“Medicine is a science of uncertainty, and an art of probabilities.”

Sir William Osler.



This is the era of science and technology. It reminds me of the time, centuries ago, when mysticism and religion were holding sway over men and matters. Unfortunately, in this so-called rational world, science seems to have received more than its fair share of following. Of course, most of the popularity of science comes from its links to technology that has become a lucrative business. Nothing intoxicates like money. Even the noble profession of medicine, which exists to provide the public with health and happiness, today has become a business. Doctors, by and large, do not even understand the word “health”. Health care is used synonymously with hi-tech medical care. The latter is touted to be highly scientific. People forget the all-pervading “art” of medicine. “Art” is that which improves the quality of a man’s day. Art of medicine makes the patient’s day. Health of the public requires clean drinking water, three square meals a day with food uncontaminated by human and / or animal excreta, toilets for everyone to avoid the rampant hookworm anaemia and, above all, education and economic empowerment of the poor villagers. This does not apply to the industrialized west although they have their own problems of the food plenty atmosphere.



In this scenario, anything in the field of hi-tech drags millions by the nose, while even the intellectuals do not seem to look for the truth. Let us, for a minute, try and understand science. If science, the knowledge accrued from our five senses only, could solve all the mysteries in this dynamic universe, the very need for science disappears. Science would die a natural death when it finds an answer to all the questions, its Holy Grail, – the ultimate reality.



The truth is that there is no reality in this world. If someone had talked of viruses one hundred years ago, the then scientists would have called him/her irrational. Apples have been falling down from the trees ever since apple trees came. They did not start to fall after Isaac Newton propounded the laws of gravity. But no one has been able to answer the question “why” in positive science. Why do apples fall? Science could answer questions like “how” or “how much”, but not “why?” Scientists can only try to understand the secrets of nature. Most of them are like children playing in the sands on the beach; at times getting exhilarated when they succeed in building a beautiful castle in the sand, while the vast ocean of truth roars on in front of them. With the high tide coming the existing castles of scientists get washed away by the cruel waves, only to be replaced by a bigger castle by another child (scientist). Occasionally, there appears a rare thinker, among scientists, who uses his intuition in addition, to stand on the beach like a promontory; stilling the angry waves but standing firm despite the constant bombarding by the waves. Men like Werner Heisenberg of “uncertainty” fame belong to this class.



Science will not, and cannot, answer all the questions for the simple reason that there is much more than the simple five senses to understand the holistic meaning of this wonderful universe. Enthusiasm (Gk: en theos – God within) is the answer. If one keeps asking questions all the time one would soon realize how little is known in science. Scientists become aware of their ignorance only when they get to know a lot about their own fileds.



Be that as it may, let us try to understand, the new fad in science and technology – cloning. Claims and counter claims are made everyday. This department of science seems to have stirred the conscience of theologists and, even, politicians, like nothing before in the field of science. So far the politicians could only see money and power at the end of science, but now, for the first time, they seem to be rattled. Some of them have begun legislating against cloning as a knee-jerk reaction. Hold on! The world will not come to an end. God cannot be sent on long leave yet. Males are not threatened yet. Nature still keeps many of its cards close to its bosom. Scientists could make a look–alike, (clone – a twig) but not a complete human. Time has not come to be afraid of another Hitler or to hope to attain the utopia under a cloned Mahatma Gandhi or Martin Luther King Jr.



In the year 1997, when Ian Wilmot, at the Rosalind Institute in Edinburgh, declared to the world that he has succeeded in cloning “Dolly” the sheep, many jumped to the conclusion that man can create new life just like nature does. Man has not even been able to replicate the green leaf method of making chlorophyll, the basis of all energy, from carbon dioxide and water vapour in the air, using the power from the sun, in any laboratory. Man creating man is a long way off, if ever possible.



When people started claiming that they are able to clone man, a much sober Wilmot admitted that even to clone “Dolly” he had to sacrifice hundreds of embryos. In addition, surprisingly, “Dolly” is already quite old. She started her cell age at the age of her mother! That apart, man is not just the replica of his genes. He has the all-powerful mind – his consciousness –, which is not inherited from the genes alone, but acquired from the environmental inputs, in addition. Mahatma Gandhi became what he was because of his evolution from day one in his mother’s womb. (Pre-natal consciousness). En route he acquired more impressions during labour (peri-natal consciousness) and, eventually, (post-natal consciousness) the empirical wisdom all through his life. A cloned Gandhi might look like the original, but can never think or act like his original. One need not, therefore, be afraid of another Hitler, although life’s vagaries could throw up more dangerous people in future: Hitler might pale into insignificance compared to them. We have many examples of such people already in our midst. Many of them act like scientists but they are wolves in sheep’s garb.



Even to clone a look-alike man there are many more hurdles to cross. Sexual act brings the sperm and egg together. Each one contributes twenty-three chromosomes with their genes to the zygote (offspring). In the bargain most of the bad genes get eliminated. What an ingenious way Nature creates better progeny? In the process of cloning, all the forty-six chromosomes of a body cell of the donor (adult body cell) are artificially fused into the nucleus removed ovum of the female. This does not eliminate any (bad) genes; resulting in a very high percentage of birth defects in the offspring, if at all it survives in the first place. The percentage death of these artificially formed new lives could be substantial.



In the case of “Dolly” it was the worst kind of incest: legal and ethical issues are to be resolved yet. The artificially fused DNA of the body cell into the Ovum without its nucleus (DNA material) has then got to be developed for a few days in a petri-dish to produce (embryo) multiplication of the cells. These cells are the mother cells that have the capacity to mature later into any of the two hundred cell types of a human being – pleuri-potent stem cells.



From then on the fused cell will have to be implanted into the uterus (womb) of a surrogate mother who has to be pregnant with this cloned baby and give birth to it. Now comes another ethical and legal question. Who is the real mother of this offspring? Is it the lady who donated her egg to create new life or the lady who allowed it to be parked inside her for incubation? The new baby would have the consciousness of both these environments in various proportions.



More than all that is the fear of multiple degenerative diseases in cloned children even when they are chronologically still children. Since the DNA of the adult donor cell, the basis of the new life, is already old, the baby’s new cells – derived from the pleuri- potent stem cell in the embryo, would start ageing from that day. Dolly, the sheep, is already having osteoarthritis, a disease of old age. Cloned humans, even the Hitlers, could possibly have Alzheimer’s disease, at age ten!



For the limited purpose of creating engineered cells to treat dreaded diseases, using the cloned embryo’s stem cells, cloning could be a new field of possibilities. However, as with many other earth shaking discoveries in the past, this may also disappear without a whimper because of the new obstacles at the execution stage. Only time will give us the answer. We need to have vigilant audits on all these new interventions. Greedy divine interventionalists and their masters, the technology Mafia, could take us for a ride otherwise.



Men, do not worry! You would still be needed. You are still the best bet to keep the human race going on this planet. If you do not use your power, you might lose it. The Raelians, who claim that aliens created life on earth, might take over soon if you stop! God cannot be sent on a long leave.

“One does not discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time.”

Andre Gide.











Dolly - picture













01. The DNA material is taken from the donor (may be a skin cell)

02. An unfertilized egg is depleted of its nucleus. (DNA material)

03. The donor’s DNA is fused into this nucleus denuded egg.

04. This fused cell (zygote or embryo) is allowed to grow and multiply in the petri-dish.

05. The embryo is implanted into the surrogate mother

06. The baby would be a genetic replica of the donor (clone)