A rchive Date
[ 17-02-2003 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ Mass Media ]
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[http://www.canoe.ca/Columnists/mulroney.html
Keep clone tot out of movies
Society's fear is well-scripted
By BEN MULRONEY -- For the Sun
January 5, 2003
I've got one word for the family of the allegedly cloned baby Eve: Hide. You've just given birth to a clone, and that scares people.
We have been fed a steady diet of anti-clone sentiment for 20 years, and one cute little clone named Eve is not going to change that. Just last year, moviegoers watched an army of clones attack its way to more than $310 million at the box office.
Our appetite for anti-clone fare keeps growing, showing no signs of weakening. And why, you ask? Because clones are not nice. Let us examine the evidence:
In 1982, Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan showed us what happens when you mess around with your genes. Ricardo Montalban's Khan used his genetically superior brain to torment Starfleet. Thank God for Captain Kirk, who was ultimately able to thwart Khan's plan. He blew up his enemy and saved the Earth.
By 1987, cloning had become linked to our greatest fear, nuclear war.
Superman IV: The Quest for Peace explored both of those themes as clumsily as is humanly (or superhumanly) possible. In this kitschy final installment of the series, Lex Luthor stole a lock of the Man of Steel's hair and cloned himself his very own supervillain known as Nuclear Man.
Pattern seen
Well, as you can imagine, Nuclear Man was not looking to protect the innocent and the American Way! Superman was forced to destroy him, and save the Earth. Does anyone see a pattern emerging here?
And let us not forget that the danger of cloning is not limited to the duplication of human beings. The Jurassic Park trilogy showed us that dinosaurs, though extinct for more than 65 million years, still make a bloody mess, all thanks to cloning.
As hard as we might try, we cannot harness and control the power of gene. Every time we try, the dinosaurs get the better of us and someone loses their head.
The list goes on.
Star Trek revisited the clone issue just last year with the release of Star Trek: Nemesis, when Captain Picard was forced into battle with a clone of himself. After a long game of cat-and-mouse, Picard defeated his genetic doppelganger and -- surprise, surprise - saved the Earth.
And thanks to the Austin Powers films, you can forget about Eve's friends calling her anything but Mini-Me until the end of time.
A clean slate
So I am pleading to the parents of young Eve: Don't let your child become another Khan, Nuclear Man or T. Rex. Don't let her be the target of the same prejudice heaped on poor little Mini-Me. She is a clean slate, a story of boundless possibility.
You have gone to great lengths to give her life. Now is the time to ensure she has a life.
Head for the hills, change your name, never tell her how she was conceived, and let her flourish to become the best darn Raelian she can be.
Read Ben Mulroney every Sunday. Contact him at bmulroney@canoemail.com Letters to the editor should be sent to editor@sunpub.com
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
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