WHAT IF...?

There is a rustling sound coming from the dark shadows of the narrow alley to the side of the derelict building. Suddenly, you see half a dozen brown rats rush out onto the pathway. They press themselves close to the wall and scurry towards a crack in the pavement into which they slither and disappear. The rustling sound continues, getting closer and closer to the entrance of the passage. You stand and wait. Then another rat appears. But this one is nothing like the previous evacuees from the alleyway. This one stands some three metres tall. Its pinprick red eyes glare at you, its long snout quivers as it sniffs the air and its mouth is open, showing a phalanx of sharp yellow teeth. This particular rat doesn’t scurry alongside walls. It hisses at you and moves forward slowly and deliberately. You then notice that its legs are those of a human. Strong, muscular human thighs covered in rat fur support its heavy body and the rat tail that switches in anger protrudes from a human-like buttock. It wears a leather tunic and short skirt and carries a large halberd in one of its paws. You have come face to face with a Rathing soldier, a Hybrid Clone created in a laboratory experiment several years before by a deranged, rogue scientist.

This spectacle is a daily event in 2078 Britain.

There is a difference between a creature that is cloned and one cloned as a hybrid. With cloning, one is an exact copy of the other [as in Dolly the Sheep]. A hybrid – or chimera – possesses two types of cell, one from each progenitor, to create a new entity which retains the identity of its origins. Hybridity, such as cloning a human gene with that of an animal has been going on for very many years. Yet it is only recently that British scientists proposed that legislation be introduced for human-animal hybrid cloning for stem cell research purposes.

Of course, arguments concerning the ethics of cloning and hybrid cloning will continue to rage. No matter on what side of the fence you sit, you and your conscience cannot escape the inevitable fact that cloning is here to stay. That is why the question what if …? is essential. What if no effective International controls in cloning are introduced? What if stem cells are not destroyed within the prescribed time but allowed to mature? What if a rogue scientist decides to play God and create his own mutants? What if a great deal of pain and suffering is perhaps experienced by these cloned creatures? What if certain experiments serve no purpose in medical advances? Some aspects of research and cloning are essential. Others may not be so. For example, two research teams (at King’s College, London and Newcastle University) are attempting to create embryos made up of both human and animal genetic material. The resulting embryos, known as cytoplasmic hybrids, are to be used in research into treatments for diseases such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s. Compare that with the recent report that an American woman was prepared to pay £75,000 to a South Korean firm if their attempts to clone her pet pit bull terrier were successful. And of a woman from Texas who paid £26,000 to replicate her 17-year-old tabby. It shouldn’t be too difficult to decide which is cloning for serious scientific research and which is not.

If someone is willing to pay to have their pet dog or cat replicated (and this is not fantasy or science fiction but fact), who is to say what could be created if the owner of a pet rat may not be willing to pay handsomely to have his dead rodent regenerated through cloning? Or might not distraught parents want to have their dead child reproduced through cloning?

It is not beyond the bounds of probability that among the myriad cloning experiments that take place every day throughout the world there might be one that produces an awesome chimera. After all, a few generations ago few people had heard about embryonic stem cells ... A few generations ago, no one had thought it possible to build a synthetic chromosome out of laboratory chemicals ... A few generations ago no one spoke of knockout mice – that is mice who had certain genes removed or ‘knocked out’, resulting in such rodents not having, say, the gene that causes fear or that which creates anxiety. We can no more dismiss the prospect of bizarre clones being created in the future than we would have ignored the possibility a few generations ago of stem cell research or of building a synthetic chromosome.

Kytos – The Dark Beyond is a piece of fiction. It does not pretend to be anything other than a sci-fi thriller. It is at present scientifically impossible to create such creatures as my imagined clones. But to quote Fredric Brown, the respected science fiction author, "Fantasy deals with things that are not and cannot be. Science Fiction deals with things that can be, that some day may be." So what may seem outlandish today could be a possibility tomorrow. Advances in genetic engineering may one day enable you to have tissue taken from your dear departed Dad cloned with genetic material from your favourite pet rat. There are more than enough rich eccentrics in the world that would rather fancy treasuring that conjoined image in their home. It would certainly be a talking point amongst their friends! And there are enough avaricious scientists who would try anything in return for a big fat financial incentive in the back pocket. After all, there’s no law with muscle to stop them. So, nothing should be discounted insofar as advances in scientific research and cloning is concerned and, given time, nothing is impossible.

Man has always striven to learn, to discover and to invent and we should be excited as we stand on the threshold of the wonderful future opportunities that genetic engineering offer us. But that should not preclude ethically-motivated scientists, doctors, legislators, those in the news media and the man in the street from always asking what if ...?


John von Kesmark