Chapter 11 On Asexual Creation

Now, it is theoretically possible to recreate an identical biological individual from the DNA contained in any somatic cell of any animal or plant.A single root-tip cell of a plant can be coaxed to produce a perfect copy of that whole plant; a frog gut epithelial cell has all the instructions needed to build a new, identical frog.If this technology develops further, you can also make people like this.Moreover, there are now dismal predictions all over the world that someday such a thing will actually be done in order to preserve carefully selected and particularly valuable Some kind of immortality.

There are many things to worry about in science: behavior control, genetic engineering, brain transplants, computer poetry, and the endless blooming of plastic flowers.Cloning (vegetative reproduction) is also an example. Clones are the darkest part of the foreground.It decreed the abolition of sexual activity, and compensated by the mere symbolic abolition of death.It is hardly consoling to know that one has an identical cloned surrogate who continues to live, and besides, that living one is likely to push aside the aging real self sooner or later.It is hard to imagine any such thing as filial piety or respect in the nucleus of an unmated child; even more difficult to imagine that a man's new, self-generating self is nothing more than an absolutely solitary, unaccompanied orphan .As for pulling a person's ego from infancy, how complicated interpersonal relationships are involved, how to teach him language, teach him to obey the rules, instill good behavior, and so on, let alone everything.How would you feel if, at the age of fifty-five, you became a hopeless juvenile delinquent through a proxy?

The inquiries from the public are obvious.Who will be selected and what are the criteria?What should we do if this technology is misused, for example, rich and powerful people who are difficult to be accepted by society, decide to clone themselves; How to cope?What effect would that identity have on all of us who have not been cloned?After all, for millennia we have been conditioned to celebrate our own uniqueness; each of us is fundamentally different from those four billion others.The attribute of ego is a fundamental fact of life.It is a terrible thing to think that people have no self and are exactly the same as each other.

Well, let's not think about it.Because this kind of thing is unlikely to happen.In my opinion, even if we plan for a rainy day and prepare for danger in times of peace, we still cannot see the possibility of its realization.I agree that you might be able to clone someone like the evil donor parent, but it may turn out that they will be as different as you are from me, and definitely more different than any identical twins today. The time required for this experiment is only one problem, but this one is formidable.Imagine that you want to clone an extraordinary and accomplished diplomat so that he can take care of the Middle East in the distant future.You have to catch and convince him to pick off a cell.This may not be difficult to do.But after that, you had to wait for his embryos to grow, and then at least another forty years.In the meantime, you have to make sure that all observers are patient and don't intervene in his uncertain childhood and adolescence.

That's not counting.You still have to be sure that you can reproduce his environment, and you have to make it almost exactly. The word "environment" actually means people, so you probably have to clone far more than the diplomat himself. This is a very critical aspect of the cloning problem.We get so excited about the cloned individual itself that we largely ignore this aspect.You don't have to agree with all of BF Skinner's arguments to admit that circumstances just make a difference.And when you look at what we mean by "environment," it ultimately means other strangers.We use euphemisms and jargon for this, such as "social force," "cultural influence," and even Skinner's "speech community," but what these words really mean is the close-knit The crowd is talking, listening, smiling, frowning, giving, withholding, encouraging, pushing, caressing, or wielding a big stick at this individual.Regardless of what those genomes say, those people are crucial to shaping the person's character.Really, if you just have some genomes and no people around them, you'll grow a vertebrate, no more.

So, to begin with, you will undoubtedly need to clone that person's parents.There is no doubt about this.That means the diplomat wasn't there, even theoretically he wouldn't be there, because, when the diplomat himself is emerging and considered a national treasure, you can't get cells from his parents.You have to find and select people who are qualified, worthy of the job, and have both parents, and make a list with a limited number of places.The parents also need to be cloned, and, to ensure consistency, their parents have to be cloned as well.I think you also need to have the usual consent form for surgery, fill it out and sign it.If I knew anything about what it was like to be a parent, I daresay it wasn't easy.Getting the grandparents to sign it is even harder.

But things are just beginning.In fact, according to the current psychological thinking, it is not only the parents, but also the whole family that affect a person's growth.Well, clone that family. Then, what else to clone?The way each member of the family grows has been determined by the environment established around him. This environment means more people, people outside the family, classmates, acquaintances, loved ones, enemies, carpools. people, and even, in some special cases, unusual strangers passing through the pillars of the subway station.Find them, and clone them. However, this planning is endless.Each peripheral connection has its own surrounding family, together with the respective peripheral connections of that family.Gotta clone them all.

To make this happen, to end up being a true duplicate of a person, you really have no choice.You have to clone the whole world, nothing less.Otherwise there is no hope. We don't have the conditions to do experiments on this scale, and I don't think we want to.First, that meant replacing today's world with an identical one, followed by a second.And that means there will be no natural, spontaneous, random, lucky newborns.There won't be a single child, only the artefacts of the pairs that are present now, plus those identical pairs of adults, including today's political eaters, all in pairs.This is too much, I dare not even think about it.

Also, when this whole experiment is done, say fifty years from now, how do you get an honest scientific readout of the results?Somewhere in that world, there would be the original clone, in his fifties, perhaps abandoned and neglected, and all around him would be exact copies of everyone we are today.It would be the same world as it is today, overflowing with all the duplicates of today's people, with their duplicates of the same problems, probably resenting and hating on having to do it all over again from scratch like we do today The original clone, who'd have a hard time picking on him, if they could find him.

Obviously, even if that thing is done right, they will still find ways to address the general discontent.Sooner or later, they're bound to be looking around, looking at each other, wondering which one of the special value to society to clone, so we can get rid of all this.So, this thing will start again and again, and may repeat endlessly. I've lived through that phase in my life.I wondered what hell would be like then, so I tried to imagine some kind of eternity.I have to admit that I've never been able to come up with anything resembling the above sight. If you're looking for a way out, I have another option.Let go of the cloning thing, don't try it, try the opposite.Find ways to make mutations come faster, more new variants, more different singing voices.If you want to mess around, it's better to tinker with something else than try to make things the same.Don't mess with anyone, not even yourself.There is a sky above the head, and the way of heaven is happy to change and not happy to live.