From: Jim Fehlinger (fehlinger@home.com)
Date: Sun Mar 11 2001 - 21:07:13 MST
Damien Broderick wrote:
>
> The other night I saw loony toons Rael on the Aussie version of *60
> Minutes*, with his cloning team biochem prof representative, and found him
> surprisingly charming and sensible. `But isn't this... *playing GOD*...?'
> asked the accusatory interviewer at the end. `There is no God,'
> forthrightly noted the UFO abductee with the topknot, in his delightful
> French accent. `It is playing intelligent human beings.' He also pointed
> out some of the usual absurdities. `They tell us that it is a vile sin
> against human dignity to create these *exact carbon copies* of other
> humans,' he said wryly (I paraphrase from memory), `and at the same time
> they say that it can never work because clones are no more perfectly
> identical than twins are. Yes! And what's wrong with twins?' Go, Rael!
Yesterday morning I happened to switch on Mystery Science Theater 3000
on the Sci-Fi Channel, and caught the final half of an unfunnily
bad movie called _Parts: The Clonus Horror_ (1978):
http://www.scifi.com/mst3000/experiments/811/
(even the wisecracks seemed strained in this one, and more than a little
homophobic). A secret government project has created clones of VIPs
solely for use as a source of backup organs, to prolong their parents' lives.
The young adult clones seem to be mentally retarded and childlike,
but one escapes (he can read, somehow) with a videotape prospectus for
the project, and threatens to spill the beans. Peter Graves, as a wannabe
Presidential candidate, gives the low-down to his brother (a writer, and
the unconsenting genetic original of the escaped clone). "People will say
it's immoral, but what they'll really mean is 'why can't I have one too?'".
Jim F.
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