The science of: The Island

[alxian]

finally took the plunge and saw the island, very pleased as it was one of my most eagerly anticipated movies of the year, though some bad reviews stopped me from seeing it initially. [never listen to movie reviews, both stealh and the island are excellent movies]

 

after a short period of sobering from the experience i have some questions about the science of the island.

 

from the process of cloning humans to the ethics of cloning humans.

 

and possibly some spoilers, though nothing much of the plot is revealed.

 

it is known that the human iris is a 100% unique structure, as should also be our [8, lol]fingerprints. some things are less unique including fingerprints, voice paterns some organs and probably structures in the brain. the latter are built from genetic blueprints but nutrition and environment amoung other factors account for the actual structure of the finished product.

 

in the movie both biological metrics [iris, fingerprints] are scanned and yield positive results. possibly submissible to the imdb for scientific incompetence. both would mean that the circulatory system down to every capillary and surrounding tissues have to be in exactly the right place. AFAIK our dna does not encode with such precision. [leaving the question "just how much unique information does our dna contain, and how much of it is expressed while our bodies grow", if the skin of my finger tip was shorn off to the dermal layer and it grew back [which happened, in a woodshop accident the tip of my thumb was lost to the belt of a sander, and 1/3 of the skin of my left hand was burnerd (melted) [except for the horrible blister and having to see the muscle tissue underneath after the skin blistered and a nurse cut it off *turning green again*] (without scarring too badly, both have recovered fully (only i can tell)) would the finger/palm print remain the same? (that i can't tell, aspects of my palm are noticeably different because it was newer groth and thus wrinkled much more easily when growing in but otherwise looks exaclty like it should).

 

i cry shenanigans since there is no way (no simple way) to influence the growth patterns in the developing human iris [nano machine scaffolds perhaps, for the more complex parts and time and nature for the rest]. the fingerprints are bigger less complicated structures and perhaps they can be influenced to grow in a specific pattern to end up analoguous to those scanned from the sponsor, but i doubt that will happen either.

 

they also mention that the organs harvested from the clones (apparently perfect) may not take, possibly faulting the transplant process but maintaining the perfection of their fictional cloning process. aside from infection what are some of the other reasons an otherwise identical organ would not successfully transplant?

 

lastly some the clones apparently have access to the adult memories of their sponsors.

 

since our memories generally aren't very explicit in detail in the first place and are more like dna scaffolding for rebuilding an event than photographically reliving an event, this in itself isn't entirely implausible. however how likely is it names or events can be recalled? as for motor reflexes are they a chemical lump, a file in the cerebellum, or a distirbuted server requiring several structures in the brain and connected neural pathways to function. such that a visual memory can be a whisper from which our brain creates the picture, while a reflex might be much more complicated to simulate since it requires many muscle groups to act in unison. these too it can be argued can be simple instructions, once the body knows how to move the arm, reflex memory simply has to provide distances and how much force to apply etc. meaning memories are as simple overloading the clone with sensory input, having them excersize like an olympian and more than likely they will experience something like what the memory should be, once they relive something the memory is reenforced by a deja vu like feeling strengthening that memory (associated brain structure, if this is the case a clones memories would be far richer than the sponsors).

 

the reorganizing of those brain structures would require high nutrition, and blood flow. i think a clone in the throws of immerging memories would have crippling headaches from the excess blood pressure, and inability to cope with conflicting or incomprehensible memories that are not easy to contextualize, a creche may employ as psycologists as physicians. a better example of immerging memories is in dune when duncan recovers his full memory with the help of murbella.

