The Long Road

05/24/2003 Archived Entry: "Send in the Clones"

In "Up the Long Ladder" of ST:TNG, there was an interesting society. Five spacemen (3 men, 2 women) had crash-landed on an uninhabited planet and decided to go one with their lives hoping but not expecting to be rescued. Instead of trying to let nature run its course, our stranded people took a more pragmatic approach to their social dilemma. They realized that they did not have diverse enough genetic material for a stable gene pool so they all vowed to never have sex with each other and build a community out of clones of themselves! A possible solution, but not very fun. Here is MY idea. Their solution is all about preserving their genes as they are, but mine involves creating a society that tries to have all possible combinations of the genes from the five original stranded astronauts represented.

Setup
We have 5 people, 3 men and 2 women. For the sake of scientific objectivity we'll name the men John, George, and Luc; the women Beth and Lucy. Our subjects are very intelligent (they are astronauts after all) but have no way to get off the planet and no immediate plans to. What our stranded specimens do have at their disposal; however, are cloning facilities that can reproduce a person using some of their genetic material. The episode shows full grown adults being made in a lab but doesn't address whether the clones come out with full motor control, understanding of language, etc. so I'll assume that clones can be reproduced as full grown adults with all the knowledge that their templates have (yaya, scientifically implausible but the show doesn't even address this as far as I can remember).

G1
For ease of reference, lets refer to our original 5 collectively as G1 (for generation 1). Initially, we create clones of the G1 people so that there are an equal number of men and women and that the cloned men are divided evenly by template amongst the women.

For example, we could create 150 clones of each woman and 100 clones of each man for a total of 600 clones. The 150 clones of Beth get 50 clones of each of the men and same goes for Lucy clones. Now we have 6 unique sets of 50 couples, making 300 couples.

G2
Lets label the children from each G1 pairing, G2. I think we can safely assume that children from identical couples will all be different since the odds of the same sperm cell from 2 cloned men impregnating the same zygote in 2 cloned women are astronomically small. Each G2 will be able to mate with G2s born from G1s that aren't their parents; G2s could also be mated with new G1-clones (or even the original G1s if they're into that kind of thing).

Let's say each of our 300 couples produce an average of 3 children giving us 900 unique children. A male G2 born from a John-Beth coupling could be mated with a Lucy-George or Lucy-Luc female offspring; he could also be coupled with a Lucy clone since he would share no genetic heritage with Lucy. Now we have 900 G2 people that we can begin cloning and we can still keep producing G1s.

G3
G3s have it a little bit harder. At this point, all G3s would share the same grandmothers (since there are only 2 female G1s). A G3 female can only be mated with the G1-male that is not her grandfather without mating with someone with whom she is genetically linked. However, it has been recently shown that the odds of genetic anomalies occurring in children born of first cousins is only about 1 percent higher than children born of unrelated couples, so G3s can be mated with other G3s with almost no problems as long as they don't share he same parents and have at least 3 unique grandparents combined.

Back to our example, a female grandchild of John-Beth and Lucy-George can be coupled with the 3rd G1 male - Luc - without intermingling genes. Their offspring would carry the genetic material of all five original G1s.

G4+
I don't know. It gets too complicated here. Every G4 and beyond will have at least 1 G1-ancestor in common. Remember that we're constantly producing G1, G2 and G3 clones and that those clones are constantly pumping out new babies. Let's say our scientists have been keeping tabs since the beginning of who is an offspring of whom and charted characteristics (physical and psychological) about everyone. After several generations and thousands of clones of each individual, our scientists will have a very clear genetic picture of almost everybody. With all this data they could easily pinpoint who is carrying certain unwanted recessive genes. With gene-knowledge in hand, these later generations would be mated with care so that unwanted genes could be breeded out of the gene pool. Eventually, we could have persons with all the desirable genetic qualities of the original five G1s and none of their weaknesses.

Musings

This would be quite a strange society!! Imagine the expectations of the 1000th clone of John. If all Johns are found to be great teachers, would all John clones not be at least somewhat expected to become teachers? How about marrying someone you know is genetically similar to you? I think these people wouldn't have a problem with it; they would be raised with a different set of values and outlook on such things. People who are found to produce 'damaged' offspring would be either not cloned or anymore, or simply not reproduce anymore and join the adopt-a-clone program.

FUN!

Does this make sense to anybody? I think its stopped making sense to me if it ever did.

Replies: 9 comments

man ... that was almost mind-bending ... way too much thinking for me for a saturday ... but an interesting theory nonetheless

but throughout this whole process, the g1's still aren't allowed to have sex?

how unfair is that!

Posted by melpie @ 05/24/2003 04:14 PM EST

Wow. You put a lot of thought into that. It would be a weird society. And yeah, that must suck for the G1's not being allowed to have sex!

Posted by Andrea @ 05/24/2003 04:39 PM EST

huh? where do i say that G1s can't have sex?

Posted by Rayne @ 05/24/2003 06:21 PM EST

They can have all the sex they want. They just aren't allowed to conceive children.

Posted by Romer @ 05/24/2003 08:31 PM EST

huh? where do i say that G1s can't have children?

Posted by Rayne @ 05/24/2003 08:54 PM EST

Here: "They realized that they did not have diverse enough genetic material for a stable gene pool so they all vowed to never have sex with each other and build a community out of clones of themselves!"

Posted by Andrea @ 05/24/2003 11:03 PM EST

My error, I do see what you mean, Thai. They can have sex and have children but if their children were to mate with each other, many genetic anomolies would turn up.

Posted by Romer @ 05/25/2003 02:49 AM EST

hmm..ok, in the show they didn't have sex or children. in my version everyone has sex!

ie:
"They realized that they did not have diverse enough genetic material for a stable gene pool so they all vowed to never have sex with each other and build a community out of clones of themselves!"
refers to the show.

Posted by Rayne @ 05/25/2003 03:36 AM EST

Ah. I get it now. My mistake.

Posted by Andrea @ 05/25/2003 01:14 PM EST