"All new technologies are introduced in terms of their Utopian possibilities. The downside of the story is left for a later generation to discern and experience, when the technology is much more difficult to dismantle." ïJerry Mander

Imagine, if you will, the following scenario. An elite group of engineers and political leaders holds a public meeting to discuss an ethical dilemma posed to society by a recent technological innovation. The engineers profess, "It will improve everyone's lives and our society will be able to accomplish more than we ever dreamed." "But," they advise, "the downside is that 40,000 members of our community will have to be killed each year for it to work."

Would an ethical society choose to adopt this new technology?

It already has. Since the automobile was invented over three million humans and countless wild creatures have been killed by our society's transportation method of choice. If the turn-of-the-century innovators had foreseen the consequences of the new technology would their informed decision have been any different?

A choice must now be made to condemn or condone the latest technological innovation sending ethical chills through the global consciousness, a discovery whose potential impact on society's future is being compared by some ethicists to that of the development of the nuclear bomb.

On February 22, Dr. Ian Wilmut, an embryologist at the Roslin Institute in Edinburgh, Scotland shocked the world with the announcement that he had replaced the genetic material of a sheep's egg with DNA from an adult sheep, creating the first successful clone of an adult animal. The procedure involved the extraction of the genetic material-containing nucleus of a sheep egg, an initial step that was first accomplished in the 1950s. Wilmut then took mammary cells from a 6-year-old adult sheep, and for the first time, successfully fused the egg cell with one of the adult cells. The two cells merged and began to grow and divide. The clone embryo was then implanted into a third sheep who gave birth to the lamb, called Dolly, in July.

A week after Wilmut's cloning success was made public, the Oregon Regional Primate Research Center reported they had used the same nuclear transfer procedure to clone two Rhesus monkeys born in August. The report that cloning had been accomplished with primates prompted President Clinton to announce a ban on federal spending for human cloning research, and he "strongly urged" the private sector to halt such research until the matter could be studied by the National Bioethics Advisory Board. The scientists involved have all denied even thinking about human cloning, but biotechnology industry analysts were quick to point out that now such a ban would be "unpoliciable."

Unlike the special materials and devices required for atom-smashing, the standard laboratory facility contains all of the equipment necessary to clone humans. Researchers are not likely to be dissuaded by occasional, disorganized outbursts of negative public opinion (or a few bioethicists)ïespecially because big business urges genetic engineers on with generous salaries in return for lucrative exclusive patents. Tolerance of genetic research is secured by the scientists who continually recite claims that it will lead to discoveries which eventually eradicate every form of human pestilence, from AIDS and alcoholism to diabetes and depression.

Biotechnology is currently a $7.6 billion a year international industry and analysts predict the market will grow to $18.5 billion a year by 2000.

"Beneath each of these endeavors lies a barely concealed contempt for unaltered life and nature, as well as for the people who are expected to endure the mistakes, purchase the results and live with the consequences, whatever those may be. It is a contempt disguised by terms of bamboozlement, like bottom line, progress, needs, costs and benefits, economic growth, jobs, realism, research, and knowledge, words that go undefined and unexamined." ïDavid Orr.

Research at the Roslin Institute where Dolly was born is focused on producing "transgenic" animals, primarily genetically-engineered, domesticated mammals with milk that has pharmacological properties deemed beneficial to humans with certain diseases. The current market for such products is about $200 million a year.

Biotechnology companies are now racing to develop new breeds of transgenic mammals with organs suitable for transplant into humans. Wilmut's success in cloning an adult sheep is being called a giant step closer to attaining the goal of "turning animals into drug factories."

The cloning of the sheep represents a milestone in genetic research, leading to renewed calls for consideration of the implications of the science.

One significant question is who will have control over the power that this knowledge generates. Oddly enough there is a simple fact largely ignored by ethicists so farïwomen, at least in the beginning stages, will have all the control. Human cloning would require an egg and a woman's womb to carry it to term.

Human cloning could represent the most sophisticated form of exploitation ever perpetrated on women. Will women, who have the inherent biological power to say no to human cloning, always have the political power?

One of the arguments used to justify current cloning research is the potential for "saving" endangered species. There has been talk about creating endless supplies of breeding populations of near-extinct species through cloningïa notion that could someday be used to undermine a law like the Endangered Species Act. Why be overly concerned about protecting populations of animals in their natural habitats when you can just make more of them?

The only thing that is predictable about the evolution of cloning research is that the eventual outcomes are totally unpredictable. Things will probably end up even more screwed up than we could ever imagine.

"Our society is characterized by an inability to leave anything in nature alone. Every piece of land, every creature, every mineral, every growing plant, every mountain, every inch of desert is examined for its potential contribution to commercial development and to the expansion of technological society... the last two relatively undeveloped wildernesses are space and the genetic structure of life... Meanwhile, organized resistance groups are slow to realize that space and genetics are wilderness issues at all." ïJerry Mander

The issue of cloning is a wilderness issue. Will anything be considered "wild" anymore after humans perceive themselves as having acquired the very power of creation?

Cloning is also a women's issue and an animal liberation issue. We all have an obligation to resist society's acceptance of this new technology. Find out if commercial or academic institutions in your area are conducting genetic research. Investigate and let them know about your concerns. Bring their work to the public's attention.

Modern philosophers talk about paradigm shifts, critical changes in worldview that occur when a chain of events leads society to question traditional fundamental beliefs about the nature of existence. The science of genetics is causing a paradigm shift. The question now is how those of us who realize that a downside is inevitable can make our voices from and for the wilderness heard.

By Theresa Kintz, who has absolutely no desire to be her own grandma...