A step closer to immortality or a step too far?

There are relatively few things that almost everyone has an opinion about. Human cloning, though, seems to be one of them. Ever since Dolly the sheep was cloned, the topic of cloning and human cloning in particular has been a fairly hot one. (This is, of course, despite the fact that even the scientists involved at the time were at pains to emphasis how far away cloning a sheep was from cloning a human, but then you can’t blame the mass media for trying to sell newspapers.) I’m not going to write here on the debate about whether human cloning is ‘right’ or ‘wrong’, but rather I wanted to focus on a more theoretical aspect that jumps ahead in time (whether that be ten years or a hundred) to when human cloning is possible.

I question that anyone seriously doubts that human cloning will one day be possible: it may well be possible now if a dedicated – and potentially suicidal given the likely public reaction – group of scientists really wanted to ‘have a go’. I want, however, to focus on something that is very much impossible: downloading a human consciousness from one person into a clone. Whilst it’s the stuff of science fiction, it could theoretically offer a route to near immortality.

Perhaps Descartes’ most famous – if not necessarily most important – legacy is the phrase cogito ergo sum: I think, therefore I am. Broadly, he was proposing that the mind is separate to the body and to some extent this sort of statement is a basic requirement for ‘downloading’ into a clone. If there is no way of separating out the mind from the biological growth of the human brain – which is at the level of neural patterns unique in every one of us – then we must give up on this particular form of immortality as a lost hope. If, though, this can be overcome, if the information encoded in the brain can be captured then what is it we have captured? Have we managed to capture – to copy – a human soul, the essence of who each of us is, or have we simply copied like words from someone’s diary descriptions that have lost their true brilliance? Have we simply preserved a description of the event, but lost the essence of it, its meaning? Consider how you would write about eating your favourite food after a hard day’s work: could you ever capture the real feeling of the event, however extravagant your text?

Although this rather philosophical line of discussion may seem a little removed from the main topic it becomes vitally important if cloning is a form of immortality. If I’m going to download into a new body, I’d rather like to know that it is ‘me’ that is going to wake up. In the same way that the brain is infinitely more than the sum of its parts, then so too who we are is rather more than simply the sum of our experiences. Whether it is ‘us’ when we awake in our nice new body (complete with full 30 year parts and warranty insurance, with 5 year complimentary accidental damage cover) has profound implications for what happens next.

Just as there are ‘windows of opportunity’ for surgery, beyond which it becomes increasingly hazardous to do a heart transplant or hip replacement etc, so too I suspect leaving a download until you die naturally is probably not a good idea. This suggests that downloads are probably best done when there are still opportunities to correct things if something goes wrong, or indeed you may be suffering a prolonged and painful illness that you’d rather avoid. You go to sleep in one body and then you wake up in another. Here’s the kicker: now there’re two of you. Let’s set aside the possible psychological issues for a moment to consider what happens to the ‘previous model’. It’s probably still ticking along unconsciously so the doctors can make sure all has gone well. Assuming you’re ok, the plug now has to be pulled. If you are indeed ‘you’, and everything has transferred, then it could be argued that this is not murder: one cannot murder oneself. (The closest would be suicide, but for obvious reasons this doesn’t fit either.) What if, though, it is not you that wakes up? Then it’s murder. I suspect proving the debate either way will keep the lawyers in Armani for a very long time. (By the time human cloning of this kind is possible (if ever) you can bet the legal system won’t have caught up to deal with it (it hasn’t even caught up to deal with the Internet yet), so what’s legal will need to work within existing terms.)

How society deals with your new found self is also interesting, from both a social and a business viewpoint. Are you still the father or mother of your children? I suspect there will be small genetic variations from original to clone, but these could still be accounted for by having resulted in differences that arise naturally in genetic variation from parent to child. How do you relate to your own children, who are now older than you are? The social impacts would probably be far bigger and longer-term than any legal or technological aspect needing resolution.

If you’ve read this far and are hoping for some answers to the many questions I’ve raised, I’m afraid you’ll be disappointed: I have only more questions. I want to emphasis that this blog is intended only as something to stimulate thought and your own questions – it’s far from a complete discussion. For example, I’ve treated ‘the clone’ as an object for simple writing convenience, which has allowed me to avoid thorny issues like whether a clone has rights before it is ‘peopled’ with someone’s memories. After all, the clone’s brain has been busy even if it is kept unconscious: what happens to its memories, the things that make it who it is as our memories make us who we are?

For my own part, I think human cloning is inevitable and unavoidable. Laws might prohibit it, but someone will still do it: a scientist because ‘they can’; a billionaire because they love life or are afraid of death. It won’t matter whether the download can be guaranteed as a complete transfer or not. One day society is going to have to look at questions like those I’ve raised here and decide how to answer them: that day will be hard, that day will be painful, that day will be full of disputes, and that day is coming.