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by Jen Idziorek
Anything is possible, we are told, but only some things are probable.
Is it probable that years from now you'll be walking down the street and see an exact replica of yourself smiling back? Not really, but it is possible.
Everyone has heard of Dolly the sheep, the first successfully cloned animal. To create Dolly, researchers removed the nucleus of an unfertilized egg from a Scottish Blackface sheep, replaced it with a nucleus from the mammary gland of a Finn Dorset (pure white) sheep. A small jolt of electricity was used to fuse the nucleus to the cytoplasm of its "new cell" and to start the dividing process. The new cell was placed in the Scottish Blackface sheep's reproductive system to grow.
The scientists conducting the experiment had no doubt they had successfully cloned a sheep when the Blackface mother gave birth to a white sheep--a feat that is genetically impossible under normal conditions. And so Dolly was created, changing the frontiers of science with her birth. Since then, many other types of animals have been cloned, and several groups around the world claim to have cloned humans. Although these claims are largely unsubstantiated, it's hard to deny that human cloning is a looming possibility.
But how long will it be until this technology is applied to humans? One promising advancement in such genetic research has been made in the treatment of massive burns.
The main danger of severe burns is death due to the wounds leaking large amounts of fluid. (A small-scale example of this is the blister that forms when you burn your finger.) The most important factor is to get a temporary covering of skin. Skin from other humans or even animals may work for a few days--until the patient's immune system attacks and destroys the graft. The only permanent replacement can be skin from the same person.
The most common method is to remove pieces of skin from elsewhere on the body and graft them onto the burn, where they grow like plants until the whole area is covered.
But patients with large, severe burns don't have enough spare skin to cover the wound. Growing new skin in a laboratory from each patient's undifferentiated cells offers a promising alternative.
Playing God?
The question on everyone's mind is, "Is it right?", and every mind has a different answer. Some people call it "playing God," and frown on the idea that we should take such measures into our hands. "Only (enter preferred deity here) creates," they say. And yet, for the most part, we choose when and how often to reproduce.
Another argument is, "(Enter preferred deity here) gave you the body and mind you have, and you should be happy with them." Yet you can change the color of your eyes with contact lenses, dye your hair, tan your skin, sculpt your body at the gym, and completely change your appearance. Is the difference, then, altering ourselves instead of altering someone who isn't born and therefore has no say?
Parents can already choose to abort a child with undesirable genetic traits or conditions. This practice--though looked down upon by some--is legal in many states and widely practiced. And would the revision of a few traits be less extreme?
There is no clear place to draw the line. Everyone has an opinion on when life begins, and whether tampering with an embryo is indeed playing God.
No pain, no gain?
Having braces and bleaching your teeth costs a lot of money. (Just ask my parents.) If we were able to choose what or whose DNA is used to make a child, we could, hypothetically, have children born with perfect teeth.
But that's not all. Many enthusiasts hope that within their lifetime, the combined technologies of cloning and DNA splicing will allow us to eliminate many diseases that plagues humankind: infertility, defective genes, cancer, and cell mutation that leads to debilitating disease.
Being able to "custom design" children to have whatever genes they deem desirable will seem like a card trick next to a Las Vegas magic show. Some even believe that cloning may be the answer to reversing the aging process. (This may seem like jumping the gun a little, but we did once think that Earth was flat!)
There are even people who hope to eliminate pain. A syndrome called Riley-Day renders its victim unable to feel pain, hot, or cold but still experience some degree of pleasure. Some believe that we should select for this condition in our children to make their lives better.
What could be wrong with that? Many things. I know first-hand. Several years ago the nerves on the left side of my knee were severed without the chance of regrowth. One day, while diving off my dock, I hit something flat on the bottom of the lake with my knee. I didn't feel the deep cut it caused, which started bleeding profusely as soon as I got out of the water. I discovered the injury only after someone pointed it out to me.
Without the ability to feel pain, people could be seriously injured without realizing it. What good would a painless life be if it ends prematurely?
This brings about a broader point: Is something really "good" or "better" if there is nothing to contrast it with? Do the idiosyncrasies of life make it worth living?
The price of perfection
Economic theory suggests that the price of something is not just the monetary cost but also what you give up to get it. Of course creating perfect children will be an option only available to the wealthy for a time, but, like all technology, it will eventually arrive at a price more affordable to all. (But isn't it still disturbing that one day there could be a market entirely for your child's features?) Even then it might be expensive, but so are big-screen TVs, and everyone and their grandma has one of those.
But other costs might incur. In the movie Gattaca, the main character is one of the few children born naturally in a world genetically altered (and supposedly superior) humans. He and others like him are seen as freaks, unsuitable to live among their spliced peers. He spends his life running from the truth to avoid discrimination, and ends up risking his very existence to fit it. (For the less sci-fi enthusiastic, the Dr. Suess book The Sneetches shows the division of birdlike creatures into the superior star-bellied Sneetches and the inferior starless, plain-bellied Sneetches.)
These stories prompt us to think about the psychological effects that genetic modification of humans would have on the population. How many wars have been fought between people from two walks of life who couldn't see that different and better aren't the same thing?
Big questions
Current government regulations make the answers to most of these questions moot. The use of federal funds for cloning research has been banned, and many states prohibit cloning research altogether.
But as researchers in other nations make advances in cloning research, the U.S. will inevitably rejoin the quest to conquer this new scientific horizon. We're already breeding genetically superior farm animals as well as growing genetically superior veggies. How much farther until we begin to engineer our children? Wealthy, infertile couples already seek out smart, attractive young women as egg donors. What's the difference? Has it already begun without us realizing it?
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A little piece of paper with a picture drawn / floats on down the stream till the wind is gone / and the memory now is like the picture was then / when the paper's crumpled up it can't be perfect again -- Linkin Park |
Whatever the future brings us, there will be no turning back. The downsides may not be readily apparent, but we will find them--if we haven't already. We didn't notice that chlorofluorocarbons were deteriorating the atmosphere until it was too late, but we still can't do completely without them.
Maybe moderation is the key.
Maybe Earth will be crawling with intellectual beauties within a century--if it's still here.
Maybe it won't make life better.
Maybe it will.
