Of Clones and Bugs

[flwyd]

Isn't it strange
Feels like I'm lookin' in the mirror
What would people say
If only they knew that I was

Part of some geneticist's plan (plan-plan-plan)
Born to be a carbon copy man (man-man-man)
There in a petri dish late one night
They took a donor's body cell and fertilized a human egg and so I say

I think I'm a clone now
There's always two of me just a-hangin' around
I think I'm a clone now
'Cause every chromosome is a hand-me-down

Look at the way
We go out walking close together
I guess you could say
I'm really beside myself

I still remember how it began (gan-gan-gan)
They produced a carbon copy man (man-man-man)
Born in a science lab late one night
Without a mother or a father, just a test tube and a womb with a view

I think I'm a clone now (a clone now)
There's always two of me just a-hangin' around
I think I'm a clone now (a clone now)
'Cause every chromosome is a hand-me-down

I think I'm a clone now (a clone now)
And I can stay at home while I'm out of town
I think I'm a clone now (a clone now)
'Cause every pair of genes is a hand-me-down

Signing autographs for my fans
Come and meet the carbon copy man
Livin' in stereo, it's all right
Well I can be my own best friend and I can send myself for pizza so I say

I think I'm a clone now
Another one of me's always hangin' around
I think I'm a clone now
'Cause every chromosome is a hand-me-down

I think I'm a clone now (a clone now)
I've been on Oprah Winfrey - I'm world renowned
I think I'm a clone now (a clone now)
And every pair of genes is a hand-me-down

I think I'm a clone now (a clone now)
That's my genetic twin always hangin' around
I think I'm a clone now (a clone now)
'Cause every chromosome is a hand-me-down

I think I'm a clone now (a clone now)

-- "Weird Al" Yankovic, "I Think I'm A Clone Now"

I just posted the following comment to a Slashdot story about the 25th birthday of the first "test tube baby." It's somewhat orthogonal to the story, but it's one of the neater thoughts I've had in a while. It's got good philosophical and fictional possibilities.

---

The Mercury article mentioned opposition to cloning and I just had a strike of insight.

Sci-fi "designer babies" ieas tend to assume that parents (with the help of scientists) can determine exactly how their baby will turn out. They just select a default set of genes, add a few they like, and then send it to the manufacturer (er, womb).

Now, as any software engineer will tell you, no code worth anything works the first time. I make embarrasing mistakes on quick 3-line perl scripts, and anything with high complexity requires months (if not years) of coordinated planning, development, extensive testing, and lots and lots of debugging.

Surely constructing a designer person is as complex as, say, Microsoft Office (if not as complex as a Mars Rover). Office had a few bugs, and Microsoft releases patches from time to time. But people are different. Testing a person requires a lot more resource expenditure than running a shell script. You can't just code up a quick prototype and throw it away. And once the person is out in the wild, updates are nigh impossible. I sure don't know how to patch a 7-year-old.

That's not to say the gold standard isn't buggy. Sex has produced some pretty lousy people, in both hardware and software. But evolution is an ongoing develop/test/debug cycle on the scale of millions of years. I don't know many parents who want to wait that long.

Comments

Depends on the type of changes

[lucent.livejournal.com]

From what I understand, early genetic engineering like selecting certain features is more like picking through an options screen. It's not at all like programming. It's probably nothing to select a type of nose, eye color, ear shape, hair color, etc. Everything else stays the same. If it wasn't a very modular system with simple options, people would not be able to have sex and end up with a workable product most of the time. Most of the code you just don't touch, since we have about 70% in common with yeast.

If you're talking about adding or changing something that will create a human with features unlike anyone alive today like a beefy arm coming out of the back of his neck or fire-breathing capability or higher resolution retina, I'm betting on that being impossible for at least another 30 years.

Re: Depends on the type of changes

[flwyd.livejournal.com]

In software engineering, there are roughly two types of tests, unit testing and integration testing. Unit tests are for single modules (i.e. "when you push this button does this LED light up?") while integration tests see how well modules actually work together (rather than with simulated input/output) (i.e. when you turn the key do the engine, lights, radio, and windshield wipers come on).

What evolution has done is integration testing, and parental genes tend to come together. For instance, a gene providing extra-sensitive eyes may not help unless there's also a gene for better eyelids. A really simple example is that if you remove the gene for sickle-cell anemia, you also remove the gene for malaria resistance. While small combinations aren't too hard to figure out by trial, error, and the scientific method, if 20 genes interact there are a million possible combinations of their presence and absence. So selecting desired pieces is easy, but the whole may have unintended side effects because nobody'd studied that particular combination of 20 genes.

So while setting "blond-haired blue-eyed" might not be too hard, getting a default base of options could be quite difficult, especially since there should be several models to choose from.

[slyviolet.livejournal.com]

Totally unrelated, but I am going to be needing to ask you a favor relatively soon... Perhaps I will ask you in person, though. Yes, that would probably be the most convenient.
Enigmatic, ne??