O, grave new world

Cloning technology (CT) is already making waves. According to reports, an American woman has had herself cloned while abroad, and now wants ...

Cloning technology (CT) is already making waves. According to reports, an American woman has had herself cloned while abroad, and now wants to return to the US with her baby. The authorities are tying themselves in knots over how to define the baby’s parentage and nationality — particularly because she is in every sense (and tissue and bone) her own mother.

Indeed, CT will pose far more profound challenges to humanity than even nuclear-technology — provided of course that sundry kooks do not get their hands on N-technology first and eliminate the said challenges by eliminating humanity. In coming years, CT is bound to become faster, cheaper and more easily accessible. As always, the first to exploit its potential will be the criminal classes.

For instance, a burglar will not hesitate to attempt the riskiest of heists. First, he will step across to the neighbourhood cloning centre and have his DNA extracted and implanted in a suitable egg. Thereafter, he will make his burglary attempt.

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If it succeeds, well, he could terminate the cloning process and retire; or else, he could choose to go through with the cloning process and spend the rest of his days happily and literally reliving life through his son. What if the heist fails, and he is caught, tried and sentenced to a dozen years as a state guest? His years in gaol will not be wasted! He will peel mountains of onions and sweep the prison yards with a smile, content in the knowledge that even as he serves his term, a younger version of himself is growing up in the free world outside, waiting as eagerly as himself for the day of his release. What a reunion that will be — truly a meeting of kindred souls.

Common folk, too, will be egged on by cunning advertising to avail of CT services. Parents will routinely make one or more clones of each child at birth; not just to insure against disease and mortality, but to maximise their influence on society. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to have an only child working as a US doctor, UP politician, IA pilot and IIT professor all at the same time… yeh dil maange more!

Alas, CT has a far grimmer side. It is likely to bring a new callousness to society, a new recklessness in just about every activity, from driving cars to driving nails. Won’t the murderer henceforth set out with a terrible new resolve, assured of life beyond the gallows by a few clones thoughtfully left behind?

Won’t we see eternal wars waged between streams of identical, indestructible GI Joes issuing forth from military cloning industries? ‘Terminators’ armed with human-terminator-gene weaponry? Can you see dozens of little Osamas in dozens of little terrorist playpens across the world, each waiting for his cue to ‘play’ in the bigger playgrounds of the world?