“We’re not ready for it yet!””We must preserve the miracle of human life!””You can’t mess with nature: it’s immoral!”All the yammering and whining about cloning humans is driving me crazy.Yes, cloning humans is scary. Yes, cloning humans may be the most dangerous technology scientists will ever discover. And yes, the moral line concerning the artificial creation of life is more than a bit fuzzy. But I’m going to let everyone in on a little secret: whether or not Clinton funds it, someone is going to clone a human, and someone is going to do it soon. Now don’t we Americans want to be the first ones to do it, and don’t we want to do it right?It seems that when we discuss human cloning, our practical side is eclipsed by moral righteousness. We should by no means ignore the ethical dangers involved, but it seems that human cloning is something of a necessary evil. It’s science’s next step. Let’s get real; human curiosity is just too insatiable to stop at cloning sheep, and those scientists are going to work on it until they get it right. Clinton’s refusal to fund the research seems like just another political maneuver.Do we want the first cloned human to be in some Japanese basement or German army base, or do we want it to happen here on American soil where we can take all the credit? Since it’s going to happen sometime soon anyway, our national vanity speaks for itself.It’s a lot like the atom bomb. We sure wish it had never been invented, but what if Japan or Russia had gotten there first?You can’t deny that cloning is both fascinating and potentially useful. I’m not talking about making babies out of the DNA of Marilyn Monroe or parents resurrecting a dead child. I’m talking about rebuilding the human race after a global nuclear disaster has made the wombs of the worlds’ women inviable and sperm of the worlds’ men deformed. It could happen. Besides, cloning is not like the movie “Multiplicity,” where fully grown twins pop out of a fish tank. Clones start out as babies too; their experiences determine a huge part of their later characteristics and personalities. They just happen to have someone else’s DNA. Besides, no matter what the government says, do you really think that they haven’t been secretly working on the same technology for years? Give me a break. They were probably pissed as hell when Dolly showed up in Scotland, that is, if they didn’t know about it every step of the way.It may seem that I am being insensitive, that I am ignoring the moral and ethical dangers of so scary a technology just to push science to the next frontier. But I must look at it practically, and I must acknowledge that if it is going to happen, I want it to happen here. And maybe that means we should be funding the research. You ask, is human cloning just a Pandora’s box? Why don’t we clone Pandora and ask her. Jessica Weeks’ column regularly appears on Mondays.