Cloning goes to the movies

Public attitude research conducted by Biotechnology Australia shows that one of the major sources of information on human reproductive cloning is movies. Traditionally, understanding of new and emerging technologies has come through the mass media but human cloning, being so widely addressed through the popular culture of movies, is more effectively defined by Hollywood than the news media or science media. But how well are the science and social issues of cloning portrayed in box office hits such as The Island, Multiplicity, Star Wars: Attack of the Clones and Jurassic Park? These movies have enormous reach and undoubted influence, and are therefore worth analyzing in some detail. This study looks at 33 movies made between 1971 and 2005 that address human reproductive cloning, and it categorizes the films based on their genre and potential influence. Yet rather than simply rating the quality of the science portrayed, the study compares the key messages in these movies with public attitudes towards cloning, to examine the correlations.


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If you believe what you read in the tabloid newspapers, the first two human clones came into existence in 2002 -one procedure was performed by Italian doctor Severino Antinori, and the other by Clonaid, the company formed by members of the Raelian movement.
If you follow the scientific literature, however, no human clones have yet been born, as cloning, in addition to being illegal in most countries, is not yet advanced enough to succeed with higher primates.
Yet cloning is all around us. Cloning of plants has been happening through taking cuttings for many hundreds of years. Cloning of animals has been happening since 1952 when tadpoles were cloned, followed by a cat, dog, mice, pigs, sheep, cows and a rhesus monkey. And cloning of human beings is a regular staple of Hollywood films. Over twenty films in the last 15 years alone have addressed human cloning.
Human reproductive cloning may not yet be possible in practice, but it is very real in the public's imagination.
Image 1. Dr Evil and his clone Mini Me from the Austin Powers movies Image 2. A newspaper headline of Dr Antinori claiming the world's first human clone. Traditional understanding of new and emerging technologies comes through the mass media, but human cloning, being so widely addressed through the popular culture of movies, is more defined by Hollywood than the news or science media. A key question to examine therefore is how well is the science, or social issues relating to cloning, being portrayed in such movies?
This study looks at 30 movies, made between 1973 and 2005, that address human reproductive cloning, and it compares the quality of the science being portrayed in them and the associated key messages relating to trust in science and regulation. The findings are then compared to public attitudes towards cloning, to determine if there are any correlations.
The movies have been divided into five distinct categories.
1. Contemporary Social Realism -those set in, or very near to, the present, and realistic.
• While primarily US-produced, the above list includes two movies made in Korea (Yesterday and Natural City), one made in Hong Kong (The Clones of Bruce Lee), one German-Turkish co-production (Blue Print) one Japanese Anime series (Neon Genesis Evangelion), and one US animated TV series (Clone High).
Analysing the movies for which there is data on cost and return, 16 films dealing with cloning cost in excess of US$1 billion to produce, at an average cost of US$67 million per film -an enviable amount compared to most science communications budgets. The concern that these movies have a large impact on people's attitudes is exemplified by the US bioethicist, Arthur L Caplan, who said of the movie Godsend, "Thanks Hollywood. Just as people were beginning to understand cloning, you have put greed before need and made a movie that risks keeping ordinary Americans afraid and patients paralyzed and immobile for many more years." 2 He also stated that a problem with being given misinformation about cloning was that it polluted the debate about making cloned embryos for research, particularly stem-cell research. 3 According to surveys conducted by Biotechnology Australia, the Hollywood media is most cited as a source of information on human reproductive cloning, and focus group discussions indicate that those films that depict realism in them have more impact than those that are satirical or science fiction and fantasy.
One focus group respondent even stated: "I saw a movie once, and it was sort of a very factual movie, where this couple cloned this child, and the child was traveling fine, until it got to about 14 or 15 years of age, and this child was gifted, super intelligent and had a lot of things going for it, and then all of the sudden the whole body system went ballistic, it went through an aging process, it started getting all these diseases in the world and that kid died… They based that movie on real events they could see happening." 4 The reference appears to be towards the film Godsend, which is a fictitious film, although it went to great pains through its promotional activities to depict a medical institute with its own website and hotline where human cloning was taking place. 5 So if social realism films can sometimes be confused with factual representations of cloning, it is therefore important to analyse the key messages being portrayed in those films in particular.
The following section provides a brief plot synopsis of these films and rates the accuracy of the science and the morals and regulation portrayed in them.
Squeezing a complex science and associated ethical issues into two hours or less, alongside plot, character development and action, obviously forces film-makers to take short cuts with the science.
The predominant message from the realism films is that cloning is conducted by evil scientists or immoral corporations, without effective regulation. This aligns closely with the public attitudes found in the study conducted by Biotechnology Australia, which showed that people felt the science of cloning was being pursued for no justifiable reason, but purely in the name of science. 7 Added to this is the high profile controversy of South Korean researcher Hwang Woo-Suk, having falsified data, and there is concern that the high public condemnation and disrepute of human reproductive cloning will flow on to all forms of research that involve some type of cloning. The screenwriter of the film Godsend, Mark Bomback, responded to criticism of the film's portrayal of science, from Nature, saying his film should not be understood as a critique of science or an attack against cloning human embryos for research. "It would mortify me if it was used to condemn stem cell research," he said. 8 Image 3. A Clone being produced in the Island Image 4. Young Adolf Hitler Clone from the Boys from Brazil

