I recently was involved in a discussion with Warren B., renowned children’s author and no stranger to BC political issues. He is most widely remembered for his bestselling children’s books : Pop! Goes The Hamster…And Other Great Microwave Games, Dad’s New Wife Robert, You Are Different and That’s Bad, Fun Four Letter Words To Know And Share, and his new release – Grandpa Gets A Casket. To make a short story long, he started to talk about cloning. Technically cloning means making a genetic lineage of identical individuals. Cloning is another one of those terms/phrases that the media has seized and bounced around so much that it is now meaningless, like information superhighway, Cyberspace, or government waste.
Talk of cloning in the media these days often stems from discussions about the genetic engineering of the food supply. Apparently, people get annoyed when those designing food these days start experimenting with such things as growing goat hair on tomatoes to protect then from early frosts. Soon there will be another use for those vegetable peelers. When talking about cloning, some reporter will usually make a comment about identical copies of him/herself walking around, or something equally asinine.
Lets suspend belief for a moment and investigate this for a minute. Imagine you are sitting at a coffee shop, lets say you are in Langley, though any town would do for the purposes of this discussion. Lets say you are sitting there and some guy gets out of a car by the curbside. With the nightmare of cloning being a reality, you might see this guy look exactly like you. Imagine, though I realize it sounds ludicrous, but you might actually see your own clone. Like looking in the mirror. Imagine if this technology became even more insidious, and people might steal DNA from you in order to clone you. Wow, that wouldn’t be all that good, people stealing DNA and all. I’d much rather they steal my pens, like they do now!
I guess that the overall end of the story here is all this could happen. Someone could steal some of your DNA, clone you in a secret laboratory in their basement, and then raise the resulting clone for TWENTY FIVE YEARS in order to scare you at a coffee shop in Langley. Even if someone wanted to do this, I doubt that they have enough patience and time enough to carry the whole thing through. As for rich people wanting to look for immortality, they clearly don’t know how this stuff would work.
So forget my whole example here. As usual I have taken a worthwhile discussion about a timely issue in the world and followed it with lame excuses and the whole thing fizzled near the end. I mean really, seeing someone who looks JUST like you stepping out of a car right in front of you is something that would never happen. I’ll try this discussion again later when I have actual, realistic examples.