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Human Clones by 2002

By Jeremy DerfnerUpdated Friday, Jan. 12, 2001, at 8:30 PM ET

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Wired, February 2001
The cover story predicts that a human will be cloned within the next year (if one hasn't been already), and what's more, it's no big deal. Animal-cloning researchers and in-vitro fertilization experts work with the necessary technology every day, and the market for human cloning is growing (most members of the substantial underground cloning community want to bring back dead relatives). The author of the piece was able to find several scientists with clients in the planning stages of human cloning projects. There are still strong taboos and laws against the practice, but in scientific circles, the logic behind them is starting to crumble. Because they would be born at different times and raised in different environments, clones of a single person would actually be very different from each other. And with technologies such as artificial wombs and genetic engineering on the horizon, human cloning is the least of our ethical problems.

Economist, Jan. 13
The cover editorial, a Clinton retrospective, echoes all the other presidential assessments. "Mr. Clinton's presidency has been both better, and worse, than we foresaw," the editors write. He deserves some credit for the booming economy, but most of it goes to Alan Greenspan. His foreign policy moved in the right direction, but he demonstrated interest in international affairs too late. And, of course, in the end, scandal sapped his effectiveness. "With more discipline and less self-indulgence," the editors conclude, "how good eight years of Bill Clinton could have been." (For the only presidential assessment you'll ever need, click here.) … A special report warns against the increasing regulation of the Internet. The Web flourished precisely because it was unregulated, but governments and businesses are now developing new technologies to limit online privacy. Filtering software gets more advanced all the time, and governments have started synchronizing their Internet laws so they apply across borders. E-commerce companies are leading the anti-privacy charge, developing software that finds personal information about users for marketing purposes.

New Republic, Jan. 22
Another Clinton retrospective cover, with three articles of praise and one dissent. … A piece highlights the little things Clinton did right that he never gets credit for. Notwithstanding the national health insurance fiasco of 1993, Clinton prevented health-care costs from ballooning out of control, shrank the size of federal government by giving power to the states, made the military more efficient, cleaned the environment, and broadened civil liberties. … A piece praises Clinton's handling of the economy, giving the president more credit than the Fed. Clinton was flexible enough to blend conservative and liberal ideologies, creating a fiscal conservatism that aided low-income people. … A dissenting piece warns that the boom came under very special circumstances, and now that it appears to be ending, a more traditional Keynesian approach is required.

New York Times Magazine, Jan. 14
The cover story echoes the wisdom that George W. Bush will run his administration like a corporation. Bush responds to people instead of ideas, and he sees his job as putting together a strong team, managing it effectively, and holding troublemakers accountable. … A companion piece laments the isolationist strain in Bush's foreign policy. His team of advisers is deeply cynical about humanitarianism abroad, and his insistence on an unworkable missile defense system betrays his mistrust of the rest of the world. Bush's policy differs not only from Clinton's but also from his father's. … An article profiles Robert Hughes, the combative Australian art critic. An insecure Australia fell in love with him 30 years ago when he made a career of criticizing the rest of the world. Now, Australia is less defensive, and his importance to its national sense of self has diminished. His reputation at home was destroyed in 1999, when he caused a terrible car accident. Instead of pleading guilty, he made a huge case out of it, publicly savaging his prosecutors and the passengers in the car he hit.

Time, Jan. 15
The cover package predicts that DNA-based medicines will revolutionize the drug industry. Old treatments, derived painstakingly through trial and error, worked only on symptoms. New medicines will fight the actual illnesses and will be targeted to an individual's genetic makeup. … An article predicts that while all of George W. Bush's Cabinet nominees will likely be confirmed, messy debates in Congress could weaken the new administration. Bush tried to earn political capital by spreading appointments around to all his constituencies, but he will have to spend capital to push through conservatives John Ashcroft, Gale Norton, and Linda Chavez. … A piece criticizes colleges for their hands-off approach to student mental illness. Time says that college students do not suffer inordinately high rates of mental illness, but it also claims that bad eating and sleeping habits and academic stress can cause undue strain. More ill students are attending college, say administrators, because new drug treatments enable students who never would have been able to endure school to enroll.

Newsweek, Jan. 15
The long cover story describes how the cryptography revolution has kept the government from gaining access to everything on American computers. The crucial moment for cryptography (the process of scrambling and unscrambling information) was the development of "public-key" encryption. The National Security Agency hated the crypto revolution because it put information out of its reach, so it used export controls to limit the development of public-key encryption. But when it tried to develop a "key escrow" system that would have given the government access to all encrypted data, the business, civil liberties, and high-tech communities protested, and now individuals can send information over the Internet knowing that the government cannot read it. … An article examines China's effort to crush Taiwanese independence efforts through economic coercion. Cross-strait trade has increased from $4 billion in 1990 to $27 billion last year, and Taiwan is now dependent on Chinese markets. An example: Taiwanese pop star A-Mei was banned in China for singing the Taiwanese national anthem in public and now vows to stay out of politics.

