Frankenstein Cloning Quotes

The controversy over pet cloning is a debate over what it means to love an animal, and it involves values and judgments that we may never all agree upon.

Cloning is reproduction—it’s not resurrection.

… To many biologists, cloning is all sizzle and no substance, a high-tech spectacle that fails to address habitat loss, poaching, pollution, and the other human activities that put wildlife at risk in the first place… But the time for first resorts has come and gone, and safeguarding species is an all-hands-on-deck enterprise. … Cloning won’t be a cure-all, but given the state of the planet, it can’t hurt to have options.

If the curtain is indeed about to drop on Sapiens history, we members of one of its final generations should devote some time to answering one last question: what do we want to become? This question, sometimes known as the Human Enhancement question, dwarfs the debates that currently preoccupy politicians, philosophers, scholars and ordinary people. After all, today's debate between today's religions, ideologies, nations and classes will in all likelihood disappear along with Homo sapiens. If our successors indeed function on a different level of consciousness (or perhaps possess something beyond consciousness that we cannot even conceive), it seems doubtful that Christianity or Islam will be of interest to them, that their social organizations could be Communist or capitalist or that their genders could be male or female. And yet the great debates of history are more important because at least the first generation of these gods would be shaped by the cultural ideas of their human designers. Would they be created in the image of capitalism, of Islam, or of feminism? The answer to this question might send them careening in entirely different directions. Most people prefer not to think about it. Even the field of bioethics prefers to address another question: 'What is it forbidden to do?' Is it acceptable to carry out genetic experiments on living human beings? On aborted fetuses? On stem cells? Is it ethical to clone sheep? And chimpanzees? And what about humans? All of these are important questions, but it is naive to imagine that we might simply hit the brakes and stop the scientific projects that are upgrading Homo sapiens into a different kind of being. For these projects are inextricably meshed together with the Gilgamesh Project. Ask scientists why they study the genome, or try to connect a brain to a computer, or try to create a mind inside a computer. Nine out of ten times you'll get the same standard answer: we are doing it to cure diseases and save human lives. Even though the implications of creating a mind inside a computer are far more dramatic than curing psychiatric illnesses, this is the standard justification given, because nobody can argue with it. This is why the Gilgamesh Project is the flagship of science. It serves to justify everything science does. Dr Frankenstein piggybacks on the shoulders of Gilgamesh. Since it is impossible to stop Gilgamesh, it is also impossible to stop Dr Frankenstein. The only thing we can try to do is to influence the direction scientists are taking. But since we might soon be able to engineer our desires too, the real question facing us is not 'What do we want to become?, but 'What do we want to want?' Those who are not spooked by this question probably haven't given it enough thought.

I come from a long line of Frankensteins long before Mary Shelley was even born.” “Really. How fascinating. And what did you do for a living before you retired and moved to Black Falls?” “Oh, I haven't retired. I'm still doing research, the same as I have since I was a young man.” Mia pondered his reply. “What kind of research, may I ask?” “Genetic research, cloning, organ replacements…. Some reanimation.” Mia’s face creased with misgiving. “Mr. Frankenstein, I….” “Please. Dr. Frankenstein. I must insist,” he said emphatically.

A Lie (Artificial Intransigence) by Stewart Stafford The morrow lies beyond The grasp of our hands, Fogged coastal shadows Of mountains in distant lands. Deities of tech Olympus, Subhuman to simulated will? Sage genius cannot tell, But hubris claims to still. The synthetic brainchild, Squats on shoulders high Of eyeless seers' vision, Our sentient clone - AI. © Stewart Stafford, 2023. All rights reserved.

Fire and sword laid waste the Earth. Darkness stalked the land. From the ashes of defeat and the smoke of despair, the people of Earth, searching for a future, plundered the past. It was the time of the Great Concoction, when the world was remade. In the thirty-first century of Our Lord, the Europe of the past rose again in the shape of Europa. In Europa, history was reborn. The geologic upheavals of Europa's formation resulted in an acute psychic backlash, manifested in periodic shifts in reality and embodied hallucinations. Spatial dimensions became mercurial in their behaviour. Entire counties could be crammed into a field. These anomalies were exacerbated by advances in psionics which produced dream worlds that were as close to the notion of a real supernatural as makes no odds. Spectres, poltergeists, fallen angels, unfallen angels, trolls, hobgoblins, vampires, werewolves and suchlike entities sprang into pseudo-being. It was upon this ontological quicksand that the Dominions of Europa were founded, recreations of ancient European countries, each containing several time periods. Within each of these historical eras there existed a small percentage of 'Reprises'; clones of famous figures from history artificially encoded with the appropriate personality matrix. These Reprises were prone to severe identity confusion. Yet more acute was the confusion of the fictional Reprises, clones of actors who became identified with particular roles: in these cases, it was not the actor's personality that was encoded into clone-body, but the role he played. By the thirty-third century, Europa was plunging into chaos. Reality unravelled. It was a time of heroes, whimsical worlds, blood and thunder, and general Byronic excess. Dark powers arose. Fearful villagers locked their shutters at night. Fire and sword laid waste the Earth. Darkness stalked... Excerpt from The Tenebrous Testaments of the House of Rue. chapter XIV. volume CLXVII [From Count (Baron) Dracula and Baron (Count) Frankenstein]

Nothing is so painful to the human mind as a great and sudden change.” ― Marry Shelley, Frankenstein