Volume 45, Number 7 · April 23, 1998
In the Genetic Toyshop
By Steve Jones
Clone: The Road to Dolly and the Path Ahead
by Gina Kolata
Morrow, 276 pp., $23.00
The Biotech Century: Harnessing the Gene and remaking the World
by Jeremy Rifkin
Tarcher/Putnam, 271 pp., $24.95
Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge
by Edward O. Wilson
Knopf, 332 pp., $26.00
I write as a clone, the son of a clone, and one of the few British citizens legally entitled to commit incest. A clone, of course: we are all one of those, for the billions of cells that we contain are—each one of them—copies of the fertilized egg that made us, reproduced without benefit of sex. My mother, as it happens, is an identical twin, so that another person shares all her genes. Her twin, in turn, has a daughter who is legally my cousin, but in genetic terms a half sister. Sadly, last time I hinted (and it was thirty-five years ago) that perhaps we should forget the ethics and try the biology, I was soundly rebuffed.
Review, 3731 words
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