Cloning: Nature or Nurture

[Professor S]

Originally Posted by Capt. Funnypants

Bladerunner is a great movie, but isn't it actually about robots rather than clones? Now I understand that they were produced by some biological process supposedly and had DNA and everything, but I thought the central question of the movie was about the nature of humanity and life. If it was made by human hands, is it alive? The story it was based on was called Do Robots Dream of Electric Sheep?

I think it was Andriods not Robots , but that doesn't really matter, and in my mind the same themes are evident in the cloning debate. If we engineer as human from existing DNA, does that nake them less human? What are his rights? What if we are actually able to create a human from scratch? What will their rights be? What will he be? If we make changes in their intelligence and appearance, can we use them as slaves or track them in their careers and place ceiling based on their gene manipulation?

Beyond Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick I also recommend Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, and it was actually made into a half-decent movie a few years ago.

Boys from Brazil is a great yarn about Nazi's in 1970's Brazil who clone hundreds of little Hitlers and then attempt to control their development from afar to create a new Adolph in both nature and nurture. It stars Lawrence Oivier as an old Nazi hunter and Gregory Peck in a frightening portrayal of Dr, Joseph Mengele.