Sci-Fi Nightmares That Could Come True | Episode One | Unveiled - video Dailymotion

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00:00 Have you ever watched or read science fiction and felt like it came scarily close to what's

00:05 actually happening in real life?

00:07 Or witnessed a technology or event unfold, knowing full well that a sci-fi writer predicted

00:12 it decades ago?

00:14 Have you ever worried that something horrible in sci-fi could one day happen to you?

00:20 This is Unveiled, and today we're taking a closer look at the terrifying future potential

00:24 for clone harvesting.

00:27 Do you need the big questions answered?

00:29 Are you constantly curious?

00:31 Then why not subscribe to Unveiled for more clips like this one?

00:34 And ring the bell for more thought-provoking content!

00:37 In 1996, a sheep was born that changed the world.

00:41 Dolly goes down in history as the first cloned mammal.

00:44 She was the product of some truly astonishing biological science at the time, although today

00:49 the list of successfully cloned animals has grown at a staggering pace.

00:53 We've now seen cloned rats, cats and camels, pigs, monkeys and wolves.

00:58 The breakthroughs are almost so expected and normal now that they don't always make headlines

01:03 anymore.

01:04 For all the positive applications that these developments could have, however, there has

01:07 always been an underlying ethical debate.

01:10 How far should we go?

01:12 The concept of "hatched humans" first came to the fore in Aldous Huxley's 1932

01:17 novel, Brave New World.

01:19 In it, the population is genetically engineered before birth, inside artificial wombs.

01:25 Once born, the children are taught and nurtured to fit into certain, predetermined groups.

01:29 Huxley then explores our freedom - or lack of it - under these conditions.

01:34 In a purely practical sense, it's a set-up that arguably could happen in real life.

01:40 So-called "designer babies" are increasingly possible thanks to gene editing, with many

01:45 fearing that the technology will lead to "customizing" human beings.

01:49 Combine it specifically with the tech that birthed Dolly the sheep, however, and that

01:53 fear cranks up another notch.

01:55 The Japanese-born British writer Kazuo Ishiguro explores the prospect of harvesting clones

02:00 in his 2005 novel, Never Let Me Go.

02:04 In the book, cloned humans are grown specifically to provide organs and other biological material

02:09 for non-cloned human beings.

02:11 Ordinarily, the clones' inescapable fate is kept from them.

02:14 They're oblivious that they're only ever alive in order to one day be cut open and die young.

02:19 However, the characters in Ishiguro's story learn the truth, and events unfold from there.

02:24 What's clear is that while "organs on tap" might represent some kind of scientific utopia

02:29 in theory, what actually unfolds is an unsettling dystopia when it's realized in this way.

02:35 Ishiguro's cloned beings think, feel and love, just as anyone else would… but they're

02:40 never free, and the scythe of death really can be ordered for them at any time.

02:45 Elsewhere, the issue of cloning is explored from a different angle in Michael Marshall

02:49 Smith's 1996 book, Spares.

02:52 Published in the same year as Dolly the Sheep was born, it again captures the then-burgeoning,

02:57 now fully-grown, ethical landscape.

02:59 Here, the action starts off on a "spares farm", where clones are grown to provide

03:04 body parts for high-paying customers.

03:07 The clones are entirely "owned" beings, with Smith creating a hellish scenario that

03:12 his characters are desperate to escape from.

03:15 The film rights were once bought but never acted upon, although many believe the 2005

03:19 movie The Island to be a very similar story.

03:22 In it, the main character learns of an entrenched conspiracy wherein clones are effectively

03:27 kept prisoner until they're required by their human parents.

03:31 Meanwhile, and although not clone harvesting, the issue of organ harvesting is at the heart

03:36 of Swedish writer Nini Holmqvist's 2006 novel, The Unit.

03:41 The eponymous "Unit" is a purpose-built facility where older people are sent by the

03:46 state to live out their final days, before they too go under the knife to die by donating

03:52 their organs and body parts.

03:54 In Holmqvist's near-future world, those who are sent to the Unit are known as "dispensables",

04:00 as the author asks the reader to imagine a time when certain groups of people are no

04:04 longer considered worthy of life, or at least their only worth is to be physically butchered

04:10 in the name of younger specimens.

04:12 Again, The Unit isn't about mass cloning, but many of the themes it raises are transferable.

