How To Defeat Your Own Clone, And Other Tips For Surviving the Biotech Revolution | |||||
Kyle Kurpinski and Terry D. Johnson | |||||
Bantam, 184 pages | |||||
A review by Charlene Brusso
Hopefully, neither of this extremes is likely. You're also not likely to ever have to fight your own clone, but
just in case, Mssrs. Kurpinski and Johnson are here to prepare you with an accessible and fun explanation of
the basics of genetic engineering and biotech.
We humans have been genetically engineering our world since the earliest days of agriculture and animal
domestication. Consider: one batch of wolf genes became hundreds of different breeds of dog. The same for cattle
and horses, and any crop you'd care to imagine. Who knew how far we'd go -- especially the advances compressed into
the last seventy years, from biologist Oswald Avery's 1944 discovery of DNA, to Craig Venter's publication of the
first completely sequenced human genome in 2007?
While a genome is "even bigger and more confusing" than you might expect, but the basic idea is this: it's the
blueprint for a living thing, a DNA map of everything you are physically, from toenails and height to hair color
and shoe size. The human genome consists of about 25,000 unique genes scattered across 23 different chains of DNA,
called chromosomes.
Your clone, if one existed, would have the exact same genome, the same DNA, as you. Identical twins, for example,
are clones. In the lab, you can create a clone by replacing the DNA in an unfertilized egg cell with a copy of
your DNA and implanting it in a convenient womb. But just because the clone starts out with the same blueprint
as you doesn't mean you and your clone will be identical. For one thing, your clone will be much younger. It
also won't act like you, and it probably won't look exactly like you because there's no way to completely
duplicate your experiences and environment from fetus to adult.
But here's the bad news: your clone may well be healthier than you, and in better shape, simply because it's
younger and hasn't spent the last decade or so watching TV, playing video games, and eating junk food. Fortunately,
reading this book will help you prepare, with plenty of topical pop culture examples from sources like films
and shows like The Simpsons and Futurama.
Whether you're hoping for a future with "chocolate-flavored broccoli," or a darker world of "viral warfare and
biologically enhanced Richard Simmons clones," the authors have written a timely guide to a complicated subject
that's as user-friendly as it is funny.
Charlene's sixth grade teacher told her she would burn her eyes out before she was 30 if she kept reading and writing so much. Fortunately he was wrong. Her work has also appeared in Aboriginal SF, Amazing Stories, Dark Regions, MZB's Fantasy Magazine, and other genre magazines. |
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