Old Email Archive

digest 1997-03-18 #001


11:26 PM 3/17/97 -0800
From: "Society for Literature & Science" 

Daily SLS Email Digest
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Date: 17 Mar 1997 06:56:32 -0800
From: 
Subject: Re: Computer Simulation of Evolution
Ms. Barros, the person who did the computer simulation was Nick Gessler.
 
You can contact him at gessler@ucla.edu.  Kate Hayles
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Date: 17 Mar 1997 07:49:53 -0800
From: "David Erben (Art)" 
Subject: Cloning
I think one reason why I am hesitant to say much about the recent
sheep-cloning is because quite a bit of speculation about it has
already
been done in flim and literature - at least in regard to how cloning
might work with humans.
I'm thinking esp of the 1978 film (there is also a book by the the same
name by Ira Levin) THE BOYS FROM BRAZIL (dir by Franklin Schaffner and
starring Laurence Oliver, James Mason, and Gregory Peck). In the film,
Josef Mengele has some of Hitler's DNA (hair or nails or some such) and
has managed to produce a bunch of "clones."
The prob, of course, which even the Nazi's recognize in the film, is
that
there is more to making a Hitler than cloning his DNA.  So, as the
Hitler
clone-boys grow up, the Nazis attempt to recreate in their lives the
"important" events of Hitler's life.  I think they get as far
as going
about killing the boys' fathers.
Anyway, the Nazi plot is foiled and the boys are left to grow up as
they
will.
The point to all this seems to me to be:  you can clone humans all you
want, but its CULTURE that makes us "who" we are.