Who cares if I suggest that a clone writing a novel would be a literary event? It would. Nonetheless, would it be similar to someone's twin writing a novel? Of course it would - but it would still be noticed, for the sheer uncanny nature of this otherwise culturally unprecedented experience.

But then such things would become everyday and no one would notice them anymore.

I think being confronted with someone who looks exactly like me, even if 20 years younger (perhaps especially!), would be a psychologically disorienting experience - and yet you seem to think that this means I don't understand what cloning is and that I've supplied "bad information."

Also, to suggest that it's irresponsible on my behalf to speculate about the future psychological impact of cloning is ridiculous! If a post on io9 ever helps shape any government's public health policy then we are already fucked. Hopefully they'll turn to genetic scientists, say, not sci-fi writers hired by Gawker to blog about the future.

If, as a writer, I am meant to police everything I write according to whether or not it might affect government policy somehow, then 1) that's a sure recipe for self-centeredness and paranoia and 2) we'd be living in a dystopian police state.

As it is, speculating as to what it would be like to be confronted with someone who looks exactly like yourself, or to discover that someone who looks exactly like yourself has published an autobiography, and that this person is, in fact, made out of your own DNA, is fair game. Nowhere does that say that cloning is an exact transfer of identity, and nowhere does it give "bad information" to the public.

Geoff Manaugh

Maybe the author was postulating about a fictional world or future where human replicates, down to their memories, could be created, but then he should have made that clear. As it is, it sounds like he misunderstands cloning.

brilliantmistake

I do not know about any sort of speed up growth to full size, and even it will later exist, you will still need to figure out speed education and experience brain loading, which all together is in the more fictional part of sci-fi at this moment. (Not as if that was a problem, but the article seemed to talk about this based on recent scientific discoveries.)

Your infant clone interrogating you at Guantanamo, without being able to speak, or some 20 years after your capture. Even better, a group of 2 month old "very special agents" tracking down anybody.

And as the previous commenter posted, if even cloned at birth, it'd be a simple twin, especially since we right now have no idea how much of the personality comes from genes as opposed to experience.

And since mentioned poster wanted stuff blown out of proportion, I'll include my usual rant:

My problem with all this is that someone always comes around with these mostly false claims when talking about the ethics and moral issues involved, and derails any sensible debate, which has a direct impact on current, contemporary medical research/procedure. Not thinking this through and making the above claims can have an effect on available medical tools, especially if we think what kind of grasp lawmakers have on technology:) As an author, journalist, and blogger, you should have a responsibility for the possible effects of what you write.

So please think a bit before you type a mix of intelligent remarks with stuff that belongs in B class would-be-sci-fi-action movies like [imdb.com]

This would be important, since there are significant moral questions involved, that should be talked about, and possibly regulated.

Am I completely off?

s8529hel

scred