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The Spirit Catches You Comparative Essay
Victoria Dorsey
Heath, Happiness, and Human Rights
Dr. Neiworth

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The Hmong people rely heavily on spiritual guidance in all aspects of life and look to shamans,
or as the Hmong people say it, txiv neeb, to call on the spirits for help. Hmong shamanism
encompasses law, medicine, politics, and religion all into a single system, making the position
greatly important for harmony in the community. As far as disease and diagnosis, shamans are
believed to have a special gift of being able to see deep into the unknown, revealing the causes
of disease and misfortune through their abilities to transcend the normal limitations of space and
time (Culture and Customs of the Hmong, 24). Sickness is usually attributed to an ancient spirit
seeking offerings, typically the food kind, or evil spirits attempting to harm the ill person.
Divination horns, commonly made from the tip of a horns of a water buffalo, are thrown to begin
the session, and the shaman is called to the house of the ill patient to enter into a trance before a
temporary altar dedicated to the spirits they will call upon. The horns are the basis of the ritual,
and depending on which way the horns fall, dictates the outcome of the ritual and how successful
it was. In performing the ritual, it is common for a shaman to dance and sing seated on a wooden
bench. This contrasts the typical method of diagnosis of illnesses in the Western culture, where
science is believed to be the most accurate way of treating/diagnosing disease.
A rift began to form between older and younger Hmong generations as Western medicine
became more prevalent. The younger Hmong generations began contending Western practices
with medicinal practices and the credibility and trust previously placed on traditional healers
had been marginalized (Immigrant Minority Health, 833). The younger generations also began
expressing their concerns for mixing both the Hmong and Western medicinal practices because
of the potential risks. This rift highlighted the growing faith in Western biomedicine and the

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decrease of faith in the traditional practices associated with Hmong religion. With this new faith
in Western medicine, younger Hmong began converting to Christianity and began picking up on
Western cultural influences. This aided in the deterioration of Hmong religion, use of shamans,
and medicinal herbs. The Hmong have certain prejudices towards Western ideas, particularly
related to medicine. The Hmong people have expressed their discomfort with the removal of
internal organs because they believe it could affect reincarnation. The Hmong also believe that
blood does not regenerate, so having blood drawn is a scary event. There is also and
incongruence in anatomical knowledge between cultures. According to CDC.gov, translation in
healthcare settings sometimes requires lengthy explanations and is sometimes impossible. This
statement is arguable the most significant factor in the incongruence of cultures mainly because
the Hmong have difficulty understanding diseases and illnesses they have never seen before, also
they have trouble understanding an illness being controllable but not curable.
With Lia it was good to do a little medicine and a little neeb, but not too much medicine because
the medicine cuts the neeb's effect (The Spirit Catches You, 101). On February 22, 1996, Ian Wilmut
brought cloning of animals to our attention, when the first animal was successfully cloned, on that
history-making day the cloned sheep named Dolly was born. Wilmut took a cell from the udder of a sixyear -old ewe and sparked a jolt of electricity to fuse it to the egg of another sheep, which was then
implanted into a third female. The only questionable aspect of the experiment was if the cloned cell was
an adult cell or the offspring that the ewe was carrying at the time. Three reports in the July 23 issue of
the journal Nature now lay those doubts to rest; Dolly is descended directly from a mature cell from the
donor sheep.

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Soon after, Ryuzo Yanagimachi, a student at the University of Hawaii, further proved that adult
cells could be cloned. He performed an experiment that produced twenty-two cloned mice. In one run,

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Yanangimachi used the natural color coding of mice for extra proof, taking cumulus cells from coffeecolored animals, ovaries from the black ones and using a white albino mouse as surrogate mother. As
expected, the clones were coffee-colored.

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Despite the great technological discovery, cloning is causing great controversy because the more
we learn about cloning, the closer we are getting to duplicate humans. This brings up a large array of
ethical issues. Human cloning is inevitable, and at the same time the public thinks of it as both practical
and impractical.

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Human Cloning would be impractical because it would take a lot of money, resources, and it
would be very risky-it could waste a lot of money. It is a very difficult procedure to do plus it is very
unethical, especially right now, because of the extremely low success rate. One problem is that humans
could be born with horrible developmental problems. Yanagimachi, the scientist who cloned mice from
adult cells, does not think that humans should clone other humans. If all humans on the face of the earth
were infertile, he told reporters, cloning human beings may be justified. But, until then, we should stick
to reproduction the way that Mother Nature intended for us, (Nichol, Mark, Science: Of Mice and Men).
Many people think that cloning would lessen the significance of god, with the human population creating
people instead of conceiving them as stated in the Wisdom of Repugnance by Leon R. Kass. He also
states that cloning could create an identity crisis for the clone since the person has already lived and could
become completely unjustified if humans were created for organ-harvesting purposes. Could you imagine
going to a childrens store like a pet store and picking out a son or daughter. Aspects like these make
cloning hard to legalize.

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Cloning humans could hypothetically also be very helpful in some aspects. It would be ethical in
a case where womens only child dies after she is no longer able to have babies. Her dead child could be
cloned, producing another child that would be of the same DNA, hers. Also, in the cases of homosexual
men or women, a clone can be produced from one of the partners, rather than having a sperm or egg
donation, therefore making the child more genetically equal to the parents. Some people think that

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cloning could override some lethal genetic diseases. This brings up the point that we already have a type
of clone biologically made: identical twins. Cloning could help create a stronger race by only passing
good traits, and also gives another option of reproductive freedom.

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While researching the topic of human cloning, I found many opinionated essays that people had
written. Human cloning is a highly debated issue right now, mainly because it is a very new possibility for
the future. The obvious next step in the walk of technology, we have already cloned animals the ultimate
goal would move on to clone the human race. Some people want to grab the idea and run with it, and
others want to ban the idea without a second thought. Only time will tell what will actually become of
human cloning.

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At first though, it seems scary. Who would want another you running around? Or even worse, you
might have a clone and not even know about it, because someone took one of your cells, having stolen
you DNA. Not only is this the cause of the scare, but also just think if it was another Adolf Hitler or
Charles Manson running around. One thing that is good about cloning is that it can match the intelligence
and appearance of the other person, so there would be no resemblance, but the nature of its upbringing
and personality are totally dependent on the parents and the environment. This means that the second
Adolf Hitler could end of winning the Nobel Piece Prize for his generosity and good deeds. The question
would still remain will Mother Nature step and fix the problem that cloning humans would create? Every
single person in the world is different, but in the case of cloning the DNA is the same so the people are
the same, and is it true that with a change in environment and upbringings actually change a persons true
nature. If two people are the same, the have the same character can end up being different. Personally I do
not think so. It logical that if I was cloned wouldnt my clone be just like me.its my clone it is me.

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Personally, I believe that human cloning should be illegal. What gives us the right to play God, to
make another human being from an already existing human being? No One! It might be easier to clone
someone if you need a liver, heart, etc it you needed a transplant; it would be a definite match. But is the
clone a person? Yes, so they should have the same rights as we do. They are human and we cannot use

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them for organs then just through them in the garbage. And God forbid if ever legalized the high price
would also help to keep the amount of cloning to a minimum.

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Cloning is a new concept that everyone is just starting to fully grasp. It is a very controversial subject in
the world today and should be dealt with in a very strict manner. If this scientific procedure fell into the
wrong hands, that would create havoc, armies on armies could be built. The whole topic scares me and
makes me somewhat dread the advances on technology, because I do not want the world that I live and
that children will live to loose it morals and ethical senses. Whether or not cloning actually happens
depends on societies views of the issue, and it causes and effects.

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