The future is drawing a path of cyborging humans and humanizing cyborgs.  With today's technology anything is possible.  Cloning is already a reality and making cyborgs more human is very close in the future.  There are questions to be answered about how we should make these cyborgs.  Should we make them in exact images as humans or make slight changes so they are easily recognized?  The answer about making cyborgs lies in looking into the future and realizing problems before they happen.

We as a society must wonder would it be right to genetically make replicants of humans.  These replicants would be almost undetectable if put in a human society to live.  If we see the future of replicants as in the movie Blade Runner, then we can analyze many problems to come.  In Blade Runner the replicant's sole purpose was to be slaves. Some of the replicants revolted and the ones who revolted were then hunted down by a Blade Runner and eliminated.  Many people would see this as wrong, because the replicants were so human. They would see the treatment of replicants as how blacks were treated before the civil war.  Before the civil war, blacks were malnourished, beaten, and raped.  This was horrible period of time to even think about, but who is to say the replicants were treated badly?  The main problem with making the replicants slaves was made by the inventor.  The inventor in Blade Runner was Tyrell.  He made the replicants in the image of humans trying to make them as human as possible.  This was the problem with Tyrell's invention.  The replicants could think for themselves, and could ask themselves why should I do this.  The replicants revolted, because they were smart enough to think slavery was bad.  One way that Tyrell could have made the replicants is like the example of slaves in Brave New World by Aldous Huxley.   The slaves in Brave New World were altered at birth by given a lack of air.  This made them dumb, because of the lack of oxygen to the brain.  Then while the slave child was growing up she was brain washed with the statement that if he was not a slave he would be unhappy.  The best way of life was to be a slave, and the thought of being something different was horrible.  If Tyrell could have made the replicants believe that happiness was to be a slave they would not have revolted.   The replicants were mechanical devices made to make human life easier, but Tyrell's inventions made like harder.  But Tyrell's point in making the replicants was to make them as human as possible and that is where the problem comes in about replicants thinking for themselves. The replicants were mechanical devices made to make human life easier, but Tyrell's inventions made like harder.  If he could have altered the thought processes of these machines, there would have been no problems with the replicants.

The genetic research field is a subject with much controversy.  Many birth defects can be found before birth in the genetic code, and in the near future doctors will be able to correct the genetic code before birth.  We wonder if this is right?  Many people can look at this as playing God.  They believe this constitutes a changing of God's perfect creation and believe it is sin to meddle with God's work.  However I think if we can help a child from suffering from genetic code then we should change it. If God gave us the ability to save lives and help others then curing a disease before birth is not amoral.  Some skeptics would look at Brave New World and wonder if our world could turn out like that.  The genetic class system is very inhuman. People were genetically altered at birth to fit into society. In "The Dark Side of the Genome" by Weinberg, he says "Policies governing the use of genetic information need to be debated and put in place early in this decade, not after the problems emerge." Where do we draw the line in the future on what genetic engineering is allowed to do?    As of right now, if progress keeps up, genetic engineering will be able to make people from scratch, and no humans will be needed for reproduction.  This I see is wrong.  We are supposed to find that one perfect person for us, and reproduce with them.  Not let a genetic engineering lab repopulate our society. The cloning of humans should be outlawed right now since it is possible now.  The future of cloning is not all bad.  Many see cloning of animals as a valuable source of food in the future because we could make so many animals.  In the next couple of years we need governments need to sit down and draw out the specific guidelines of what genetic engineering can do.

In the future we will have to deal with many problems pertaining to the creation of cyborgs.  Could we make these cyborgs into sentient being, a being with emotion and perception?  In Blade Runner this was one of the main problems.  The Nexus six replicants were made so well that after four years they would start gaining their own emotions.  Tyrell, the inventor, saw this as a problem and made a failsafe device where the replicants would die after four years.  Many would ask if this approach was ethical.  I would answer we make these replicants for self-preservation. We make them for the sole function for our survival.  Society would use the replicants to do all our hazardous operations.  If our creations start gaining emotion they pose a threat to our society, and we would have an ethical responsibility to protect humanity by disposing of them.  Others would say eliminating the replicants would be barbaric and unethical, even though the replicants stop doing what they were made for.  However someone most do the hazardous work for the human race to survive.  By making the replicants we found away around putting human life at risk.  Survival has plagued humankind since the beginning of time, and we have always found away. In the future making cyborgs will just be another way of survival.

Where is our future going?  Is the future headed in a downward spiral, where there are no morals and no ethics, or can we change the future by what we do today? To stop future from being corrupted we need to make strict laws today about important genetic research material. Our world could be a better place where no genetic cloning of humans is allowed.  The power of genetics is very hard to control because there are so many problems to address in the future.  Only time can tell what humankind will do.