Life in the Clone Zone
Although it seems pretty much everything has already been cloned -- trees, sheep, rats, Doritos, reality shows, Dick Clark -- recent South Korean reports proclaim the first creation of human embryo clones. Permitting reproduction of genetically compatible healthy cells for implantation, this procedure could be important for treating diseases like Parkinson’s and diabetes. As you might imagine though, cloning is a controversial complex procedure involving very white lab coats, clean test tubes, donated eggs, and cells with arcane names doing things that only scientific journals can spell correctly. Perfecting the production of identical people will take time. Given today’s pace of change, it can’t happen much before late March, when megacorps like Comcast, Pfizer, Citibank and Energizer will be able to build human facsimile assembly lines. Maybe for pets too? Think of the sales (and ratings) from producing your own identical customer base.
If you’ve walked through crowds or attempted to drive a freeway recently, you might question the need for more people, let alone any who look, act and smell identical to the thoughtless, ugly cellphone users already fouling so much public space. And you might judge by the way teenage girls and boys partially dress nowadays that the business of turning out identical look-alikes is already well underway.
Given the inexorability of modern science even without clear demands or needs for oncoming advances, we should confront the implications of cloned folks. Cloned parents would enable every mom and dad to attend every game of their every child. A cloned couple could produce four incomes instead of two, keep only one mortgage and assign clones to do the shopping and arguing. One child cloned once could complete any chore in half the time, while a triple-clone job could produce a college freshman, sophomore, junior and senior simultaneously under one name -- and one tuition bill. Even a single person, once cloned, could finally complete that Saturday errand list. And anyone, sufficiently cloned, could arrange his or her own group rate for movies and air tickets.
Clone questions remain, however. Will everyone need to patent his own face? Should we really outsource cloning to countries where it can be done more cheaply, like South Korea? Will we need clone caps and clone tariffs to limit look-alikes? What about clone pirates cloning clones? Would clone kids get child tax credits too? Candidate clones could raise money at simultaneous party rallies in four cities while also attending church in numerous Southern states. And maybe, finally, the Dodgers new owner could clone some clutch hitters.