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00:00 Have you ever watched or read science fiction and felt like it came scarily close to what's
00:05 actually happening in real life?
00:07 Or witnessed a technology or event unfold, knowing full well that a sci-fi writer predicted
00:12 it decades ago?
00:14 Have you ever worried that something horrible in sci-fi could one day happen to you?
00:20 This is Unveiled, and today we're taking a closer look at the terrifying future potential
00:24 for clone harvesting.
00:27 Do you need the big questions answered?
00:29 Are you constantly curious?
00:31 Then why not subscribe to Unveiled for more clips like this one?
00:34 And ring the bell for more thought-provoking content!
00:37 In 1996, a sheep was born that changed the world.
00:41 Dolly goes down in history as the first cloned mammal.
00:44 She was the product of some truly astonishing biological science at the time, although today
00:49 the list of successfully cloned animals has grown at a staggering pace.
00:53 We've now seen cloned rats, cats and camels, pigs, monkeys and wolves.
00:58 The breakthroughs are almost so expected and normal now that they don't always make headlines
01:03 anymore.
01:04 For all the positive applications that these developments could have, however, there has
01:07 always been an underlying ethical debate.
01:10 How far should we go?
01:12 The concept of "hatched humans" first came to the fore in Aldous Huxley's 1932
01:17 novel, Brave New World.
01:19 In it, the population is genetically engineered before birth, inside artificial wombs.
01:25 Once born, the children are taught and nurtured to fit into certain, predetermined groups.
01:29 Huxley then explores our freedom - or lack of it - under these conditions.
01:34 In a purely practical sense, it's a set-up that arguably could happen in real life.
01:40 So-called "designer babies" are increasingly possible thanks to gene editing, with many
01:45 fearing that the technology will lead to "customizing" human beings.
01:49 Combine it specifically with the tech that birthed Dolly the sheep, however, and that
01:53 fear cranks up another notch.
01:55 The Japanese-born British writer Kazuo Ishiguro explores the prospect of harvesting clones
02:00 in his 2005 novel, Never Let Me Go.
02:04 In the book, cloned humans are grown specifically to provide organs and other biological material
02:09 for non-cloned human beings.
02:11 Ordinarily, the clones' inescapable fate is kept from them.
02:14 They're oblivious that they're only ever alive in order to one day be cut open and die young.
02:19 However, the characters in Ishiguro's story learn the truth, and events unfold from there.
02:24 What's clear is that while "organs on tap" might represent some kind of scientific utopia
02:29 in theory, what actually unfolds is an unsettling dystopia when it's realized in this way.
02:35 Ishiguro's cloned beings think, feel and love, just as anyone else would… but they're
02:40 never free, and the scythe of death really can be ordered for them at any time.
02:45 Elsewhere, the issue of cloning is explored from a different angle in Michael Marshall
02:49 Smith's 1996 book, Spares.
02:52 Published in the same year as Dolly the Sheep was born, it again captures the then-burgeoning,
02:57 now fully-grown, ethical landscape.
02:59 Here, the action starts off on a "spares farm", where clones are grown to provide
03:04 body parts for high-paying customers.
03:07 The clones are entirely "owned" beings, with Smith creating a hellish scenario that
03:12 his characters are desperate to escape from.
03:15 The film rights were once bought but never acted upon, although many believe the 2005
03:19 movie The Island to be a very similar story.
03:22 In it, the main character learns of an entrenched conspiracy wherein clones are effectively
03:27 kept prisoner until they're required by their human parents.
03:31 Meanwhile, and although not clone harvesting, the issue of organ harvesting is at the heart
03:36 of Swedish writer Nini Holmqvist's 2006 novel, The Unit.
03:41 The eponymous "Unit" is a purpose-built facility where older people are sent by the
03:46 state to live out their final days, before they too go under the knife to die by donating
03:52 their organs and body parts.
03:54 In Holmqvist's near-future world, those who are sent to the Unit are known as "dispensables",
04:00 as the author asks the reader to imagine a time when certain groups of people are no
04:04 longer considered worthy of life, or at least their only worth is to be physically butchered
04:10 in the name of younger specimens.
