The Illusion of Eternity
Duplicating the Body
Cloning would certainly provide an illusion of eternity, but at the price of individuality. "I" would become "We". By perpetuating genetic identity without changing it, cloning would reduce us to the level of a bud or a cutting. It would mean the return to a more primitive form of life: bacteria perpetually splitting, never dying. Nature created immortal organisms before sexual reproduction, which requires that individuals die so that new and different individuals may be born.
 

MHNN, Katrie Gagné

Calf with two heads, MHNN / Photo: Alain Germond
   

Once they have succeeded in cloning a sheep, a mouse and a pig, will scientists move on to human beings? And if they do, what will be the function of a human clone? To be a puppet of the original - protected, controlled and manipulated?
Mask by Werner Strub
Photo: René Funk
   

The earliest robots, created with remarkable technical expertise, reproduced not only the appearance of the human body but also its movements. Two centuries later, parts of the living body are being created in our laboratories.
The Draftsman, robot by Jacquet-Droz, 1769
From the Musée d'art et d'histoire de Neuchâtel

In future, who will decide what is human: how it can be transformed, according to what standards, and for what social ends? Scientists, doctors, insurance companies, politicians, business tycoons? (Daniel Cerqui and Olivier Simioni). God no longer has exclusive rights to Creation and many people dream of immortality.
MHNN, private collection
 Man and His Double, Björn Fühler, puppeteer, Alsace
Is cloning a dead end where the scientist plays God in order to create man in his own image?
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