| From: | shadowrn@*********.com (Hahns Shin) |
|---|---|
| Subject: | Cloning (was Re: Cryogenics) |
| Date: | Sat Sep 29 15:50:01 2001 |
the lower body into a cheese grater of monowire, some of the more
deadlier neurotoxins)... it all leads to brain death anyway. Magical
healing could take care of certain things, but massive systemic injury
(burns, electrocution, lopping off the head) is totally inoperable.
Think "regeneration" power and its limitations, and you get a general
idea. I doubt that a lopped-off head could be reattached... think
about trying to reattach literally millions of severed wires, clean
cut notwithstanding. Even magic isn't strong enough for that, unless
we are talking about undead-creating magic ("The Headless Horseman
rides again!"). It would actually be easier to repair a (small
caliber)gunshot wound to the head. This is one reason why I do not
see total brain transplants as a viable option (too many things to
wire and patch up) though an interesting choice would be a partial
cortex transfer... the end result would be similar to the Trill on
Star Trek.
Cloning presents an interesting problem and a moral question that
won't be solved any time soon. Much as the morality of abortion has
been discussed for centuries (and is still being debated, of course),
the answer to the morality of cloning may elude us for some time.
Cloning body parts and bioware is commonplace in the world of
Shadowrun, so I assume that most industrialized nations accept cloning
on legal and moral grounds (I'm sure there would be some political and
fundamentalist groups that would object). And I remember it being
mentioned in Shadowtech that human cloning is past the "initial
experimental" stages, but the clones still do not maintain viability.
Cloned organs are still transplanted organs. It isn't a "germ-line"
change, so to speak. Many of the available options for cultured
bioware are merely hypertrophic versions of normal organs, stimulated
to grow bigger/hardier than the typical organ, or perhaps boosted by
genes from other animals. Part of the body cost in both cyberware and
bioware is immune-suppression, especially in the case of bioware, and
culturing the body part lessens both the chance of rejection and the
amount of immune-suppression needed (thus, a lower Body Index cost).
Your body is constantly destroying cells on the basis of surface
antigens... it is as if every cell in your body needed a "Shibboleth"
or password to avoid being destroyed. Tumor cells cloak themselves
from this autodestruction immune response, and thus proliferate into
neoplasms and cancer. The majority of organ transplant immunology
consists of either matching the cell antigens to the host (having the
right password, either naturally or artificially) or suppressing
immune function (getting rid of your body's tumor sentinels).
"Forced" cloning to produce an organ is a process that totally renders
the "host" clone inviable. There are various procedures induced on the
genome and the development of the forced clone that maximize the
output of a particular organ or organ system at the cost of
obliterating other systems. Think of an anencephalic baby (i.e. a baby
born without a cortex). Technically, it is still "alive" but it has no
consciousness and no chance of future consciousness. I imagine that
forced clones would be the same way... alive but vacant.
The reason that we retain our intelligence and memories is deep-seated
in our development. The leaps of intelligence and logic that we make
while we are infants are lightyears ahead of what we can learn as
adults. The brain is rewiring itself, so to speak. I cannot imagine
that a clone can possess the intelligence of an adult when they are
force-grown, a process that takes perhaps 8 months. Also, much of the
way we learn absolutely depends on outside stimulation. As events and
things act on us, we learn to react. An example of this concept is
the story of the horrible orphanages in Eastern Europe (note: not ALL
orphanages, but just a few), children who are literally locked up in
"nursery jails" from a very young age. They end up being profoundly
retarded from a lack of nutrition, but more importantly, a lack of
contact and outside stimulation. I hardly think a clone can develop a
lifetime of experiences in a few months. I do not think simchips would
help in this regard, as I would think they would depend on the
pre-existing neurons of the brain to be developed (this is not to say
that personalities and memories could not be recorded on a chip, but
they cannot be recorded back into a tabula rasa "blank" template
clone). Thus, an "adult" forced-grown clone would be no more than a
newborn in mentality and reason.
The interesting question, of course, is what if you clone a person and
let the clone develop naturally from infancy to adulthood, growing up
and learning just like a normal human. Would it be a person or a
copy? I'm sure nanotechnology and gene therapy would be able to cure
some of the horrible side effects of cloning that we have discovered
recently (including cancers that we have never seen before, grossly
shortened lifespans, spontaneous degeneration and de-differentiation
of tissue, immune disorders, just to name a few). This would produce
a viable and, more importantly, self-aware "person"... is the clone a
human being? Does it possess a soul?
Another possibility (more sci-fi-ish) comes from the novel "Bean" by
Orson Scott Card. Bean is a cloned individual with "Anton's key", a
genetic marker that allows one to retain the receptive intelligence of
an infant, but eventually will result in death of the individual (to
put it grossly, the brain and body grows gradually over time until the
person dies of heart failure, cerebral hemorrhage, burst blood vessels
by age 15). Perhaps a similar marker can be "flipped" to allow a clone
to have exceeding amounts of intelligence and learning capabilities,
at the cost of lifespan.
I think I remember it being mentioned that the "magus factor" in
humans hasn't been found, and that cloned mages do not necessarily
produce new magically active clones.
I realize that the above passage is beginning to sound like an anime
monolog ("if you could take the power of an ameoba..."), so I'll stop
for now.
Hahns Shin, MS II
Budding cybersurgeon
"Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist. Children already
know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be
killed."
-G. K. Chesterton
