Cloning: Not So Far, Far Away - an essay

The following is the transcript of a speech given three years ago, for the NCFCA Regional Invitational. In-text citation and a works cited page have been added for your convenience.

Today, the word "clone" has become almost synonymous with "Darth Vader's mindless goons" or "those stormtrooper guys that the Rebel Alliance is always fighting." In George Lucas's Star Wars Episode II, a clone creator describes them as "units," "immensely superior to droids" (Lucas) due only to the fact that they can think creatively. "They are totally obedient," he says, "We modified their genetic structure to make them less independent." (Lucas) At first, I found nothing disconcerting about these statements; to me, the clones of Star Wars were robots in human form, not to mention peripheral characters of science fiction. Planet Earth would never have to see, nor worry about, those.

So you can imagine my surprise when I read a Time Magazine article by Michael D. Lemonick saying that scientists had cloned a dog, and that humans were probably on the way (Lemonick). And my unease was only exacerbated further by reading "Republic Commando," a book by Karen Traviss, revealing the individual, day-to-day lives of the clones of Star Wars (Traviss), and, in the process, the frightening possibilities that now face us in the real world.

Here on earth, the possibility of human cloning is already looming on the horizon; therefore, before we dive in headlong, it would be prudent to first critically examine it – analyze the financial and medical risks, determine how it would affect our morals and ethics, and take into account the expert's and the public's opinions. I would like to first address each of these issues of the present in turn, and then close with a vision of the future, because, as we all know, the decisions we make today will affect our tomorrow.

When one thinks of the word "clone," one may be tempted to think of the copy machine; you scan the object, punch in the number of duplicates you want, press the big green start button, and watch as they pop out, one by one. Sadly, cloning is not that simple. The expenses, both financial and medical, and the small success rate make it a formidable task.

According to the aforementioned Time Magazine article, the first attempts to clone a dog cost the makers seven years and over nineteen million dollars (Lemonick). Those attempts failed, and would continue to fail for the next three years (Lemonick). This is mainly because much of the cloning process takes place on the molecular level, where a single blink, a speck, or a millimeter can destroy years of work.

But after the new, artificially fertilized egg is safely in the surrogate mother's womb, everything should be fine, right? Wrong. Surviving clones are not perfect carbon copies of the original (Park). And as of now, the process embeds flaws in genomes, which can lead to disastrous results, including death (Park).

The Human Genome Project of the U.S. Department of Energy and the National Institutes of Health tells us that less than ten percent of cloning attempts produce viable offspring ("Cloning Fact Sheet"). The first cloned sheep, Dolly, is the only successful result of two hundred and seventy-seven cloning attempts (Park). Many of her predecessors were born as bloody, dead atrocities, bodies and organs either deformed or incomplete (Park).  

A common defect among the few cloned animals that have survived past birth is large-offspring syndrome (Park). At U.C. Davis, all six cloned calves born in a study on this syndrome weighed from seven to sixty-eight percent more than their normal counterparts, as well as suffering from cleft palates, breathing difficulties, low oxygen levels in blood, and retarded ability to stand (Lau). The U.S. Human Genome Project says that many clones have a more compromised immune system function, resulting in higher rates of infection and tumor growth ("Cloning Fact Sheet"). And even those who seem perfectly healthy do not live up to normal life expectancy ("Cloning Fact Sheet").

Now, in light of these facts, close your eyes and imagine a cloned human – let's say his name is Andrew. Several hundred other "Andrews" never made it to their first week of life, or even their first day, but he did. One of Andrew's kidneys is damaged, resulting in several major operations and forcing him to be extremely careful for the rest of his life. He cannot play sports for fear he might get hurt - he is so overweight that he'd soon run out of breath trying to keep up anyway - he's two grades behind in school, the doctors tell him he'll only live to the age of twenty, and…you get the picture. And even this picture would be extremely optimistic, and merely physical, telling nothing about his family, thought, or spiritual life. And if we think about it, he may not even be human.

The creation of artificial homo sapiens could change the nature of that word "human being," and who we include in our definition of this word. Would clones like Andrew be considered people, protected by law and given human rights (McGee)? Glenn McGee, a PhD in philosophy and professor of bioethics, says that children often feel pressure to be exactly the same as or completely different from their siblings, particularly if they are twins. He believes that clones, being more or less a much younger genetic twin of someone else, would suffer the same pressure, only a thousand times worse, and would be denied the "right to an open future" (McGee). And speaking of open futures, for a clone to be created, there must be a specific purpose – say, to be a soldier, or to replace a deceased person. The clone would not have the right a normal child would have to just be himself. And by far the most frightening question for many religious groups is: would a clone, being created artificially by mankind, have a God-given soul? Or would he simply be another animal, with nothing higher to live for than to eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die?

Another frightening aspect elaborated upon in many a science fiction book is the value of human life in relation to human cloning; if we were able to effortlessly "create" people, might we be tempted to depreciate human life, and consider people such as the elderly, the handicapped, the ill, and the unborn as less deserving and dispensable, under the assumption that we "can always make more"?

