Alter Ego

 

So I just saw a French science documentary, "Alter Ego", on Swedish TV about cloning. Artificial human cloning of non-human animals, to be exact. Remember Dolly the cloned sheep? For whatever reason, the European Union bans this kind of cloning, so the industry thrives in the rest of the world. In the docu, they interview Americans and Argentinians who clone horses (including race horses), Chinese who clone pet dogs, and a hyper-modern lab in the United Arab Emirates financed by the Emir of Dubai which clone dromedaries (camel races are popular in some nations). In the United States, there are supposedly cloned deer with exactly the qualities a wild-game hunter wants!

There are also discussions to clone mammoths and other extinct animals, such as the dodo. Maybe this is a bit too much hype? One scientist actually believes that cloning birds is extremely difficult to impossible. Another opines that "cloned mammoths" would really be genetically enhanced elephants which can live in cold weather! However, the cloned foal of a Przewalski´s horse (this species or sub-species is extinct in the wild) is real, so here is a possible avenue to save endangered species. It seems cloning can even enhance the genetic diversity of a species. The two-humped Bactrian camel (which is almost extinct in the wild) is mentioned as the object of another possible rescue mission. 

The documentary doesn´t discuss human cloning and no Raëlians are interviewed. The production is clearly pro-cloning and I do wonder after watching it why the EU has banned cloning. How does this help us? How does it help the animals? Is it just some weird superstition? On our "enlightened" continent! In reality, the applications are almost endless. Imagine killing off all wolves, but keeping their DNA around for future re-creation just in case. 

Hmmm...