadly, humans will always find one among them who would abuse any power.

We must ask ourselves can we live in a society with human clones? To answer this question we must discard our lab coats and look at this matter as sensible human beings. As if life were not hard enough, how would you develop your identity if you were created to replace a lost friend or relative? How would you feel if you were abnormal and someone conscientiously knew the imminent risk but created you regardless? Is it necessary to implement another form of reproduction in a society suffering from overpopulation? All questions of human cloning must be answered before scientists consider any cloning.

As a society, we must look past short-term progress and focus on the long-term consequences of our actions. Similar to the nuclear weapons brought forth half a century ago, we face a difficult decision of introducing a society-changing technology. We can either jump into this path of no return and waste decades trying to redeem ourselves, or we can avoid this path altogether and take a safer road. But before we make this change, we must remind ourselves that it is always better to be safe than sorry.