It was called In His Image: The Cloning of a Man.

Rorvik doesn't get a whole lot of respect as a science writer any more. But if he had waited a few years to publish, he probably would have fared better today.

Why?

Because it's difficult to argue now that cloning is impossible, despite what a few reactionaries While politicians are wringing their hands over the prospect of Dr. Frankensteins using taxpayers' dollars to bring about cloning, ethicists are padding their university salaries making the talk show rounds.

And don't forget about the sharp biotech investors who are ready to throw venture capital at whoever promises the big breakthrough.

The reality of cloning is this: My generation will live to see the day a human clone walks the earth.

We have the technology, the opportunity and the motive. And I, for one, find that scary.

The Technology
While the equipment and expertise aren't easy to come by, the concept behind "somatic nuclear transfer" is relatively straightforward.

Extract an egg cell from a woman and replace its nucleus, which contains 23 chromosomes of DNA, with the nucleus of any non-reproductive cell -- one with 46 chromosomes -- such as a skin cell, or one from the lining of the stomach. The egg, suddenly finding itself with a full set of 46 chromosomes, is fooled into thinking it's just been fertilized.

Most of the time, the cell will commit suicide. But every now and then a new living being will begin to grow. Implant the embryo into a waiting womb, wait nine months, and voilá: a clone.

Already we have Dolly, the cloned sheep brought to us by Scotland's Roslin Institute in 1997.

The next year, the Japanese managed the same feat with cows.

Next came the Americans with mice, and in 1999, a Montreal firm, Nexia Biotechnologies, introduced the world to Clint, Arnold and Danny, cloned triplet goats whose milk contains super-strong artificial spider silk called BioSteel.

This month's hot topic in cloning circles is a plan to revive the bucardo, an extinct species of goat.

Honorable research, to be sure, but animal clones aren't the problem.

In theory, says Patricia Baird, a professor of medical genetics at the University of British Columbia, "there is no reason to believe that humans are any different in this regard."

Baird should know. She's been studying the social and ethical implications of what are euphemistically called "new reproductive technologies" since chairing a royal commission on the subject back in the early 1990s. She's worried that few other people share her interest.

For one thing, the federal government has yet to respond to her commission's report, which has been collecting proverbial dust for eight years now.

The Opportunity
Baird is right to be worried, but ultimately, any government response would be moot.

Don't get me wrong -- it's not because cloning isn't a threat to the very fabric of society. In fact, the World Health Organization even calls it "contrary to human nature."

Rather, government action would be moot because there isn't much governments can do about it, one way or the other.

As Baird noted publicly last month in Vancouver at the Liu Centre for the Study of Global Issues, "If someone has the money to pay for it, some professional will be found to perform the services."

Rorvik, who still says he believes his story is true (and still has no evidence for it), makes the same argument.

He suggests that "unregulated locales" like Singapore, North Africa and South America are where you'll find the most advanced cloning programs.

Baird speculates on a less exotic setting for the hospital that delivers the first human clone: California.

The Motive
On Aug. 29, in Denver, Colo. Adam Nash was born.

He is widely believed to be the first child deliberately brought into this world to serve as a source of living tissue for another human being, in this case umbilical cord blood cells for an anemic sister.

Ethically, it's a very small step from there to full-fledged cloning.

But it gets worse.

New body parts, which could be cloned separately without the need for an entire body, are just one justification for embracing the concept.

Also on the list are replacements for babies that die in accidents and a chance for double-infertile or lesbian couples to "conceive" their own offspring.

I asked Jeffrey Turner, president of Nexia Biotechnologies, for his thoughts on some of these issues, but all I got was a polite no comment. Not surprising, really. When the doctor overseeing the Adam Nash case presented his intentions to a biomedical conference in Italy last June, fertility experts were reportedly "aghast."

At least the scientific community knows it's playing with fire.

If you also think they're playing with fire, tell me about it.

Related Sites:
The Canadian Medical Association's take on cloning
David Rorvik's latest take on cloning in Omni magazine
Britain's Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority
The Human Cloning Foundation

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