Other Cloning Films
Looking at the science fiction/fantasy films together, the science is generally good, but again tends to have been undertaken for dubious moral purposes. Little attention is paid to individual scientists in these films, as the science tends to be undertaken by large organizations. The only film in this category that shows a benign form of cloning is the Fifth Element, when the 'supreme being' is cloned from the remains of her hand. Star Wars: Attack of the Clones portrays the creation of a cloned army through mass cloning, and the Korean film Natural City, which has been closely compared to the ground-breaking 1982 film Blade Runner, has clones that are produced for menial labour and are treated as second-class citizens.
Cloning in these films tends to be very advanced and conducted for sinister reasons. In Alien Resurrection, the lead character, Ripley, has been cloned to separate her DNA from an Alien's -which is showed in a room full of preserved half-Ripley half-Alien creatures.
In the satire and comedy films cloning is generally undertaken to generate a humorous situation. These include an overworked family man making many clones of himself to fulfill all his roles in life in Multiplicity, and a lab technician cloning his dream woman and then teaching her to behave like one of the boys in Repli-Kate. There are few evil Percent scientists in these films, more often well-meaning but unaware of the trouble they are causing. An exception to this is, of course, Doctor Evil, from the Austin Powers films, whose clone is a miniature version of him -Mini Me. The science of cloning is rarely accurate in these comedy films, with full-grown clones being produced that are the same age as the original, and there is next to no regulation or control over the production of clones.
Amongst these films Clone High deserves a special mention. The MTV animated series is set in a high school being run as a government experiment where all the teenagers are clones of famous people -such as Cleopatra, Abraham Lincoln, Joan of Arc and Gandhi. The satirical portrayal of Gandhi as the class hyperactive nerd sparked emotive protests in India -where the show is not actually broadcast.
Those films rated as gone and forgotten tend to have little impact on public attitudes, but bear some mention. Most used cloning as central to the plot, even if in a bizarre way, such as in the Clones of Bruce Lee, made four years after his death, in which several actors, who almost look like Bruce Lee were employed to play his clones (with the improbably names of Bruce Le, Dragon Lee and Bruce Lai). Again the scientists tend to be sinister and cloning is inaccurate.
Overall scientists hoping to educate the public about the benefits of cloning are facing an uphill battle. According to Charles Colson, writing for Beliefnet, "… it's nearly impossible to name a film where cloning or any other biotech advancement is depicted as unambiguously good." 9  However if we look closer at the negative images and stereotypes depicted in these movies, and look at public attitudes, we can see that they actual mirror each other to some extent. The Biotechnology Australia study found that while there was a very high awareness of cloning, with only 2.2% not having heard of the term, over 85% stated that human cloning was not morally acceptable to them. Focus group participants described it as "abhorrent", "horrific, mind boggling," and "against nature". 10 There was also significant concern about raising clones for body parts, which was seen as raising serious ethical dilemmas. As one focus group participant put it: "You're cloning a human for it to die healthy. The whole idea is not very humane." 11 US science journalist David Ewan Duncan, has said, "Clearly, the never-ending stream of batty scientist flicks reveals an underlying anxiety and fear about the possible dark side of the technology." 12 However the negative depiction of cloning in films that play upon the worst stereotypes of evil and uncontrolled scientists fail to challenge us to think seriously about cloning, or to consider the types of questions that would have to be considered if human reproductive cloning ever did become a reality. These include such issues as, what would be the rights of a clone? Who should decide who would be cloned? Or how might clones fit into society?

Conclusion
Overall, portrayals of the science of cloning in movies is mixed, but very few movies portray cloning as anything other than evil, dangerous, unnatural and uncontrolled. And while there is not enough evidence to suggest that Hollywood cloning films drive public attitudes towards cloning, there are strong correlations between the themes in the films and public concerns. The public has strong concerns about human reproductive cloning, and these are reinforced, or mirrored, by the portrayal of cloning in movies, perhaps explaining why audiences respond to many of these films so well.
Image 5: The types of clones we can expect, according to the way human cloning is portrayed in movies.