Cloning Rant
OK, I'm so aggravated by the popularity of this delusion that I have to say something about it. What is it that makes people think that a genetic clone is the same thing as the source it came from? One of the "promises" of cloning is that you could theoretically "bring back" a dead person by cloning them. Hey, you could reverse death! You COULD save that child, even though he died before you could rescue him.This is absolute nonsense!
Let's take the movie coming out this week called "Godsend"...According to the plot summary posted on the Internet Movie Database by The-Gent, it's about a married couple who lose their son in an accident, and decide to clone him to "bring him back."
PEOPLE!!! The cloned Adam is not the dead Adam. You cannot bring a person or animal back by cloning them. Genetic Mapping does not a person make. May I draw your attention to identical twins? They look exactly the same, and they are genetically identical, but nobody thinks they're the same person. Stand in front of identical twins and you are looking at genetically identical people who are unique from each other and from every other human being on the planet. Identical twins have been around for as long as the human race has been; Nature has been doing this cloning thing for millions of years, and you DON'T get the same person out of it. The delusional parents in this film, and anybody else who thinks they can bring somebody back by cloning a genetic map, are kidding themselves. All they're doing is creating an identical twin of the dead person, who will NOT be the same individual, or have the same memory, feelings, and desires.
According to The-Gent's summary, things get scary when this cloned Adam starts to get dark and dangerous as he turns 8 years old, presumably because something genetic has gone awry. Now, I haven't seen "Godsend," so I'm going out on a limb; maybe the movie makes this point. But here's the story that needs to be told: A married couple lose their son Adam to an accident. They decide to "bring him back" by cloning his genes, as absurd a notion as that is. They think they've got Adam back. Ah, Nature is reversed! All is well, that "bad thing" never happened.
But as the cloned Adam turns 8, things start to get weird. Scary, dark things start to happen, as Adam realizes that his parents don't see him, but some kid that looks like him that he never knew and died eight years ago. He realizes that the only reason he exists is because someone died -- whether it's him that died or someone else, he's not sure. He is told that he was that dead person, but he has no memory of it, nor does he behave, think or feel the way that dead person supposedly did. He realizes that he's not the result of the miracle of love between two people, but a scientific creation directed by two desperate people so absorbed in their own grief and needs that they cannot even honor their son's death, nor can they honor the individuality of the 8-year-old now living with them. They even had the gall to give him the same name as their dead son, as if he was him! The kids at school have no end of fun with this "freak" in their midst, and he is tortured daily at school. This poor 8-year old is so distraught by his alienation, by his complete invisibility in the midst of everyone else's pain and delusion, that he gets an AK-47 and decides to see how far the illusions go...and you can choose the ending.
If you want to imagine being cloned, just imagine that you have an identical twin that died tragically years ago, and for your entire life, you have been told and treated as if you are him.
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