Cloning offers the possibility of making exact copies of ourselves. Should this be allowed? What benefits and dangers may cloning bring?
克隆技術使我們有可能分毫不差地復制自己。這一技術是否應該獲準應用？克隆技術會帶來什么裨益與危險？

A Clone Is Born

Gina Kolata

1 On July 5, 1996, at 5:00 p.m., the most famous lamb in history entered the world. She was born in a shed, just down the road from the Roslin Institute in Roslin, Scotland, where she was created. And yet her creator, Ian Wilmut, a quiet, balding fifty-two-year-old embryologist, does not remember where he was when he heard that the lamb, named Dolly, was born. He does not even recall getting a telephone call from John Bracken, a scientist who had monitored the pregnancy of the sheep that gave birth to Dolly, saying that Dolly was alive and healthy and weighed 6.6 kilograms.

克隆生命誕生了

吉納·科拉泰

1996年7月5日下午5點，有史以來最出名的小羊羔問世了。它出生在蘇格蘭羅斯林鎮的羅斯林研究院所在的那條路上的一個小棚里，這只羊羔是在該研究院創造出來的。而它的創造者伊恩·威爾莫特，一位正在謝頂的文質彬彬的52歲的胚胎學家，卻不記得自己是在什么地方聽到這頭名叫多利的羊問世的消息的。他甚至不記得曾接到約翰· 布拉肯的電話，這位對產下多利的那頭羊的整個妊娠過程進行監察的科學家在電話上說多利健康存活，體重6.6千克。
　
2 No one broke open champagne. No one took pictures. Only a few staff members from the institute and a local veterinarian who attended the birth were present. Yet Dolly, who looked for all the world like hundreds of other lambs that dot the rolling hills of Scotland, was soon to change the world.
沒有人打開香檳酒慶賀。沒有人拍照留影。只有研究院的幾位員工，以及接生的一位當地獸醫在場。然而，多利，這頭與蘇格蘭起伏的山丘上散布著的千百頭其他的羊毫無異樣的小羊羔，很快就改變了世界。

3 When the time comes to write the history of our age, this quiet birth, the creation of this little lamb, will stand out. The world is a different place now that she is born.
當后人編寫我們這一時代的歷史的時候，這一平靜的降生，這頭小羊羔的問世，將會引人注目。世界因它降生而從此改變。

4 Dolly is a clone. She was created not out of the union of a sperm and an egg but out of the genetic material from an udder cell of a six-year-old sheep. Wilmut fused the udder cell with an egg from another sheep, after first removing all genetic material from the egg. The udder cell's genes took up residence in the egg and directed it to grow and develop. The result was Dolly, the identical twin of the original sheep that provided the udder cells, but an identical twin born six years later.
多利是頭克隆羊。它不是精卵結合的產物，而是由取自一頭六齡羊的乳腺細胞的基因材料生成的。威爾莫特先將取自另一頭羊的卵子中的所有基因材料取出，再將該卵子與這一乳腺細胞融合。乳腺細胞的基因在該卵子中安營扎寨，令其生長發育。其結果就是多利羊，即與提供乳腺細胞的那頭羊一模一樣的孿生羊，只是這頭孿生羊晚出生了6年。

5 Until Dolly entered the world, cloning was the stuff of science fiction. It had been raised as a possibility decades ago, then dismissed, something that serious scientists thought was simply not going to happen anytime soon. Now it is not fantasy to think that someday, perhaps decades from now, but someday, you could clone yourself and make tens, dozens, hundreds of genetically identical twins. Nor is it science fiction to think that your cells could be improved beforehand, genetically engineered to add some genes and remove others. 在多利羊問世之前，克隆技術不過是科學幻想的故事。幾十年前有人提出這種可能性，后來遭到摒棄，嚴肅的科學家那時認為克隆在近期根本不可能實現。現在這已不再是幻想，幾十年之后，或許有朝一日你可以克隆自己，造出數十個，數百個，上千個基因完全相同的孿生的兄弟。事先改進你的細胞，運用基因工程注入某些基因，剔除某些基因，這樣的事也不再是科學幻想。

6 True, it was a sheep that was cloned, not a human being. But there was nothing exceptional about sheep. Even Wilmut, who made it clear that he was opposed to the very idea of cloning people, said that there was no longer any theoretical reason why humans could not clone themselves, using the same methods he had used to clone Dolly. "There is no reason in principle why you couldn't do it." But, he added, "All of us would find that offensive."
沒錯，克隆的是頭羊，而不是人。但羊并沒有任何獨特之處。甚至明確表示反對克隆人的威爾莫特也稱，理論上，沒有理由說人類不能使用與克隆多利羊同樣的手段來克隆人類本身。“原則上沒有不能這么做的理由。”但他補充說，“我們都會認為這樣做令人厭惡。”


7 We live in a time when we argue about pragmatism and compromises in our quest to be morally right. But cloning forces us back to the most basic questions that have plagued humanity since the dawn of recorded time: What is good and what is evil? And how much potential for evil can we tolerate to obtain something that might be good? Cloning, with its possibilities for creating our own identical twins, brings us back to the ancient sins of vanity and pride; the sins of Narcissus, who so loved himself, and of Prometheus, who, in stealing fire, sought the powers of God. So before we can ask why we are so fascinated by cloning, we have to examine our souls and ask, What exactly so bothers many of us about trying to make an exact copy of our genetic selves? Or, if we are not bothered, why aren't we?
我們生活在這樣一個時代，人們為了追求道德的完善對實用主義和妥協折衷的問題爭論不休。而克隆技術迫使我們回到有史以來一直困擾人類的那些最本質的問題：何者為善，何者為惡？為了獲得可能有益的東西，我們對邪惡的隱患能容忍到何種程度？克隆技術以其創造與我們自身完全一樣的孿生兄弟的可能性，將我們帶回到種種古老的罪孽：虛榮傲慢；那喀索斯式的自戀罪，以及普羅米修斯的罪孽，他以盜火來謀求上帝的權力。因此，我們在捫心自問為什么對克隆技術如此著迷之前，不得不首先審視自己的心靈，問一問：究竟是什么東西使得我們中的許多人對于嘗試復制與自身基因完全等同的孿生兄弟那么不安？或者，如果我們并沒有感到不安，其原因又是什么？


8 We want children who resemble us. Even couples who use donor eggs or donor sperm, search catalogs of donors to find people who resemble themselves. Several years ago, a poem by Linda Pastan, called "To a Daughter Leaving Home," was displayed on the walls of New York subways. It read:

Is it my own image
I love so
in your face?
I lean over your sleep,
Narcissus over
his clear pool,
ready to fall in --
to drown for you
if necessary.

Yet if we so love ourselves, reflected in our children, why is it so terrifying to so many of us to think of seeing our exact genetic replicas born again, identical twins years younger than we? Is it one thing for nature to form us through a genetic lottery, and another for us to take complete control, abandoning all thoughts of somehow, through the mixing of genes, having a child who is like us, but better? Normally, when a man and a woman have a child together, the child is an unpredictable mixture of the two. We recognize that, of course, in the old joke in which a beautiful but dumb woman suggests to an ugly but brilliant man that the two have a child. Just think of how wonderful the baby would be, the woman says, with my looks and your brains. Aha, says the man. But what if the child inherited my looks and your brains?