This pattern of thought, that "we can always make more" or that certain people are "less fit to survive," is, I believe, the same train of thought that led to eugenics, ethnic cleansing, and genocide. Such people are playing with lives; Hitler's men "helped nature" or "played God" by killing five-point-seven million Jews deemed less deserving of life (Gilbert 242). Likewise, would we be playing God by artificially creating life? If life becomes so that we can toy with it, decide who gets to be born and who gets to die, how many lives would be considered worthless? How many people would have to die?

With all of these dangers and unanswerable questions, it is no surprise that the majority of public opinion is turned against human reproductive cloning; in fact, according to a 2004 Gallups poll, eighty-nine percent of Americans oppose it (Lyons). Most scientists consider human cloning unethical, and physicians from the American Medical Association have issued formal public statements against it ("Cloning Fact Sheet"), fearing, if not the prospects of cloning itself, the public outrage that would ensue following future human cloning failures ("Human Cloning").  As of 2001, 42 countries have banned human reproductive cloning. However, only fifteen states in the U.S. have passed any state laws pertaining to its prevention, leaving another thirty-five states – and the U.S. legislature – open (Fenoglio).

The answer seems obvious. In addition to being highly expensive, time-consuming, and dangerous, human cloning raises many issues that we cannot deal with and do not want to be held responsible for. But this idea has already been given that inch, and is already gaining miles of progress. As of now, the vast majority of the public, including the President, support therapeutic cloning, the cloning of organs and body parts. Cows are cloned for beef, and people readily buy this higher-grade meat in the supermarkets. Although it is, in and of itself harmless, and even beneficial to mankind, it is a baby step towards something much bigger. One small step at a time, human cloning could grow to be accepted and even applauded, and what might happen then?

No one knows for sure, but that doesn't stop people from guessing. In the fictional world of Star Wars, a world more like our own than we realize, the cloning process has already been perfected, and hastily accepted, as a means of defending the Republic in a major galactic war (Lucas). Clones are being mass-produced by the millions to fight this threat, and in the process, their independence, free will, and even a full lifespan are stripped from them ("Cloning"), in an effort to speed up production and prevent revolts. They are looked upon and treated like robots and freak shows, even though they are human beings (Traviss). Because they are artificially created and expendable, they are given no rights, no homes, no love, no families, and nothing to live for (Traviss).

It seems quite distant to us – currently, there is no major war that would make cloning troops necessary; we don't yet have the technology to mass-produce people without surrogate mothers either. But the danger of the future is still there. And if we are not careful, our world may very well end up with armies of genetically identical soldiers – people like us – just not considered as such.

I would like to close with a quote from "Republic Commando: Hard Contact," the Star Wars novel that originally inspired me to write this speech. These are the words of Jedi Knight Bardan Jusik, addressing the Jedi Council on the matter of clone troopers.

"So how do we justify what we are doing now? Breeding men without choice, and without freedom, to fight and die for us? Where is our society heading? Where are our ideals, and what are we without them? If we give in to expedience in this way, where do we draw the line between ourselves and those we find unacceptably evil?" (Traviss 121)

It is my hope that we draw the line now, rather than put it off, saying we don't have a pencil, and then find one too late.


Works Cited

"Cloning." starwars.wikia.com. Wikia. n.d. Web. 29 Jan. 2010.
"Cloning Fact Sheet." genomics.energy.gov. U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science, Office of
     Biological and Environmental Research, Human Genome Program. n.d. Web. 14 Oct. 2009.
Fenoglio, Gia. "What Cloning Has Wrought." Center for Genetics and Society. Center for Genetics and
     Society, 4 Aug. 2001. Web. 22 Oct. 2009.
Gilbert, Martin. "Atlas of the Holocaust." Oxford: Pergamon, 1988. Print.
"Human Cloning." American Medical Association. American Medical Association. n.d. Web. 14 Oct. 2009.
Lau, Eddie. "Dark Side of Cloning Perplexes Scientists." UC Davis Biotechnology Program. UC Davis, 18
     Aug. 1999. Web. 30 Dec. 2009.
Lemonick, Michael D. "Woof, Woof! Who's Next?" Time. Time Inc., 7 Aug. 2005. Web. 14 Oct. 2009.
Lucas, George, dir. Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones. 20th Century Fox, 2002. DVD.
Lyons, Linda. "Americans Register Strong Feelings on Cloning Issue." Gallup. Gallup, Inc., 6 Jul. 2004.  
     Web. 29 Jan. 2010.
McGee, Glenn. "Primer on Ethics and Human Cloning." ActionBioscience.org. American Institute of
     Biological Sciences, Feb. 2001. Web. 30 Dec. 2009.
Park, Alice. "The Perils of Cloning." Time. Time Inc., 5 Jul. 2006. Web. 14 Oct. 2009.
Traviss, Karen. Star Wars Republic Commando: Hard Contact. New York: Del Rey Books, 2004. Print.