04:12 Again, The Unit isn't about mass cloning, but many of the themes it raises are transferable.
04:17 And more generally, the same kind of questions are often asked in stories involving artificial
04:22 intelligence - what happens when robots feel?
04:25 Should machines have rights?
04:27 The TV series Humans looked directly at what might happen if synthetic humans ever became
04:32 almost indistinguishable from flesh-and-blood organic people.
04:36 With cloning in particular, the fact is that we are still a long way from fully-cloned
04:41 human beings.
04:42 But, nevertheless, the groundwork has been made, and many deem that the barriers between
04:47 us and it are almost always ethical, rather than technological.
04:51 Practically speaking, and while research into artificial wombs is ongoing, if a clone is
04:56 to be born it would most likely be to a surrogate mother.
05:00 Science fiction likes to show cloned creatures suspended inside vats of an unknown substance,
05:06 but the real-world work toward inventing those vats hasn't really materialised.
05:11 This in itself could breed concerns for what a future of cloning might look like, though,
05:15 with the potential for "clone carriers" to be treated badly - something akin to the
05:19 handsmaids in Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale.
05:23 More broadly, the potential for corruption with cloning could be huge, including with
05:28 the advent of clone slavery, the creation of clone armies, and with the birthing of
05:32 secret clones for variously unjust, duplicitous or malicious purposes.
05:37 A darkening picture gets even worse if we consider that, in the real world, cloning
05:42 is arguably less desirable in the scientific mainstream as it once was.
05:47 Due to the development of gene editing, for anyone wanting to create seemingly perfect
05:51 people - no matter the moral problems that that raises - cloning is no longer necessarily
05:56 the best route forward.
05:58 Because how do you choose who or what gets cloned?
06:01 And why should you bother if you could just write what you wanted into the genetic stream
06:05 at source?
06:07 These developments will never suddenly remove the knowledge of cloning from human society,
06:11 however.
06:12 And so, if tech develops to make cloning easier - which it surely will - then could we be
06:16 laying the foundations for a wild west of copied creatures in the future?
06:21 Today, the world is littered with long-discarded products that were once deemed the height
06:25 of technology, only to be replaced and thrown out.
06:29 If cloning ever arrives, then will it eventually go the same way?
06:33 Could we ever see a time when human bodies are so easily made and so little cared for
06:38 that they are just piled up in landfill?
06:41 For now, there are plenty of big strides that need to be made before that disturbing reality
06:45 comes to pass.
06:46 But what do you think?
06:47 Is there a place for cloning tech in the modern world?
06:50 Would you feel comfortable with cloning part or all of yourself in the future?
06:55 And if it does one day arrive, then how do you think we should govern it?
06:59 Let us know in the comments!
07:01 There are some common themes that run through all of the science fiction stories and moral
07:05 dilemmas that dip into cloning.
07:07 What do we count as life?
07:09 How do we value life generally?
07:11 Is any one version of life worth more than the other?
07:14 If a clone is born, then are they a clone or a human, first of all?
07:19 Beginning with Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, writers have long mused over the direction
07:24 that this kind of deeply biological research could take us down.
07:28 It's almost a century since Brave New World, however, and are we now about to step into
07:33 the time that Huxley envisioned?
07:35 In the time since Dolly the Sheep, we've fast-tracked to a level of knowledge that
07:39 would have been previously hypothetical only… so much so that perhaps we've never properly
07:45 considered the long-term implications.
07:47 In a near-future era when cloning is commonplace, there's ample opportunity for people to
07:52 take advantage; with an immediately clear threat such as nuclear weaponry, there's
07:57 always the fear that the know-how will one day be widespread and the consequences will
08:01 be dire.
08:02 But, it's arguably much the same thing in this case.
08:05 It's frighteningly simple to imagine a path for cloning that could lead to people born
08:11 to die, to some very literally unwanted children, and also to a time when only the rich get
08:17 replicated.
08:18 And, as incredible as cloning is, and as useful as some aspects of it could be in the future
08:23 of our species, that's how this science fiction nightmare really could come true.
08:30 What do you think?
08:31 Is there anything we missed?
08:32 Let us know in the comments, check out these other clips from Unveiled, and make sure you
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