Cloning Primer

With the recent scandal surrounding South Korean scientist Hwang Woo-suk’s made-up cloning results, the genetic sciences are once again in the spotlight.

And with that spotlight come questions. “Are you making gill-men? Is that what all this is about?” we ask. As is usually the case, cloning and stem cells aren’t actually about gill-men at all, but something else entirely that isn’t terribly interesting.

Nonetheless, it is science we must embrace. Why? Because any advance in genetics gets us one step closer to the ultimate goal of all gene tinkering: that someday, it will be raining men. Perhaps even gill-men, though we don’t have the hard facts to back that up.

To date, male-based precipitation research has produced nothing significant. Yet every new finding—be it stem cells or cloning or what have you—gives us hope that the ultimate prize is ever closer to our anxious grasp.

Cells are the building blocks of humanity. You, for instance, are made out of trillions of teeny tiny little cells. They’re apparently really small, so trust me, don’t even bother looking.

This is true of all creatures, big and small. Even Kirstie Alley, who an astute observer would conclude is composed entirely of fudge, jelly donuts and coagulated gravy, is
in actuality made up of the same stuff as you or me.

A horrifying thought, certainly—but also one staggering with implications. How can any of us be racist, for example, when the folks we’re discriminating against are made up of the same adorable little parts that we
are? How can we deny Sylvester Stallone another big box office hit, if we take into account that his cellular make-up is almost identical to our own, no matter how vile his films may be?

Cells are small human-building things, the existence of which offers conclusive proof that you should watch Sylvester Stallone movies. This alone is cause for alarm; so it’s easy to see why such small things can stir up so big a fuss.

Cells are the bricks that make up the you-building. As we all know, a pile of bricks left to their own devices will not make a building. They’ll just sit there like Teamsters.

This is where enzymes come in. Enzymes are like builders, and can get a cell to transform into one of your you-parts. Your DNA, a stringy collection of data that tells the enzymes how to build the you-parts, is like the blueprint.

Hot damn! Through a simple metaphor, we’ve taken a complicated genetic process and made it easy to understand.

Unfortunately, we’ve also simplified it to the point where it’s retardedly inaccurate. In actuality, cells produce their own enzymes as they need them. Plus, DNA transfers instructions to the enzyme through a complicated process involving RNA molecules and ribosomes. To put all that nonsense into people words, imagine a construction site where piles of bricks
give birth to their own construction workers; the building’s blueprint is popping out instructions that zoom off and gestate inside the workers; and the workers themselves construct the building by setting off chemical reactions inside their own bodies.

Now our metaphor is more accurate. It is also a little horrifying. If it helps at all, try to imagine the construction workers as cuddly bears.

Stem cells are just cells that haven’t been given any instructions yet—they’re a pile of bricks just waiting to be told to transform into something.

Recently, scientists have begun to figure out ways of giving stem cells instructions that will start them on their way to becoming things. From a medical perspective, this is a real breakthrough, as it means we can build sick people replacement lungs, livers, skin, or anything else that isn’t working.

From a raining-men perspective, however, the news is discouraging. Hypothetically, we could use stem cells to stockpile the resources needed to have it rain men’s parts. As an alternative, though, it’s sadly lacking.

No, not really. Once something’s been built, it can’t actually be un-built. The idea of giving someone new DNA that will change them overnight is a misconception made popular by bad Hollywood movies starring big muscle guys and, lately, Tobey Maguire.

The entire Marvel universe, in fact, rests on the assumption that if you were irradiated, exploded, driven over, or otherwise spectacularly mangled, it would jangle up your DNA and give you super-powers. It is not the purpose of this article to argue the merits of Stan Lee’s grasp of molecular biology. However, it’s worth noting that if any of the above were actually true, you would suddenly sprout dragonfly wings every time you bumped into a door.

In reality, the best science can do would be to replicate a sick person’s DNA, clone them, and harvest the clone for parts—in other words, rebuild something from scratch. So far, though, the best the cloning sciences can do is duplicate a sheep that is perpetually sick, can’t walk or think right, and costs millions of dollars to keep alive. Don’t hold your breath for that new kidney, in others words.

Remember that scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark, where those Nazis opened up the ark and had their faces melt off?

It wouldn’t be anything like that.

Because of where scientists have to get them. Stem cells, remember, are cells that haven’t been built into anything yet. So if you’re in the market for a handful of primo stem cells, you’ll most likely have to get them from something that hasn’t been built yet: i.e., human embryos or fetal tissue.

This opens up the age old debate we’re all understandably sick of by now: when can a human being be called a human being? When it’s born? When it’s still in the womb? At the point of conception? When it’s old enough to move out of the house and get a damn job?

Saner heads may point out that the pro-life and pro-choice activists should just pick a point randomly and be done with it. It’s difficult to be sympathetic to the “every human life is a sacred miracle” argument, after all, when there are over six billion of the sacred little angels consuming our planet’s resources right now. Twenty years from now, when the world population hits critical mass and we’re all scrounging around for food scraps and living with five hundred of our closest relatives, we’ll be aborting “sacred little miracles” well into their late thirties.

Future generations might look back on our stem cell debate as impossibly quaint. This is because they’ll be holding lotteries over who gets the privilege of eating a bag full of everyone else’s hair.

Well, let’s be fair. Currently, scientists are getting permission from women who have had abortions to extract stem cells from the discarded embryo. Now, if you see stem cells as a goopy pile of embryonic tissue, there isn’t much of a problem.

However: what if those stem cells were a bunch of cuddly little bears? Capering about the forest as cuddly bears do, sitting down to cake-and-honey picnics, playing lively games of charades? Why, those monsters! They’re killing those bears!

This, in essence, is where the problem starts. Pro-life activists feel that using stem cells for research disregards the sanctity of human life, since the stem cells had the potential to build a human being. Scientists have argued that the embryo was aborted anyway, so the choice was already made. The pro-lifers argue that the scientists are still destroying the embryos to get the cells, with the implication that the scientists should instead be making the embryos back into babies.

“Why have the abortion in the first place, then?” the scientists say.

“Exactly!” say the pro-life activists.

Eager to avoid fisticuffs, everybody simply agrees to disagree. Since using stem cells denies the sanctity of human life, the embryo is thrown into the trash instead of used, which somehow makes the pro-life activists happy. Elsewhere, someone with acute liver problems dies of liver failure. But it could be argued that he would have been the next Hitler anyway, so it’s not entirely relevant.