04:17 And more generally, the same kind of questions are often asked in stories involving artificial

04:22 intelligence - what happens when robots feel?

04:25 Should machines have rights?

04:27 The TV series Humans looked directly at what might happen if synthetic humans ever became

04:32 almost indistinguishable from flesh-and-blood organic people.

04:36 With cloning in particular, the fact is that we are still a long way from fully-cloned

04:41 human beings.

04:42 But, nevertheless, the groundwork has been made, and many deem that the barriers between

04:47 us and it are almost always ethical, rather than technological.

04:51 Practically speaking, and while research into artificial wombs is ongoing, if a clone is

04:56 to be born it would most likely be to a surrogate mother.

05:00 Science fiction likes to show cloned creatures suspended inside vats of an unknown substance,

05:06 but the real-world work toward inventing those vats hasn't really materialised.

05:11 This in itself could breed concerns for what a future of cloning might look like, though,

05:15 with the potential for "clone carriers" to be treated badly - something akin to the

05:19 handsmaids in Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale.

05:23 More broadly, the potential for corruption with cloning could be huge, including with

05:28 the advent of clone slavery, the creation of clone armies, and with the birthing of

05:32 secret clones for variously unjust, duplicitous or malicious purposes.

05:37 A darkening picture gets even worse if we consider that, in the real world, cloning

05:42 is arguably less desirable in the scientific mainstream as it once was.

05:47 Due to the development of gene editing, for anyone wanting to create seemingly perfect

05:51 people - no matter the moral problems that that raises - cloning is no longer necessarily

05:56 the best route forward.

05:58 Because how do you choose who or what gets cloned?

06:01 And why should you bother if you could just write what you wanted into the genetic stream

06:05 at source?

06:07 These developments will never suddenly remove the knowledge of cloning from human society,

06:11 however.

06:12 And so, if tech develops to make cloning easier - which it surely will - then could we be

06:16 laying the foundations for a wild west of copied creatures in the future?

06:21 Today, the world is littered with long-discarded products that were once deemed the height

06:25 of technology, only to be replaced and thrown out.

06:29 If cloning ever arrives, then will it eventually go the same way?

06:33 Could we ever see a time when human bodies are so easily made and so little cared for

06:38 that they are just piled up in landfill?

06:41 For now, there are plenty of big strides that need to be made before that disturbing reality

06:45 comes to pass.

06:46 But what do you think?

06:47 Is there a place for cloning tech in the modern world?

06:50 Would you feel comfortable with cloning part or all of yourself in the future?

06:55 And if it does one day arrive, then how do you think we should govern it?

06:59 Let us know in the comments!

07:01 There are some common themes that run through all of the science fiction stories and moral

07:05 dilemmas that dip into cloning.

07:07 What do we count as life?

07:09 How do we value life generally?

07:11 Is any one version of life worth more than the other?

07:14 If a clone is born, then are they a clone or a human, first of all?

07:19 Beginning with Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, writers have long mused over the direction

07:24 that this kind of deeply biological research could take us down.

07:28 It's almost a century since Brave New World, however, and are we now about to step into

07:33 the time that Huxley envisioned?

07:35 In the time since Dolly the Sheep, we've fast-tracked to a level of knowledge that

07:39 would have been previously hypothetical only… so much so that perhaps we've never properly

07:45 considered the long-term implications.

07:47 In a near-future era when cloning is commonplace, there's ample opportunity for people to

07:52 take advantage; with an immediately clear threat such as nuclear weaponry, there's

07:57 always the fear that the know-how will one day be widespread and the consequences will

08:01 be dire.

08:02 But, it's arguably much the same thing in this case.

08:05 It's frighteningly simple to imagine a path for cloning that could lead to people born

08:11 to die, to some very literally unwanted children, and also to a time when only the rich get

08:17 replicated.

08:18 And, as incredible as cloning is, and as useful as some aspects of it could be in the future

08:23 of our species, that's how this science fiction nightmare really could come true.

08:30 What do you think?

08:31 Is there anything we missed?

08:32 Let us know in the comments, check out these other clips from Unveiled, and make sure you

08:36 subscribe and ring the bell for our latest content.

Sci-Fi Nightmares That Could Come True | Episode One | Unveiled

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