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Greg Bear, Darwin's Radio (Del Rey: New York, 1999). Review by Tom W. Miller |
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With Darwin's Radio, Greg Bear has written a gripping, science-laden biotech thriller, though one with only indirect references to human cloning. High in the frozen mountains, Mitch Rafelson discovers a Neanderthal couple, perfectly preserved in the ice. Near the mummies lies the couple's apparent offspring-a child that inexplicably resembles modern human beings. Meanwhile, a new health crisis has arisen throughout the world. A long-dormant part of the human genome-a retrovirus-has become active and is causing women to miscarry. Herod's Flu threatens to eliminate an entire generation of children. Not everybody, however, considers this retrovirus a virulent disease. Kaye Lang, an expert on retroviruses, suggests that the human genome may have a purpose-a purpose revealed by Mitch Rafelson's discovery. Kaye and Mitch argue that the retrovirus is not an illness at all, but the mechanism that drives human evolution. The two fall in love and seek to prove their theory by bearing a healthy example of the next evolutionary stage. Nobody is actually cloned in this book, though the birthing process for the new stage of humanity involves a kind of asexual reproduction. Sexual intercourse gives rise to a "first stage fetus" that in part resembles a giant ovary. After the woman miscarries, she finds herself pregnant (no sex necessary) with the "second stage fetus" that eventually comes to term. The popular reaction to the new process, however, harkens to the current widespread repugnance for human cloning. Ignorance creates panic and prejudice against the prospective parents of the new humans. Many people regard the "upgraded" humans as monsters, when they are simply the result of a natural evolutionary process. While reproductive cloning involves human intervention, after conception and implantation in a womb, the cloned child will develop as does any naturally born child into a unique human being. The public should not allow fictional portraits of human cloning to bias it against new reproductive techniques that could benefit the infertile. Darwin's Radio reinforces the important idea that new, that different does not equate with bad. |
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