Recently I saw on the Internet an article with a list of persons the author thought were worth of cloning. It is not my desire to criticize the right everyone has to enumerate their ideas and innermost desires. So I won't go over the list of such "cloning candidates".... What worries me is the pseudo cientifical way the article treated such a deep and important issue as "cloning". Its entertainment value not overlooked, the fact the author didn't actively state about the "unrealism" of her arguments raised my aprehension neverthless. In the past, I have just shuddered and kept living my life, but seeing the rampant advance of pseudo scientific material reaching the public, which most times is more gullible it would be advisable, I had to step in.

First, there is the misconception about how cloning really works and what it can do and what it cannot do.

Besides the still almost overwhelming difficulties of making a specialized somatic cell (be it from skin, hair, or even blood, or internal organs like the liver) revert back to the unspecialized stage of the original human egg cell, so it can fully develop into a full human being in the process, it seems indeed the technology for cloning is barely beyond our grasp. Although, there are technical and natural limits to what it would be able to accomplish.

First, even though any cloned human being would be very (not totally...) similar to its original donor, none of the life experiences would be passed over. For example... Let's say Ghandi's parents had immigrated to America fleeing from famine in India and fared well. Would Gandhi still have been the figure he was if he always had food on his stomach, and actually never even heard about the situation in his homeland? Or, to mention one of the chosen candidates, would Nelson Mandela be the person he is if he was not born under the Apharteid endorsed in South Africa? The answer is likely to be no. They would probably turn to be wonderful creatures, but could otherwise pass unnoticed among us, as I'm sure many do, for having what it takes, but being in the wrong time or place.

Indeed, the whole concept of cloning personalities is completely flunked by that principle.

Secondly, going beyond pure cloning, the author starts to wander into the realm of genetic manipulation. Cloning has NOTHING to do with genetic manipulation. In the process of cloning all one does is to take the ENTIRE nucleum of a cell and insert it in an egg cell, or otherwise use the own cell (if the specialization is reverted...)... But in any case, there is no genetic manipulation. While cloning is close to become technologically available, genetic manipulation beyond simple and or identifiable physical traits as eye color or sex is still several decades away. Even if there are genetic components to our personalities, what is very likely to be true, we have not the least idea of where they are or how they would work. So, we would not be able soon, if at all, to take out the "mysogeny" of a cloned Picasso (IF it is that it was genetic and not just a matter of his life experience...), or make a Bill Gates less "ruthless" (what is the definition of ruthlessness anyway? It seems to vary from time to time and culture to culture...). Clones would be as normal, defective or gifted as any of us are, born as kids that would have their destinies mostly defined by how they would be grown by whoever would be their adopted parents (No, clones are not full grown individuals made instantly - "just add water"-, as some may think).

The article which is subject of this text has no validity at all on scientific grounds. Although it is very entertaining to think about who we would like to recreate or bring back to life again, what we should be worried about is to make life more just and livable for those who are not famous, but build the places we live in, or grow the food we eat, and could even become the next great writer, or scientist, if they didn't live day by day with starvation and social injustice as company. Let's stop dreaming about others, and do our own job: raise our kids in a good way, embracing intelligent skepticism instead of gullibility, and then we will not create unnoriginal clones, but fully independent and apt human beings, our own children.

Voltar