U.S. News & World Report, Jan. 15
The cover story describes yet another downside of the tech revolution: With so many gadgets, who knows how to use them? A few popular devices, such as the PalmPilot, were designed with the consumer in mind, but more often tech-wiz engineers lard their gizmos up with impossible-to-understand features. Americans use almost half their time with new appliances just figuring out how they work, and several experts estimate that they use only about a third of the capacity of their doohickies. … A piece says a rate-cutting, tax-cutting consensus is developing in Congress. Even Democratic leaders are willing to discuss tax cuts, and very few experts have questioned Greenspan's half-point rate cut. Lagging consumer confidence could increase because it is clear that both Bush and Greenspan have prioritized preventing a recession. … A short article says that Japanese women are starting to fight back against subway groping. According to a recent survey, 72 percent of female high-school students have been molested on a train, but 40 percent confronted their harassers. Molesters are now being arrested in significant numbers, and women have established women-only trains.

The New Yorker, Jan. 15
A piece analyzes the final, failed negotiations between Microsoft and the Justice Department. Microsoft wanted desperately to settle and had agreed to surrender some of its principles—its objection to open source code, for example—to reach a deal. But at the last second, the 19 co-plaintiff state attorneys general balked at the imminent agreement, derailing months of negotiations. The piece includes withering quotes from Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson about Microsoft and Bill Gates in particular. ("If I were able to propose a remedy of my devising, I'd require Mr. Gates to write a book report" about Napoleon "because I think he has a Napoleonic concept of himself and his company.") … An article profiles Christian diet guru Gwen Shamblin. She believes diet crazes encourage an unholy obsession with food (instead of God). Old-style Christian diets encouraged self-denial ("More of Jesus, Less of Me"). She encourages her adherents to eat what they want, but less of it. She has built a small empire, including her own church, publishing imprint, and plans for a possible radio show. … An article profiles Dr. Wouter Basson, the evil mastermind of South African biowarfare. In the 1980s, he founded Project Coast, a chemical and biological warfare program, and experimented with ways to wipe out large black populations without affecting Afrikaners. Basson also lived high off graft, was addicted to pornography, and sold laboratory-created street drugs, which is how he was arrested in 1997.

Weekly Standard, Jan. 15
The Clinton farewell extravaganza criticizes almost every aspect of the Clinton legacy. He kept the left wing at bay, but not enough. It is already coming back. He presided over a period of amazing Republican growth across the country, losing the House, the Senate, state legislatures, and governorships to the GOP. His successes, welfare reform and the balanced budget, were Republican initiatives. His foreign policy was based in self-aggrandizement, money, and political maneuvering. His recent meddling in the Middle East could do irreparable harm. He ignored the threat China poses because he wanted access to its markets. He intervened in Haiti for domestic political reasons (Florida), but when the going got tough, he abandoned the mission. … A piece checks in on the WOCS (Women of the Clinton Scandals), finding most of them the worse for wear, several of them struggling to make ends meet, and others posing for Penthouse (Paula Jones, Connie Hamzy).

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Jeremy Derfner is a former Slate editorial assistant.

COMMENTS

Reader Comment From the Fray:

The opposition to cloning is "crumbling" because it's basically stupid. The main arguments are:

1. It will create subhumans. Answer: only if you clone a subhuman.

2. It's unnatural. Answer: only if identical twins are unnatural.

3. God doesn't like cloning. Answer: Yes, she does. (The answer, like the objection, is a matter of faith and hence not subject to rational argument).

4. It gives some people "the willies." Answer: so does homosexuality. For that matter, so does Kathie Lee Gifford. Yet banning things on that basis--well, except maybe for Kathie Lee Gifford--would be seen as prejudiced and unfair. Why is banning cloning different?

5. We can't foresee the consequences. Answer: We can't foresee the consequences of much of anything beyond the short term, at least not at the level of certainty that cloning opponents apparently would insist on.

Instead of agitating against cloning, those who seek moral authority would be better advised to try to see that all children, cloned or not, are cherished. That, of course, would be hard work and hence is not nearly as appealing as issuing anti-cloning broadsides. As Mark Twain said, "To do good is noble. To tell others to be good is nobler still, and no trouble." Most of the political and intellectual classes live by this aphorism today, but without Twain's sense of irony.

--A.G.Android

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