Work by Jean Fontaine, MHNN / Photo: Danièle Rapin
MHNN, Katrie Gagné
Calf with two heads, MHNN / Photo: Alain Germond
Once they have succeeded in cloning a sheep, a mouse and a pig, will scientists move on to human beings? And if they do, what will be the function of a human clone? To be a puppet of the original - protected, controlled and manipulated?
Mask by Werner Strub
Photo: René Funk
The earliest robots, created with remarkable technical expertise, reproduced not only the appearance of the human body but also its movements. Two centuries later, parts of the living body are being created in our laboratories.
The Draftsman, robot by Jacquet-Droz, 1769
From the Musée d'art et d'histoire de Neuchâtel
In future, who will decide what is human: how it can be transformed, according to what standards, and for what social ends? Scientists, doctors, insurance companies, politicians, business tycoons? (Daniel Cerqui and Olivier Simioni). God no longer has exclusive rights to Creation and many people dream of immortality.
MHNN, private collection
Man and His Double, Björn Fühler, puppeteer, Alsace |
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These are the thumbnails and texts for this alcove. They can be printed.
Duplicating the Body : The Illusion of Eternity
We are already able to grow the cells of some of our organs outside our bodies. it is not an enormous leap to creating a double of the entire body. Dolly the sheep and Fibro the mouse have shown us the way to human cloning, now technically possible. Wouldn’t a double be a marvellous source of organs, always available and perfectly compatible with each persons immune system?
Cloning would certainly provide an illusion of eternity, but at the price of individuality. "I" would become "We". By perpetuating genetic identity without changing it, cloning would reduce us to the level of a bud or a cutting. It would mean the return to a more primitive form of life: bacteria perpetually splitting, never dying. Nature created immortal organisms before sexual reproduction, which requires that individuals die so that new and different individuals may be born.
Is cloning a dead end where the scientist plays God in order to create man in his own image? |
