Thus, consider the arguments of Lee Silver, a molecular biologist at Princeton, who has cheerfully predicted that parents will one day be able to choose for their children genes that increase athletic ability, genes that increase musical talents and ultimately, genes that affect cognitive abilities. "Why shouldn't parents be able to give their child something that other children already have?" From this is it not even a small step towards suggesting, as did Barbara Ehrenreich, "why not make a few backup copies of the embryo and keep a few in the freezer in case Junior needs a new kidney or cornea ?"
 
What is alarming is how much of this is happening without the knowledge of society at large, much less with the tacit approval or discussion of the issues that are involved. Much of the genetic research that is ongoing today is not veiled in secrecy so much as sanguinely proceeding without reference to any need to inform society. Even the possibility of the Dolly, the famous cloned sheep that started the current round of such activity, became known to the world only several months after her existence. Patrick Dixon, a scientist who has been prominent in opposing cloning research, argues that "when it comes to cloning of mammals there has been a deliberate conspiracy of silence. At the very moment of such protestations, advanced experiments of varying kinds were already taking place in utmost secrecy."
 
Interesting, too, is the extent to which such public debate as there has been has focused less on the darker side of these practices, in particular on eugenics, and more on other intractable but somehow cosier problems. Thus, what would happen if a woman cloned her father and bore him as her son ? What is the status of cloned individuals - are they the same as others ? What about a possible black market for embryos, and the possibility of "gene theft" as people choose to clone others by saving some of their cells ?
 
Indeed, the philosophical and psychological issues thrown up by the very real possibility of human cloning are as mindboggling as they are fascinating. The analyst Adam Phillips posed the question : is cloning the death or the apotheosis of individualism ? He suggests that "in one fell swoop cloning is a cure for sexuality and difference... the art of self-cloning is an attempt to stop time by killing desire."
 
But there, is of course, a darker side. And this darker side is the same as was revealed at various points throughout the previous century and is now most evident in the attempts at genetic manipulation of future humans in other ways as well. Cloning could easily turn into an extreme manifestation of the eugenic desire to "improve" the human race, or the megalomaniac desire to reproduce oneself, or the totalitarian desire to create humans who can be controlled.
 
It is true, of course, that the advance of technology constantly forces us to rethink the norms and ethical principles on which our societies are based. But equally, as technology advances well beyond the awareness and even the imagination of ordinary people, its capacity not only for beneficial progress but also for massive social disruption and even pure evil, cannot be underestimated.