Take cloning to the farthest, eeriest, most ambitious and strange
reaches of your imagination, and what do you get? A Leave-it-to-Beaver
family of Mom, her clone, Dad, and his clone? Or something a little more
peculiar: American Gothic, with generations of enigmatic, dour-faced
clones holding their raised pitchforks in a field of wheat?
The real revolution in the world of cloning, however, is not about
clones. It's about what made cloning possible in the first place.
Something called nuclear transfer. It's about the whole brave new
universe of genetic engineering, and cloning is just the cute little pug
nose-tip of the iceberg.
A clone is essentially a delayed identical twin. But with the same
technology -- adding genetic enhancements to a cell and growing it into an
embryo -- you might engineer your unborn child to be resistant to AIDS,
heart disease, or cancer. Or like select breeds of tomatoes, to grow
small and plump, or large and glossy. And, as we continue to unravel the
secrets of the human genome, limitless possibilities will fan open before
us. The problem, according to Lee Silver, Ph.D., a molecular biologist
and author of Remaking Eden (Avon): "This engineering will be used only
be people who can afford it... it could produce two different species.
Every scientist I've talked to believes this will happen."
Welcome to the ethical dilemmas of the 21st century. From President
Clinton's call for a ban on human cloning to Chicago physicist Richard G.
Seed's plan to open a cloning clinic, the fun has just begun.
The eminent Lewis Thomas, M.D., once wrote that he couldn't
envision a clone "as anything but an absolute, desolate orphan."
Scientist Richard Dawkins said: "Wouldn't you love to be cloned? I would,
out of pure curiosity."
But who gets the option? Polio vaccine was available to everyone,
genetic vaccines are prohibitively expensive. "We could perfect cloning
for humans in about five years," says Silver, "and as soon as this
happens, the technology for genetic engineering will be available." He
believes it can't be stopped: "Even if it is made illegal, someone will
go to a clinic in the Caribbean."
"I see serious dangers in all the choices," says psychiatrist
Willard Gaylin. "All the sociological structures that define the family
are now up for grabs." But maybe in worrying about these issues, we are
"finding high-tech things to scare ourselves about -- and taking the focus
off our real problems."
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