Word: cloning
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...comes the feature, and charm is replaced by the dull treatment of a way-too-familiar scenario. As in the James Bond film The Man with the Golden Gun, an evil genius lords it over a mountainous island patrolled by a supermonster. The monster here is Mewtwo, a kitty clone or copycat of cuddly Mew. And as in Toy Story, the old-fashioned toys (like Mew) have to teach the mechanized ones (like Two) a bit about human values...
...even have sex and parenthood without suffering the bit in between. Some Hollywood actresses may have satisfied the urge for mothering by electing to adopt children rather than spoil their figures (as they see it) by childbearing. For people as beautiful as this, the temptation to adopt a clone (reared in a surrogate womb) could one day be irresistible...
...obstacle to President Clone will come if cloning carries serious side effects. Dolly the sheep, it turns out, has prematurely aged cells, probably attributable to the fact that she is the biological extension of an animal that was already an adult. Human clones could have the same problem--plus cloning-related mental or behavioral defects that might not be apparent in a sheep...
Sure, why not? Scientists used to think it would be difficult to clone an animal as complex as a mammal, but Dolly the sheep neatly demolished that theory. If you can clone a sheep, a human isn't much tougher. Whether it is ethical to do so is another matter, and in fact human cloning has been outlawed in a number of countries and states. But illegal or not, someone's going to do it--and having been conceived by a convicted felon is no bar to public office...
...Constitution, moreover, doesn't have a clone clause. As long as you are a citizen and 35 or older, you're eligible. The age requirement means it can't happen for a while--2036 at the earliest (presuming that someone hasn't already secretly created the first human clone). But 2036 is not that far away. While some may insist that a clone should not be eligible for citizenship, the argument won't fly. If you are human and born in the U.S., you're a citizen. A clone will be born in the conventional way, with a mother...