Limelight: To clone or not to clone By Lubna Abdel-Aziz The race between science and science fiction may have started in the 17th century, but accelerated into full speed 200 years later. During the 19th century the race tightened, and in the last decade or two, science handily won, stunning the world with its awesome advances. The culmination was the ultimate biological phenomenon of cloning. Science fiction writers with no more venues to explore, look to the vast skies and all the probable and improbable forms of mystery and adventure, out of sight-in outer space. Meanwhile science continues its journey at a breathless pace with no end in sight. How shocking was Mary Shelleys Frankenstein (1818)? Would it be so shocking today? Is cloning here to stay? Is it the answer to all our woes, disease, aging, death? The premise of a new film The Island goes that far. On a distant isolated island, with golden beaches and azure skies, human clones are harvested to provide spare parts- organs-for their owners, when needed. While it may seem far-fetched, the concept of reproducing perfect human beings, like automobiles or machines has already been treated in the renowned sci-fi thriller by British author Aldous Huxley(1894-1963) in his book Brave New World. It sent shock waves throughout the scientific community on a world scale. Set 600 years into the future the Huxley novel raised the possibility of horrendous consequences, brought about by the alarming technological changes of his era, the mass production, affordability and influence of radios, telephones, and Ford Model T cars rolling off the assembly line, in a stream of identical clones. Will this also be the future of the human race? Huxley expressed his nightmare vision of an automated, fast-paced, mass-produced, meaningless future in his book, where human life was entirely industrialized, with a few individuals in control, at the top of a World State. Huxley and his contemporaries created utopias, with optimistic views of the future, or dystopias with dark foreboding scenarios. The most popular writer of utopian fiction, H.G. Wells (1866-1946), Huxley, with characteristic wit wanting to poke fun at Wells' optimism in Men like Gods and A Modern Utopia, began writing Brave New World (1932), but what started as a parody turned into one of the greatest sci-fi thrillers of our time. Huxley opened a new door into fiction- writing, giving the traditional utopia a modern edge. A decade later George Orwell wrote his Animal Farm and 1984 (1946) which built on the energy and feel of a Brave New World. In the 50s Ray Bradbury proposed a future society without history or literature in Fahrenheit 451, a dystopia fashioned after Huxley's mould. In the 60s Anthony Burgess imagined his own futuristic and frightening London in A Clockwork Orange. The Huxley theme of social conditioning, of control and loss of self, continue to reverberate in fiction as well as in everyday society, up to the present. Brave New World opens with a laboratory where human beings are created and conditioned to the needs of society's strict caste system. It establishes an antiseptic tone and the theme of a dehumanized life where the natural process of birth, aging, and death, represent horrors in this world. Had he been living today, Huxley would probably have written something akin to The Island, a natural evolution to his Brave New World. Island's author, Caspian Tredwell-Owen, conceives of another dystopia in the mid 21st century, where those who can afford it are cloned from DNA samples. The clones live in an enclosed facility, with no concept of the outside world. Their only hope is that one day they will be chosen to go to The Island, a paradise on earth, and the last uncontaminated place on the planet. In reality they are moved to the island only when the person from which they were cloned on the outside needs a body part. When Lincoln Six-Echo (Ewan McGregor) discovers that it is only a matter of time before he is harvested, he plans his escape together with fellow resident Jordan Two-Delta (Scarlett Johansson). They take off in a race for their lives, relentlessly pursued by the forces of the Institute that once housed them. Director Michael Bay (The Rock, Armageddon) takes the Huxley premise to greater heights, or depths, more confusing, more disturbing, more repelling than ever viewed on the screen before. The script for The Island found its way to Steven Spielberg's desk, and together with his associates, lost no time in getting its production wheels in motion. Bay, their first choice, was given one night to decide, and by morning the deal was sealed, and the result is a $120 million dollar sci-fi thriller that is likely to create a stir as well as a quiver. Two of Hollywood's most exciting young stars rule The Island. Fresh off the Star Wars roster as Obe- Wan Kenobi, is 34 year-old Ewan McGregor, another one of Scotland's offerings to our civilization. More than any country of its size, Scotland has inundated the world with its many gifts: whiskey, salmon - smoked or otherwise, tartan plaids, fine wools, bagpipes, and the most famous Scotsman, superstar Sean Connery. Now Ewan McGregor of the famous Gregor clan, is Scotland's biggest movie star since the first and foremost Bond. Born in Creiff, Perthshire in 1971, outside of Edinburgh, Ewan's parents were both teachers who made sure that their two boys, Ewan and older brother Colin, had a solid well- rounded education. Ewan excelled at singing and performed as a soloist for both choir and orchestra but never entertained the idea of acting until he was 16. At 17 he moved to London and spent the next 3 years studying at the London Guild Hall of Music and Drama. Success was almost immediate, in British television and feature films, but it was not until the Oscar-nominated Trainspotting (1995) that Hollywood beckoned. Director Ridley Scott picked him for Black Hawk Down (2002), Baz Luhrman for his Moulin Rouge (2001) where he sang his heart out to the beauteous Nicole Kidman. He has serenaded many other screen belles, including Zeta-Jones, Zellwegger, and now the youngest of them all Scarlett Johansson. Only 20, Scarlett Johansson is already referred to as " the next big thing "! Her mature and measured performances in Lost in Translation and Girl With the Pearl Earring (both in 2002) astounded Hollywood and won her double Golden Globe nominations as well as a pile of offers from every studio in tinsel-town. Like her namesake of Gone With the Wind, Scarlett always knew what she wanted. She wanted to act. By age 7 she was on her way. When Oscar-winning director Sofia Coppola cast her opposite the much older Bill Murray, she saw an old soul-wisdom in her eyes, and so did the rest of the world. Her husky voice and siren looks added to her maturity and versatility. She is quickly developing into the smartest actress of her generation. Director Michael Bay is a veteran of many hit movies including Bad Boys I and II (1995), The Rock (1996), Armageddon (1998) and Pearl Harbor (2001). Although the thought of cloning is abhorrent and appalling to him, he feels that the story is so close to reality with our desperate need to stay young and beautiful. About mass producing humans, or cloning, world opinion is divided, as to its ethics and morality. Will it mean the erosion, not only of all our traditional values and beliefs, but of the whole human race as we know it. The new race would be created from cells in a lab engineered and custom made to fulfil special needs. If you could, would you be cloned? Horrific as the thought might be now, scientists believe that cloning is here to stay, and what is offensive and deplorable today will be the acceptable norm tomorrow. Our desire for beauty, health, happiness, and longevity may well make Huxley's nightmare, a dream come true. The great tragedy of science _ the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact T. H. Huxley (1825-1895)
