Dolly and the age of unreason

Ever since Dolly’s birth, alarmist visions of armies of soulless Hitlers have only been offset by philosophical ruminations about the essence of humanness and some down-to-earth querries about a clone’s status. Who are the clone’s parents? (The twosome who gave birth to the person who wascloned.) Will a genius’ clone be just as intelligent? Will he be crushed by identity crises?

And, most important of all, how old would one’s clone be? This has intrigued Dolly’s mentors ever since her birth. Did she start out in life with her biological clock reset or did she start out years older than other newborns since she was cloned from a six-year-old adult? Preliminary findings are sketchy about her exact genetic age but the fact that her telomeres, appendages on chromosomes that shorten with age, are stunted compared to her peers has added an entirely unexpected spin to the cloning debate.

Wilmut and a host of others have been arguing that human cloning must be preempted, for it would burden an offspring with oppressive expectations since their future selves would virtually be foretold, while others say this smacks of genetic determinism and that, in the words of James Watson, "never postpone experiments that have clearly defined future benefits for fear of dangers that can’t be quantified." A fewmonths ago South Korean scientists announced they had successfully cloned a human embryo only to nobly abandon this journey into the great unknown. Now Wilmut’s latest bombshell will ensure a more frenzied reaction to any such claim, which is but inevitable very soon.

It’s the same old story all over again. New technologies are changing the way we work, the way we think, and the way we perceive ourselves — and in this age of unreason, while the scientific consensus tilts wholeheartedly towards inexorable progress, every so often a study comes along and stokes loud hysteria with warnings of doom couched safely in could bes and maybes. Health scares are perhaps the most predominant manifestation of fin de siecle angst.

Why do we wade through reams of data to grab at flimsy ifs? Mobile phones lend millions of lives a new flexibility; but millions more have their hearts aflutter after sensational yet preliminary claims are made about handsets cooking the brain leading to tumours andmemory loss. Men of reason counsel restraint and point out that no such study has been adequately substantiated – but to no avail.

The Internet has thrown up new social dynamics, it has changed how the world interacts, researches, passes time, organises itself, it’s their window on their own world. Yet, listen to a bunch of resea-rchers, hear them cite the “only authoritative”, wideranging study on the World Wide Web, and one would think one is surfing on the edge of a precipice, poised to topple over into a perennial state of depression and loneliness.

Scientific and social debate is replete with such examples, as it is with the ever emphasised imperative for more research, for a fool-proof no-side-effects warranty. But the spin-offs of new technology are invading modern life at such an exponential rate that by the time an all-clear signal is waved, the global village will be animated by a new health scare, a fresh catastrophe just waiting to happen. So Dolly’s drooping profile will once again provokewide-eyed alarm, but be assured that the march towards cloning of farm animals — and perhaps humans — will continue apace. Uncertainty is something mankind will just have to learn to live with.