A Number

My wife and I have season tickets to the American Conservatory Theater (ACT) in San Francisco. It's been an interesting experiment. I've really enjoyed the plays but it's a hassle to rush to and from the city because of the kids. Perhaps we'll circle back on season tickets again when the kids are older.

Today's performance, A Number, was particularly thought-provoking. The play was about a father who clones his son to have another chance at being a good father. His wife committed suicide and he was an alcoholic. Some time after his wife's death, the father sends his biological son (who is hard to handle) off but clones him first. He then starts over as a father with the cloned son - without realizing that the cloning company had created "a number" of additional clones without his knowledge. During the play, the father is confronted by his biological son and two of the clones.

In the context of genetic research and engineering, stem cell research, animal cloning, etc, the play raises a number of questions that are hard to answer. One hard question is whether the clone is the same or different person from the source. Does the clone have a soul? In the program, there is an essay by Brian Alexander called "Biology Is Not Destiny". In it, he points out:

There is no such thing as "exactly the same genetic person," especially when it comes to the hypothetical idea of cloning a human being in a lab. There are scientific reasons for this. For example, the mitochondria, the little powerhouse of cells, have a small number of their own genes. When a cell from a person to be cloned is placed into an egg to begin the process, that egg will not have the same mitochondrial DNA as the mother's egg used to conceive the original person. Second, the way in which genes are switched on and off, epigenetics, varies according to many, often unknown circumstances, including our environment. And of course, a clone would probably not gestate in the same mother and certainly not at the same time. In other words, identical twins would be closer genetic copies than any lab-created human clone could ever be. Yet even they soon diverge genetically in small ways. We are all unique.

Assuming all this is true, it would seem that the clone would be his or her own person and have their own soul.

Another interesting question raised by the play is the influence of nature vs nurture on the type of person someone becomes over time. In chaos theory (see this post), one property of chaotic dynamics is sensitivity to initial conditions. This means that two points in a chaotic system may move in vastly different trajectories in their "phase space" even if the difference in their initial configurations is very small. The systems behave identically only if their initial configurations are exactly the same. So, from a nature perspective, the very slight genetic differences described by Alexander could lead to very different outcomes later in life. I think it's also fairly obvious (at least to me) that even if a person is genetically predisposed to be excel in a particular area, nurture plays a big role in whether the person will actually achieve that potential (or go in an entirely different direction).

The last important question I'll mention is whether it makes sense to clone a human being or pet when they pass on. When we lose someone or something that is important to us, it's very tempting to want to bring them back or to have another chance to right previous wrongs. It's hard to argue against the desire. But, if Alexander is correct (and I assume he's done proper research), you can't literally bring that exact person or thing back. You'd be bringing back someone that is substantially similar (at least genetically) but it's an entirely different person. Also, from a spiritual perspective, if you believe that everything happens for a reason (see this post), it was that person's (or pet's) proper time to go - even if it doesn't make sense at the time.

Anyway, lots of interesting questions raised by this play. I don't claim to have any real answers but those are some thoughts to consider.