 

how can this be possible?[clones recovering the memories of their genetic sponsors] if the brain is properly scanned [information that needs to be very exact, even a molecule for molecule clone will grow differently setting down new memories, this of course is irrelevant to the story since they are only being used to house organs and not actually "become" that person] its possible that growing a clone from extremely specific neural maps (of the sponsors living cerebellum) would a grant the clone some of their reflexes and maneurisms, could this also mean other regions of the clones brain would have extreme facility with seemingly complex tasks? learning everything their sponsors knew at the point of the scan? the sponsors brains structure being a memory device as much neural networking or chemical structures in the sponsors brain. because the clones brain is roughly similar to that of the sponsor (a xerox) it will act similarly enough to think like the sponsor? [not part of the film, they stop short of this by implying the clones will only share memory, the only thing that is impossible to replicate is the personality and motivations between agnate and sponsor]

 

this would not allow for quantum mirroring [a clone of quatum perfection may induce a number FTL like twinning to its sponsor, they would act as one, save instead of inverse mirroring it would be as though one mind controlled both physical bodies at once, one person in two places at once] but the clone may after a time become a functional match for the sponsors as much as it will remain its own person, thinking like that person since everything would be vaguely familiar to them, they'd wake with a form of incurable amnesia like some humans do after trauma and would through living a persons life possibly be able to become them.

[CraigD]

Alxian, I think your skepticism in the science of “The Island” is well-placed.

 

The tradition of attributing scientifically silly qualities to human clones is older the human awareness of the structure of DNA. One of my favorites was a movie in the 70s in which a scientist clones a dozen copies of himself, which grow in about a week into identical-looking (and dressing) adults to announce “hey – I just noticed – we can all hear one another’s thoughts!” A pure MST3K moment.

 

Identical twins are clones. While similarities between identical twins separated at birth (usually by adoption), not only the expected physical ones, but behavioral, such as professions and esthetic preferences, are sometimes striking, leading us to wonder how much of what we think of as high-level learned cognitive data may actually be due to low-level, heritable neurological features, I know of absolutely no mechanism by which an adult memory can be encoded into ones DNA. Inheriting adult memories, which potentally good SF, is scientifically senseless.

 

As far as tissue compatibility (eg: for organ transplants) goes, clones, including identical twins, are, according to transplant specialists with whom I’ve spoken, as close to 100% compatible as it’s possible to be. It’s possible for a clone to be “spoiled” slightly as an organ donor by damage to tissue due to disease – eg: diabetes or HIV/AIDS – but on a genetic level, an identical twin’s immune system simply can’t tell her tissue apart from that of her twin.

 

“Quantum duplication” of a human being – building a human being a fundamental particle at a time – is in principle possible, but only if you build 2 new human beings out of complimentary particles. Although the 2 would be, in a very real sense, “quantum entangled” – measuring, for example, the spin of an electron in one would tell you the spin of it in another – the entanglement would last only an instant until interaction with the outside universe would scramble all the data, rendering the entanglement meaningless. Even if they could be kept in a state of coherence, causally isolated from the universe, their entanglement wouldn’t cause them to have any cognitive or physical “sharing” – the spin, etc. of a particular particle in ones body doesn’t have a significant effect on ones macroscopic behavior.

 

Human cloning to create “spare parts slaves” is an interesting fictional premise, hypothetical question of medical ethics. An scientifically accurate fictional treatment of it wouldn’t make for a very good action-adventure SF movie, I’m afraid, more of a human rights drama. It’d be less like “The Island”, and more like “Pretty Dirty Things”.

[UncleAl]

[qoute]i cry shenanigans since there is no way (no simple way) to influence the growth patterns in the developing human iris[.quote]

Gross anatomy is identical in identical twins (same or mirror-image organisms). Small scale development is unique. There is no way to exactly duplicate fingerprints, retinal vasculature, etc. Microsecond by microscond the exact threading of stuff in a growing fetus is randomly determined by local variables within a specified average. DNA is not a blueprint. DNA encodes raw materials and sequencing. Development is local happenstance. When it happens badly you get birth defects.

 

Growing an exact Doppleganger is worse for females. Every female somatic cell has two X-chromosomes. Only one is active. Females are random chimeras of two distinct but related people.

 

Clones are not 3-D Xerox images. Everybody is small-scale unique.