LOSING a loved one is a devastating experience, and bereavement affects people in many different ways.
Until you lose someone close to you, it is hard to predict how you will be affected by their death and what measures you will take to cope.
It now seems that a small number of people are seeking to alleviate their grief by paying scientists to cre
ate a clone of the one they have lost.
We have long known that genetic companies have set up commercial businesses offering to clone beloved pets that have passed away.
But last week, maverick scientist Panayiotis Zavos claimed not only to have implanted cloned embryos in women's wombs but also to be working with genetic material from three people who had died.
His case work reportedly included one woman hoping to "bring back to life" the ten-year-old daughter she tragically lost in a car accident.
Ignoring the fact that most countries consider it illegal to implant cloned embryos in a womb, can it be right that we pursue this line of science? Would its complex advances actually achieve what we hope for – the return of a much-loved family member or pet?
Several years ago, I found myself pondering this issue, though thankfully not due to the loss of a friend or relative. It followed the death of Tim, my family's cat of many years and a constant presence during my childhood.
He was an old cat and not without his health problems, so it should probably not have come as too much of a shock when the call eventually came to say he had died.
But it was a shock. By this point, I had left home and, finding myself on my own, I was surprised at how distraught I felt. To take my mind off Tim, I decided to wander around the Science Museum in London, hoping nobody noticed as the tears rolled silently down my face as I pondered the inner workings of the steam engine and iron lung.
Some time after this pathetic image occurred, I read stories about companies cloning animals for owners who wanted to bring their beloved pets back to life.
I was momentarily struck by the rose-tinted image of Timmy running into the room, a rough-and-tumble kitten again, brought back to life as a clone of the cat we had lost.
"What an amazing idea," I thought. If I had the tens of thousands of pounds required to fund such as clone, perhaps I would go about hunting down a few cat hairs lingering around the house to help scientists recreate Tim.
Back in the land of reality, I soon came to the conclusion that cloning was a simple solution to a complicated problem.
The problem is even more complex when you consider the prospect of cloning actual human beings. After all, we are not simply the sum of what we look like and the genetic material we are made of.
What makes us the people we are – and so the people who might actually be missed – are the things we experience, the people we meet and the individual decisions we make.
There are a million and one tiny elements that make us who we are, and expecting a clone to be able to recreate this is just ludicrous.
I have nothing but sympathy for devastated parents, so grief-stricken that a mirror-image of the child they have lost seems the only way of alleviating their suffering.
And I cannot honestly say that if I found myself in the same position, I, too, would not wonder about the possibilities genetic science has to offer (if, indeed, reproductive cloning ever became legal, and we have to assume it will not).
But ultimately, I think we have to accept that while cloning technology may be a useful tool for scientists searching for treatments for devastating diseases, such embryos must never be allowed to develop to the stage where one day a child may be born into a world where the person they must be has already been mapped out.
Cloning entered my head again more recently. On a hiking trip in the Canadian Rockies, I glanced down at the tiny white cat hairs stubbornly holding on to my fleece jacket. Could this genetic material be used for a clone, I wondered, while knowing it was probably too old to be of use to even the most skilled scientist.
I brushed them off and watched the wind carry Tim off over the mountainside.
The full article contains 772 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
