Thursday, April 17, 2008

Clone Me!

     Yesterday I caught part of a movie called Godsend.  In the movie a couple clones their son that died in an accident at 8 years old.  Of course the cloned child starts acting weird at 8. 

     I thought it was kind of sick that they would clone their child.  You can't just replace a person and it isn't like bringing the first child back to life.  It did get me thinking about cloning though.  I would like to clone myself.  Much like Jango Fett, I would raise the child myself and teach him in the ways I felt he should be taught.
 

     To understand my thinking you have to know a little about me.  My mother didn't quite quit drinking or smoking while she was pregnant with me.  I was born premature and weighed 4lbs 9oz.  This isn't too small I know and several people have a worse time of it being born.  I was also not breast fed and allergic to milk/formula.  I was put on meat formula.  I was always smaller than other kids growing up and now stand at a tall 5'7".  There is no way of knowing if I would be taller had my mothers pregnancy been healthier.  I don't really care about that, but it is an area to be considered when cloning oneself to try and get the maximum potential out of oneself. 
 

     The greatest area of improvement would be in academics, I believe.  I attended 13 different schools growing up.  Looking back, this had a noticable impact on the classes I was able to take and the consistency of my learning.  I was either catching up or waiting for the people around me to do so most of my school life.  I moved to a different state for 9th grade and they wouldn't let me take Algebra due to me not taking pre-Algebra which was normal 8th grade math for me.  This meant that I didn't advance through the Maths and was never able to take an advanced math class due to time constraints.  I also changed schools in the middle of my 11th grade year.  I was taking French III, but my new school only offered up to French II.  I was able to take the French II class for a French III credit but I slept through the class and finished the year knowing less French than when I started and with no option for French IV.  Examples abound.

      I consider myself a smart person and know that I was bored at school most of the time, but the turbulance of my situation never allowed that this would get noticed and I would get that special attention that could have impacted my academic carreer.  I was also not pushed at home.  Good grades were encouraged but that was it.  I was never directed and seldom received the at home education that would have encouraged learning in the sciences and social studies.  I am thankful that our house always had a bookshelf with books like Watership Down and The Hobbit. 
 

     So, I want to clone myself to see how I could have been, had I been given the right circumstances growing up.  I want to allow this version of me to play little league and take martial arts classes.  I want him to get the encouragement he needs to excell in school.  I want to feel for what interests this person and guide him towards it acedemically.  To a point my own children exposes some of this potential, but there is always the question of did they get that from me or from their mom.  It shouldn't matter with my kids and it doesn't, but I kinda want to know how I could have been and the girls don't reveal that, not the way a clone would. 

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11 comments:

Steve Betz said...

Great reflection, Budd. Seems like you turned out pretty well -- though it would be sort of fun. Would Boba-budd have his own vox page?

Budd said...

Boba-Budd, I like it. I am sure he would. I think this would be a great experiment though. It could be called the personal potential project. What would be real cool is when my clone picks his career path, I would finally know what it is that I want to do.

grrrace said...

"boba-budd" is the best name EVER. this is an awesome post...

Cori said...

[this is insightful] I always thought it would be cool to have more than one life. There are far too many things I want to experience in this short time I have here. It would be really interesting to see my clone making different decisions. Fascinating post!

Kirk said...

I've thought about this myself and the philosophical implications are what became overwhelming to me. I was all cool with the physical/intellectual aspects, but once I started thinking about the nature of the human soul (if such a thing exists) I realized that if I was going to believe in God, I was going to need some serious answers before I'd be willing to create any human clone whatsoever.But the thought of making a better me is very provocative. All the things I do well could be started earlier in the cloned Kirk, thereby hopefully achieving greater skill in those areas. Likewise, negative things like drinking alcohol could be severely discouraged.Cloning humans would also provide a lot of data on the whole nature/nurture thing.

Budd said...

yeah, I wouldn't be who I am without all of my collective experiences, but I would like to see how much of me is genetically coded as well.

Steve Betz said...

Remember, there are lots of clones walking around in the world (people with the same genetic code) -- we just call them identical twins. Talk about a euphamism! ;)

Kirk said...

See, that's where my ignorance of genetics shines through.OK, so, what you're telling me is that a clone of a child is, at the DNA level, precisely the same as an identical twin of that child, only younger? Do I have that right?

Steve Betz said...

Kirk -- yep, that's the gig -- they are genetically indistinguishable.
Insterestingly, there are sequences of DNA that "cap" our chromosomes. The cap is called a telomere. Every time your cell divides, it can't copy the last little piece of the telomere. So after every division, you cap gets a little shorter. Eventually, when it gets too short, your cells stop dividing (or they can stop dividing correctly, which can lead to cancer...). Some folks have suggested that telomeres are kind of an internal "yardstick" and their length tells something about how old you are.
Now the question is: what if you took DNA from your 30-ish year old cells (with their 30yo telomeres) and implanted it into an enucleated embryo?? Does the resultant child have "30-yo" chromosomes and will get cancer in his 20s?
If I was a clone, that'd sort of piss me off...maybe that's why they turn evil

Kirk said...

Fascinating. You've just increased my reading load by quite a bit. Thanks. (I mean that.)

Dancing Bear said...

I was in six schools in second grade alone. I turned into the biggest "people pleaser" because I was always looking to try and fit in. I usually did but I ended up being what people wanted me to be rather than who I was. That's why I'm such an rnean old cuss now. I refuse to accept anything. I shun many things that seem to make sense. I still rebel and I'm almost 50.
I was thinking aout cloning two days ago believe it or not. We do cloning where I work. Of course it is just cells or multicellular animals. I wanted to have my dog cloned. I thought I could look into it and see if they would consider drawing DNA so that if they could do it down the road they could clone him. But then my mind took me to my "ugly" place and I started thinking that they would make several clones, and more, and more, and they would use his clones to experiment on. That would be just like doing it on him.
I just kept picturing him in labs all over the place being"tested" and it made me shudder.
I guess you are looking at it from the "It's a Wonderful Life" perspective or like Ebenezer Scrooge. Where you could get a peek at how things would be different. Does that make you Ebenezer Bobo Budd?
So much of who we are has to do with boh nature and nurture. When people ask me if I'm gay for either of those things I say probably some of both. But then I say that I had no control over either so why should I be picked on or mistreated. I got my genes and my upbringing from my parents. Maybe people should hate them instead of me.