a real life attack of the clones?
How close are we to creating a literal army of clones? And more importantly, should we?
In a dark laboratory, somewhere far from the prying eyes of the law, a mad scientist is working on a project that crosses all sorts of ethical and social boundaries. Cloning more than a dozen human embryos, he implants them into four women and waits. If all his hard work pays off, one of these women will give birth to a nearly identical copy of a cell donor. Some of these donors are people who are no longer with us. One of those dead people is a ten year old child who died in a car crash and who's genetic material could live again as another little girl. So far, all the experiments have failed, but he's not discouraged. He knows that one day soon, human cloning will work.
According to The Australian and The Independent, that's not the opening scene of a sci-fi movie. They're the self-admitted exploits of Dr. Panayiotis Zavos, a fertility specialist who practices in the U.S. While it's a little reminiscent of the announcement by the Raelians, a religious group which believes in a variation of the ancient astronaut theory, Zavos' claims seem much more plausible. For one, he's a fertility doctor with the experience and the tools to attempt such a procedure. Secondly, he admits he tried and failed because the process is very complex rather than claim success without providing any evidence for it. And whether he really did perform these cloning experiments or not, his interest in trying to get the issue in the news shows that there are scientists very interested in perusing this line of research.
Now I'm probably one of the last people to try and hold back scientific progress or say that scientists with an interest in cloning are crossing a line humans weren't meant to cross, but I'm a little skeptical about the benefits of cloning people. Dr. Zavos' attempt to clone a little girl who died in a car crash is a pretty disturbing one if you think about it. With the way cloning is portrayed in pop culture, her parents might think that they'll be getting their little girl back when in fact, the clone will be her own person with her own quirks, personality and even subtle genetic variations from the original donor, just like any twin would have. Is it even a good idea to give a grief-stricken couple the idea of having another shot at raising their lost child? What kind of pressure would her clone face growing up when she's replacing a lost bundle of joy?
