From: Hal Finney (hal@finney.org)
Date: Thu Mar 28 2002 - 19:13:20 MST
Glancing at the TV listings I see that tonight on the Lifetime cable
network will be a made for TV movie called Cloned:
"Set in the year 2008, this provocative 1997 TV drama raises a
multiplicity of moral dilemmas surrounding the issue of human cloning.
"When Seattle couple Skye and Rick Weston lose their 8-year-old son in
a boating accident, their lives are shattered. But what they discover
next is even more shocking. The fertility clinic where their son was
conceived, via in vitro fertilization, made 'copies', dubbing the fetus
'Baby 2000.' When the Westons threaten to expose the cloning, their
doctor makes them an offer that any grieving parents would find tempting."
Anyone seen this? Lifetime is mostly for women so this is probably just
another weepy drama. But it is not an entirely implausible scenario.
It would not be cloning of an adult, but it is possible to split
embryos to form artificial identical twins, and freeze some of them.
I don't think this would be a normal procedure during IVF but fertility
clinics are notorious for rough and ready ethics, so it could happen.
Then the situation in the movie is presumably that they offer to implant
a stored embryo and give the couple an identical clone of their dead son.
Hal
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