I remember reading a short story once about a guy who invented a clone of himself. He was feeling tied down at home, and wanted to spread his wings a bit at the bar with the guys, while keeping his wife pacified--the clone was going to be the great fix. Things went well at first: the clone did its chores, sat with the man's wife in front of the tv for hours, until she went to bed. But then the clone caught on--he, it, learned. The story ended with the man returning home to the locks changed and the clone having stolen its creator's life--including the wife. The story struck me as sinister and far-fetched--that was 30 years ago. As with many other technologies that seemed outrageous in the past, cloning is emerging in a rapid and rather eerie way.
China is poised to open a mass-cloning factory by the end of this year, the 'products' of which will be cows, sheep, and even humans. The futuristic facility has a goal of creating one million cows every 12 months by the year 2020. Along with that, the factory will be cloning police dogs and thoroughbred horses.
The factory will be built by BoyaLife Genomics, a subsidiary of BoyaLife Group. With an investment of 200 million yuan ($31 million USD), the centre will be jointly built by Sinica, Peking University's Institute of Molecular Medicine, the Tianjin International Joint Academy of Biomedicine, and the Republic of Korea's Sooam Biotech Research Foundation--in sum, a powerful cohort of researchers and investors. What is not possible with such research and development potential.
The facility was designed to accommodate the growing demand for meat to feed the surging Chinese population, and has emerged out of the success of 2014 in which a couple of Bull Mastiff puppies were cloned.
But there is an underbelly to this facility: the technology is ready for humans to be cloned once a mass market emerges. There are so many ethical issues with cloning, especially in a country such as China whose human rights compromises are myriad.
What will they be cloning humans for--a giant army? Greater workforce? And what kind of market will be created that human cloning will fill? Will human cloning be the milestone on the way to AI? Will the clones be super-powered with AI capabilities? Will the clones be the resurrection of those who have passed away under the facilitation of companies specializing in cryogenics? Where is all this going?
Regardless, we have a massive factory designed to in the near future manufacture 1 million cows. According to the US Food and Drug Administration, the meat manufactured from cloned cattle and pig is considered safe to eat. Would you eat cloned meat?
And what about the dude whose clone took over his life? Could such a scenario may be commonplace within the next 5 - 7 years?
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