Hollywood Cloning

[jimnms]

I found an interesting article about that Godsend movie and cloning:

God, Send a Realistic Tech Flick

In movies, anyone who dares to use a newfangled technology to "play God" almost always opens the "gates of hell."

The movie is the kind of publicity that people who want to outlaw all human cloning could only dream of. Whether the filmmakers realize it or not, the message is clear: Scientists who want to clone are evil, or mad, or both; cloning should not be done, period.

At least that was the underlying message for a viewer who is immersed in the science and politics of human cloning. Normal people may simply think it's a somewhat entertaining movie they could have probably waited to rent;

To his credit, writer Mark Bomback avoids inserting too much science into the film. But although the press materials for the film say, "the science itself is grounded in fact," the brief description of the cloning process is a tad off.

A voice-over from Wells tells the audience that after shocking cells back into their "stem-cell precursor," they're injected into an enucleated egg and then nature takes its course. Not so much. Stem cells are precursor cells, but they're not required for cloning.

The press materials reveal a bit about where the movie makers are coming from. They quote Dr. Leon Kass, head of President Bush's Council on Bioethics, more than once. The press notes read: "Dr. Kass eloquently explained why the issue of human cloning is so vexing to us as Americans: 'The greatest dangers we confront in connection with the biological revolution arise not from principals alien to our way of life but rather from those that are central to our self-definition and well-being: devotion to life and its preservation; freedom to inquire, invent or invest in whatever we want; a commitment to passionate humanitarianism; and the confident pursuit of progress through the mastery of nature, fueled by unbridled technological advance.'"

The notes go on to interpret Kass' comments, saying that, in essence, the real-life doctor's point is that to be anti-cloning is to be against the American free enterprise system, which made the practice possible in the first place. "It's easy to imagine Dr. Wells, the character played by Robert De Niro in Godsend, agreeing with Kass," the notes say, but this interpretation is downright hilarious to anyone who has followed Kass' anti-technology career.

Plus, all the characters repeatedly say cloning is illegal. It's not, at least in the United States, but the film's plot hinges on this misstatement of fact. Fear of exposure and potential jail time is what forces the Duncans and Wells to keep quiet the fact that they've cloned Adam.

"Illegal? Yes. Immoral? No," Wells tells the Duncans when he's trying to talk them into his scheme.

But the United States is one of the few developed countries without a law regulating human cloning, mainly because legislators refuse to separate the two different types of cloning: the kind to create a baby, as portrayed in Godsend, and the kind that scientists want to use to develop stem cells for potential medicines (aka therapeutic cloning, or cloning for biomedical research).

Conflating the two types of cloning has held up a bill that would ban only reproductive cloning, which almost everyone agrees should be illegal. Legislators are more divided on therapeutic cloning.

As long as all cloning is associated with results like evil Adam No. 2 in Godsend, no one will want any part of it. Will demons appear in the bathtub if a clone is around? Will that clone have nightmares about his past life? As far as anyone knows it hasn't happened to any of the cloned cows or sheep to date.

_____
Learn from the mistakes of others, you won't live long enough to make all of them yourself.

[Wise Young]

It is frightening that Hollywood tries to play to people's worst fears and it becomes part of the culture. Perhaps one day, somebody should make a movie of how stem cell research was held back by the unlikely combination of compassionate conservatism and hollywoord fearmongering. Wise.

[Christopher Paddon]

Wise,

We don't need a movie with that plot - it's happening in reality

What about a movie in which the government spends billions of dollars to kill and maim people in other countries and at the same time causes unnecessary suffering at home by denying funds for research - oh yes, that's happening in real life too

[Faye]

But the United States is one of the few developed countries without a law regulating human cloning, mainly because legislators refuse to separate the two different types of cloning: the kind to create a baby, as portrayed in Godsend, and the kind that scientists want to use to develop stem cells for potential medicines (aka therapeutic cloning, or cloning for biomedical research).

Conflating the two types of cloning has held up a bill that would ban only reproductive cloning, which almost everyone agrees should be illegal. Legislators are more divided on therapeutic cloning.

We wouldn't have to be so afraid if we actually had a law against Reproductive Cloning!!

A law against Reproductive Cloning needs to be passed ASAP, to put this fear-mongering to rest!!

Then the Therapeutic cloning issue can be addressed ( /regulated ), and with appropriate over-sight become more palatable to the general public.

"Together we stand, divided we fall..."