Psyclone – A look at Cloning and The Mind
If you were cloned, would it still be you?
I’m not a psychologist mind you (no pun intended), nor am I an expert, by any means, on cloning. I just have some thoughts on the whole idea of cloning people regardless of the ethicality.
From a purely technological standpoint I think successful human cloning would be an incredible scientific event. Unfortunately there are far too many drawbacks to cloning, so much so that physicians and scientists from the American Medical Association and the American Association for the Advancement of Science advise against human reproductive cloning. The Human Genome Cloning Fact Sheet states:
“Due to the inefficiency of animal cloning (only about 1 or 2 viable offspring for every 100 experiments) and the lack of understanding about reproductive cloning, many scientists and physicians strongly believe that it would be unethical to attempt to clone humans. Not only do most attempts to clone mammals fail, about 30% of clones born alive are affected with ‘large offspring syndrome’ and other debilitating conditions”… “In addition, scientists do not know how cloning could impact mental development”… “With so many unknowns concerning reproductive cloning, the attempt to clone humans at this time is considered potentially dangerous and ethically irresponsible.”
Notice they say “at this time,” that would indicate that the scientists and physicians in agreement with this current statement may change their minds if cloning could be achieved with a significant reduction in error.
All else aside, if a clone were successfully created using current cloning technology would the clone match the original, and would the sense of self be the same? If you were cloned, would it still be you?
Based on what is involved in the actual cloning process an exact duplicate of the organism being cloned is not possible. So in the purely physical sense your clone would not be you. If you think about it, nature has been producing exact clones all along. We call them identical twins. They share identical DNA. Clones in the lab do not have identical DNA. The chromosomal DNA is the same, but the mitochondrial DNA is different. Therefore it is not an exact duplicate.
While many of your traits come from your parents, psychologically you develop your own sense of self and your own personality based on your environment and your experiences. You’re self awareness is a product of your mind. You are made who you are as you develop. Even now you are developing into someone that is different than you were just a few years ago. We learn and change as we age.
Identical twins share many similarities based on traits they’ve acquired from their parents, but they still have unique personalities, knowledge and experiences, which make them who they are.
Since self awareness develops as we grow, and different experiences create different outcomes with regard to the mind of an individual, there really is no way that an individual mind can be cloned. Unless, after the original person died, a cloned version could be grown without developing its own thoughts and experiences, perhaps in a medically induced coma, until it reached the desired age. Then somehow the information from the original mind, stored on a flash drive or something, could be uploaded into the mind of the clone. Imagine the implications there. All of the info from a 70 year old mind loaded into the mind of a 10 year old. Hmmmm.
Ethics again.
