Dear Readers:

In Woody Allen's movie "Sleeper," set 200 years in the future, the dictator who rules the world dies but his lieutenants manage to preserve his nose. Their plan to clone a new leader from the old one's olfactory organ was an amusingly science-fictional notion in 1973 when the film was made.

It seems less fanciful today, 14 years after the birth of Dolly the Sheep and just days after learning that Doc, the steer crowned 4-H grand champion at the Iowa State Fair, is a clone of Wade, the steer that won two years ago. It was Wade's ear that provided Doc's genetic material -- steers don't really have "noses," do they? But putting aside that detail and the difference between a dictator and a neutered bull, it's safe to say we didn't have to wait 200 years for cloning.

In retrospect, Doc's victory reeks of a publicity stunt by pro-cloning forces.

"We really did it to be able to highlight the capability that exists." That's what David Faber, father of the 17-year-old who showed the steer, told our Chris Clayton. Faber is also president of Trans Ova Genetics, which provides "advanced reproductive services to cattle breeders."

The cloners' case got a boost from the 4-H referee. Clayton asked whether 4-H might ban cloned animals from future competitions. No, the ref said; there's no way to determine whether an animal is a clone.

Yet somehow "publicity stunt" isn't entirely fair. The Fabers, after all, had no assurance Doc would win and no guarantee the publicity would be one-sidedly favorable if he did. And, indeed, it wasn't.

The New York Times, which isn't normally concerned with fairness at state fairs, weighed in with the complaint that showing cloned animals favors the rich. "The technology," the Times groused, "is out of the reach of most farm families, who have to make do the old-fashioned way with cows and bulls."

If the paper had thought another ten seconds, it might have realized that the high cost of technology should also ensure that cloned animals won't often be entered in competition. Horse-racing associations ban clones, but there's serious prize money at stake in horse races. The Fabers won little more than publicity to compensate for the costs of producing a clone, estimated at $20,000, plus the $45,000 paid to ensure Doc's meat didn't enter the food supply in violation of the industry's voluntary stance against meat from cloned animals.

Not to be outdone by the Times, the usual websites seized on Doc's victory to trot out the usual anti-cloning arguments: Meat from cloned animals could prove unsafe, whatever the FDA thinks. Cloning seemingly perfect specimens could lead to a dangerous lack of genetic diversity. Animal cloning could lead to human cloning.

This is not the place to rebut those arguments. My point in writing isn't to bad-mouth the opponents of cloning, whose arguments deserve to be treated with respect even by those who disagree with them. What disturbs me isn't so much the objections to this one technology as the thousands of objections to every imaginable technology. What disturbs me is the increasingly Luddite texture of our social discourse.

Name a technology, any technology, and somebody is warning it's dangerous. The public, not knowing what to believe, is uneasy about everything, including products in everyday use like cell phones (emit radiation), video games (encourage violent behavior) and car air conditioners (contain benzene). In less than a century we've gone from worshiping technology to realizing it has downsides to presuming technologies to be bad until they're proved good.

History teaches that when societies turn against technological development, they go into decline. Up until the 14th and 15th centuries, China's technology was superior to the West's, but conservative factions in the country's leadership won the internal power struggles and blocked continued modernization. Gradually but surely China fell so far behind that only today is it beginning to catch up again.

Our society isn't yet in danger of heading down the same path, but we see early warning signs. They include the many calls to follow Europe in embracing the precautionary principle, which rejects technologies until they're proved safe.

Granted, technology isn't a panacea. Technologies do have downsides as well as upsides. Insisting on monitoring and regulating isn't unreasonable.

But demanding prior proof of safety is. Opponents will always be able to argue that the technology's ill effects might not show up for generations. To meet the burden of proof, then, will require decades of testing. A more insidious scheme to discourage scientists from pushing new technologies is hard to imagine.

What we need is not less technology, but more. Would we really prefer a world in which the steam engine had not been introduced for fear that the burning of coal would cause pollution generations later? Isn't it better to have adopted the steam engine and trusted that man would devise still newer technologies like solar and wind power to deal with the unintended consequences?

The Times ended its editorial on an intriguing note:

"And yet Doc has been useful. A cloned steer highlights the peculiar limitation of cloning, as opposed to ordinary reproduction. Cloning can only ever replicate what is, while biological breeding -- even with artificial insemination and embryo transplants common in the cattle industry -- continues to offer what hasn't yet been."

I agree with this. But far from being an argument against cloning, it's the answer to worries that cloning will threaten genetic diversity. For while cloning today's best specimens may bring profits, cattlemen will go on looking to breed still better specimens even as they reap those profits. Man's spirit of invention will ensure against monocultures.

Unless we throw needless obstacle in the path of that spirit, our scientists and inventors will continue to seek out "what hasn't yet been" to the benefit of mankind.

**

As always I welcome your feedback on this letter and your suggestions for how DTN might serve you better.

Sincerely,

Urban

Urban C. Lehner
Vice President, Editorial
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