Hartman moved the conversation ahead. "The environmental influences are incalculable. That's why I hit the ceiling whenever people ask me if someday we'll be cloning a future Adolf Hitler or a future Albert Einstein. Believe me, it took a lot more than errant genes to create the monster of Hitler. I'm sure that someone with the same genes and a different upbringing would turn into a perfectly pleasant Viennese painter. As for Einstein, we could clone him from here to doomsday, and I doubt we'd get someone who even understands the theory of relativity."
"I suppose that's what I meant by soul," said Bailey, who, it turned out, was a psychologist. "Imagine Einstein without the genius or Hitler without the evil. Imagine a younger brother so desperate to become like his older brother than he imitates him in every way, or an older brother desperately trying to live again through his younger brother. Aren't we losing something here? Aren't we cutting down the mountains and filling in the valleys and ending up with something innocuous and homogeneous and faceless?"
"Nonsense," said Hartman. "Your use of the word 'desperate' in the examples you cite proves just how human they will be. They won't be automatons. They'll be capable of all the extremes of emotion, good and bad, just like the rest of us. And as for Einsteins and Hitlers, we'll have those in the future, too, but not because we breed them. Simply because the multiple variants inherent in both heredity and the environment are so vast that exceptional beings will continue to be thrown up on both ends of the spectrum."
"Don't forget mitochondrial DNA," said Ellen.
"What's that?" asked an older man whose name Jude had missed.
"It's DNA that is passed on through the mother alone. It's in the cytoplasm of the cell, not inside the nucleus. That means it is not affected by nuclear transfer. We're not talking about a lot of genes here, maybe sixty out of a hundred thousand, but they play a role in making enzyme proteins, which are important in development. So identical twins would have the same mitochondrial DNA, but clones would not. The more you think about it, the really strange aberration of nature is identical twins. If they had not existed and scientists had produced them, we'd be run out of town by mobs carrying torches as in the Frankenstein movies."
At that point, dinner was called. The group moved inside and sat around a long oak table piled with servings of potatoes and squash and green beans while Hartman carved a large chunk of meat.
The man to Skyler's right, Harry Schwartzbaum, hadn't yet said a word, and Jennifer Hartman turned to him.
"You've been quiet, Professor," she said. They were all professors, but she appeared to call him that in deference to his field, philosophy, which elevated him to the ranks of a deep thinker.
"I was thinking of a book I read two weeks ago," replied Schwartzbaum, "the diary of a sixteenth-century Spanish count, Don Jose Antonio Martinez de Solar. He wrote about absolutely everything of interest to him and his world, which was centered upon Seville in the year 1501. He wrote trenchant comments about mores and dress and high society and the Spanish church.
"But what he did not write about — and this is my point — is the event that had occurred less than ten years earlier, Columbus setting out from that very same city and discovering the New World. That one voyage ended up doubling the known world, but Martinez didn't include it, because he didn't see its importance. I think we can live through major events and major discoveries and not even recognize them for what they are.
"By the same token, I think that cloning — and by cloning, I include everything from the Human Genome project to genetic engineering — is the most significant scientific advance of the modern age. It surpasses by far the discovery of the atom. The atom allowed us to manipulate the external world. By zeroing in on isotopes, we were able to achieve nuclear fission and alter certain unstable compounds. But genes permit us to manipulate the internal world, our very selves, and there is no limit to what that can lead to."
Several nodded in agreement.
"Imagine, for example, the qualitative leap that would occur if we increase human intelligence by a factor of four. We know we only use a paltry part of our brain. You mentioned Einstein. What if he were able to tap into the full dimensions of his intellect? Or what would happen if we increased human longevity, so that the working lifespan of a creative mind becomes three times what it is today? Imagine if that same Einstein were able to work productively for one hundred years instead of forty. It would become possible for a single human being to become proficient in five or six major disciplines. You'd have someone conversant with, say, astrophysics and molecular biology and neurology, someone able to bring together all the divergent strands of human knowledge. Not since Samuel Johnson of eighteenth-century London has there been a person who could lay a claim to knowing everything worth knowing."
"You all keep talking about the advantages and benefits," said Bailey, "and you refuse to recognize the dangers."
"Such as?" asked Hartman.
"Such as the decline of diversity. Nature thrives on diversity and heterogeneity, and cloning moves in the opposite direction. In that sense, it is against nature. How about all those stories of genetically engineered strains of wheat and cotton? They're perfect. Each grain is extra-nutritious, each boll is packed with extra fiber. And yet when a new fungus or a new breed of insect comes along, the entire crop disappears overnight. The plants are identical, and so none of them have developed mutant variants to survive the onslaught and carry on to the next generation."
"But surely you don't think that will happen with people?" asked Hartman. "No one is talking about making every human on the planet like every other one."
"No, of course not. But if human selectivity is brought into the process, you can bet your bottom dollar all the interesting people are never going to be born. No more Franz Kafkas or Vincent van Goghs or Stephen Hawkings. If anything other than pure chance is involved, then the overall result will be a diminishing of the world's gene pool — for plants, for animals and for us."
Schwartzbaum finished his food and pushed his plate away from him.
"At the risk of sounding pompous, let me state my view," he intoned. "All of nature is a struggle between the species and the individual. The species strives only for procreation of itself, while the individual yearns for immortality for itself. One involves change and mutation, the other immutability and stasis. The conflict is irreconcilable."
"You sound like one of those wild-eyed evolutionary biologists," said Jennifer. "Those guys who say our only purpose in life is to pass on our sperms and eggs and then kick the bucket."
"Yes, Jennifer. There is a connection between sex and death. It's a common survival strategy — among lesser creatures with shorter life spans — to spread their seed as widely as possible and then pass into the night. Once you've procreated, nature has no further use for you. So we strut and fret our hour upon the stage and then are heard no more. Up to now, the game has favored the species. What could we do to achieve immortality, assuming we're not Shakespeare, except to have offspring whom we hope will in some way resemble us? But now suddenly the equation shifts. Now we can have offspring that are us. We can, as individuals, achieve a certain immortality. We do it by suppressing mutation and substituting replication. It's significant that cloning is the only form of reproduction that does not involve sex. We will have finally broken that age-old connection between sex and death. Women will be able to conceive children without men."
"Great," said Bailey. "Doesn't sound like much fun to me."
"Oh, I don't know," said Jennifer.
She and Ellen laughed.
"Are you familiar with the work of Adam Eyre-Walker and Peter Keightley of Britain?" asked Hartman. "They've shown that humans retain more adverse mutations in our genome than other animals. Something like 4.2 mutations every generation and 1.6 of them are harmful."