Imagine Magazine - Johns Hopkins - September/October 2010 - (Page 14)

Interview with Kyle Kurpinski and Terry D. Johnson by Melissa Hartman In How to Defeat Your Own Clone, Kyle Kurpinski and Terry D. Johnson oﬀer not just entertaining advice for taking on your genetic double, but vivid and engaging explanations of the science behind everything from genetically modiﬁed tomatoes to chimerism. It’s a survival guide ﬁlled with advice that you might never need to practice—and science that everyone living in this biotechnological age needs to understand. We caught up with Kurpinski and Johnson over e-mail to discuss some of the issues raised in HTDYOC … and to ask for a little more advice, just in case. In your book, when you envision the future of biotechnology, the first human clone is born in 2021. Why that year? How do you know she hasn’t been born already? KK: The only people claiming to have cloned human beings thus far have refused to provide any evidence. Either the first human clone hasn’t been born yet, or someone’s doing a very good job keeping her under wraps. Predicting the future is a dangerous game, especially when you’re a professional scientist (and even when you’re doing it satirically). As far as we know, there are still a few technical hurdles to overcome before human cloning becomes possible, but the world is full of clever people. We think eleven years is a reasonable amount of time for someone to solve the remaining scientific issues and finagle their way around a few legal precedents ... if one were so inclined. entitled to your life as you are, and were inexplicably evil—they’d be pretty scary. That’s a pretty good description of a typical Hollywood clone. A real clone of you would be your twin, albeit a twin you don’t share a birthday with. Twins don’t push the same buttons; they don’t threaten a person’s sense of identity the way a Hollywood clone does. necessarily the technology itself. That distinction needs to be made clearer for the general public, which is partly what the book is about: fear of technology without understanding is usually either misplaced or impractical. You’re better oﬀ when you understand the situation before you react to it. Have you encountered the fear of biotechnology firsthand—say, at dinner parties, when you tell people about your line of work? KK: I don’t work with cloning on a daily basis, so I didn’t have to field many clone-related questions until after we wrote the book. However, my PhD research focused largely on stem cells, and even though I worked with adult stem cells from bone marrow and not the far more controversial embryonic type, I’ve still had to assuage a lot of fears and deconstruct a lot of misconceptions. Interestingly, the people who are most fearful of biotechnology are often simply misguided; their apprehensions are usually based on partial information or an overly partisan news excerpt. That being said, there are plenty of reasons to be afraid of the misuse of biotechnology, but not Your book tells us how to make clones and how to genetically modify lower life-forms. Don’t you worry about what some of us might do with this information? TDJ: When the Mythbusters are documenting a dangerous build, they’re careful to avoid showing the entire process. Our book is safer still—there are no instructions describing how to actually perform any genetic engineering. We leave that to the classrooms. How to Defeat Your Own Clone discusses how cloning and genetic engineering work, and to what ends they have been (and might one day be) applied. Making the simplest of these experiments happen will take years of dedicated study and meticulous research. A large lab filled with brilliant collaborators and expensive widgets also helps. Why do you think people are afraid of the concept of cloning? Is it all Hollywood’s fault? TDJ: If your clone looked like you, thought like you, had your memories, thought that they were as 14 imagine Sept/Oct 2010

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Imagine Magazine - Johns Hopkins - September/October 2010

Imagine Magazine - John Hopkins - September/October 2010
Contents
Big Questions
Big Picture
In My Own Words
Biotechnology is
A Survival Guide for the Biotech Revolution
The Indiana Jones of Biotech
Stemming the Monster
Transgenic Animals
Building a Better Hydrogel
Immortal Cells & Bioethics
Selected Opportunities & Resources
Nights at the Museum
One Step Ahead
Middle Ground
Off the Shelf
Word Wise
Exploring Career Options
Planning Ahead for College
Students Review
Creative Minds Imagine
Mark Your Calendar
Knossos Games

Imagine Magazine - Johns Hopkins - September/October 2010