The Second Tree of Clones, Chimeras, and Quests for Immortality

Alan Belk is a sessional instructor in the Philosophy Department at the
University of Guelph.

We are fascinated by the doings of other people, real or fictional, a
fascination that is catered to through magazines, newspapers, books, TV
programs, and the Internet.

This concern with “human interest” explains why Elaine Dewar’s
book is both important and hard to put down. It presents the “what,”
the science and commercial activity of biotechnology, hand in hand with
the “who.” Biotechnology is very big in Canada. It involves
academia, government, and business in a way that few other fields do.
Although taxpayers spend billions of dollars, the personal goals and
ambitions of individuals drive the industry. Motives vary—intellectual
challenge and curiosity, the desire for fame and fortune, a need to
change the world, conflicts of interest, ignorance, ruthlessness, and
greed all figure in the mix.

Dewar presents a formidable amount of extremely well researched science
in plain, intelligible language. For example, few writers appreciate, as
Dewar does, that the reason for a maternal gene rather than a paternal
gene being expressed in an individual is unknown. A strength of the book
is that she presents interviews with many of the major figures in this
fast-changing field. These people themselves show their motives and
goals. The thread that links them is Dewar’s research and increasing
knowledge and understanding of the issues around biotechnology.

The search for immortality—a search that involves cloning humans,
using stem cells, and modifying the genes of proto-children—raises all
sorts of issues for society that biotechnology itself does not address,
and that we cannot address unless we know what is going on. Read this
book.