Cloned humans won't be identical to original

Editor,

Craig A. Butler's Feb. 14 column, "DNA Code is a Pandora's Box," is on target when it comes to genetic discrimination. When it comes to cloning, except for the technicalities of how it's done, he has no clue.

Perhaps he should have spent the time actually reading - and watching - science fiction, which has discussed these matters for the past 30-plus years, rather than dismissing it as "only Star Trek fans ..."

Back in the early '60s, James Schmitz addressed the question of "Is it right to copy an existing person? Is it right to create life?" The villain in the novel "The Telzey Toy" did exactly that, and the court decided that the copy was legally the villain's daughter - he had, after all, created her - and his sole heiress.

Will the clone have a soul? In Lois McMaster Bujold's "Ethan Of Athos," a lab-created man asks that of a doctor with a religious background, who promptly answers, "We are all children of God the Father, however orphaned ... what are you? My brother, of course."

Will corporations try to copy their most valuable employees? Good luck! Take an engineer born in 1912, raised by parents according to the period, who is a child during the Depression and fought in World War II - and, in 1960, clone him. He is raised according to the child-rearing books of the period, a child of the '60s and later fights in Operation Desert Foolishness - you think he'll be the same person? Or more like that person's grandchild? Lots of luck.

As for eugenically created armies of clones marching to the drums of fanatic despots, you don't need cloning for that. You only need a charismatic despot and vast numbers of gullible - or heavily indoctrinated - young men.

On the other hand, the cloned soldiers are just as likely to make up their own minds about soldiering and their "glorious leader" as anybody else with the proper life experience. Unless, of course, all the initiative has been conditioned or engineered out of them, in which case, what use are they to a modern army? Not to mention any germ or virus the original specimen is susceptible to will be caught by the entire army, making biological warfare as easy as sneezing. Poor dictator!

We science-fiction fans have been discussing this longer than most Daily Lobo readers have been alive. Hey, we've even discussed the civil rights of androids ("Measure of a Man," by Melinda Snodgrass, "Star Trek: The Next Generation").

My opinion is the cloners can try and the doomsayers can try, but all we'll get is another way of making human beings, just as time-consuming, expensive and unpredictable as the old way. And not as much fun.

Patricia Mathews

UNM staff member