The 20 Million-Year-Old Man

Several years ago the Voyager probes were launched into deep space.  On each of these probes was placed a gold record which contained information about humanity for the benefit of any intelligent life which might stumble across it.  I have often wondered what might happen if we went a step further.  What if rather than merely sending information, we send an actual DNA sample of a human being, say a strand of hair or something, with instructions on how to clone a human being from this sample.  I wasn't too surprised to find that this idea had been anticipated to some degree and that plans were already underway to send DNA into space, most notably Stephen Hawking's.  But the possibilities are at once amazing and horrifying at the same time, and I was surprised that there wasn't a little more controversy over this.  There's a certain moral grey area here.  Millions of years from now a human being created from such a sample could walk the surface of an alien planet and make contact with intelligent, extraterrestrial life, but it's hard to say whether this possibility would be worth some of the potential moral problems involved.  I want take a moment to consider some of these problems.    

First, of course, there's the whole issue of cloning itself.  At a quick glance, it might seem that the issue is irrelevant, since it would be the hypothetical aliens who would or would not do the cloning.  We're just talking about sending a tiny piece of ourselves into space.  But what is the real issue with cloning?  When you put aside people's suspicion and superstition on the subject, you're left with the basic matter of human rights.  There's the old argument of growing human beings solely to harvest their organs, and so on.  Many of these arguments are based on a gross ignorance of genetics, nevertheless the issue is a legitimate one.  If unlimited copies of a person could be created in a lab, at what point does their value as unique human beings become undermined?  And so, if we're talking about sending a sample of DNA into space with the potential that a human being could be cloned from that sample, don't we have to consider the implications of the life that we would be consigning such a person to.  I guarantee you, if we were talking about sending fertilized embryos into space that could somehow be preserved for millions of years, someone out there would be writing a letter.  And rightly so.  You might say that a strand of hair is miles apart from a frozen embryo,  but when the potential exists that a human being could be created from either one, is there really a fundamental difference in this case?

So that brings us to the next issue: What sort of life would we be consigning such a person to?  It's hard to fathom what it would be like being born on an alien world, having no idea who or what you are and finding out that the species you descend from most likely long since vanished into dust.  In some sense, I suppose, it would be like a cosmic variation on the old legend of the boy raised by wolves.  He would identify with the aliens that raised him.  He would learn their language and follow their ways and generally consider himself one of them.  But there would still be that loneliness that would come from being the only one of his kind.  Maybe we could send two samples, one male and one female.  We can only hope that they'd get along, and that there aren't any snakes or apple trees nearby.

But even that is really just considering the best possible scenario.  We really don't know what the hypothetical aliens would be like, or what kind of intergalactic foster parents they would be.  Maybe they would display their newly grown human in some sort of space zoo.  Or maybe they would use the sample to pump out hundreds of Stephen Hawkings, assembly line style, to be used as slave labor.  I just hope they realize that those don't come with a warranty agreement.  

From all of this it might sound like I'm against the idea of sending DNA into space, but really I'm just pointing out some things that ought to be considered.  I don't think that shooting our fingernail clippings out into space should be taken lightly.  I think we should be aware of the gravity of what we're doing.  However, I guess I support the idea.  I have some reservations about it, obviously, but the idea is just a little too compelling for me to completely dismiss it.  The possibility of preserving humanity for millions of years beyond its shelf life here on Earth is definitely a big argument in its favor.  Add to that the possibility of a human being standing face to face with intelligent life from another planet.  Sure it would be a human being that knew nothing of Earth or where it came from, but it would still be one of us with a toothbrush and an encyclopedia of human history packed for it as we send it off into the great unknown.