LIFESCIENCE: microbes

[PROFRICHAR@aol.com]

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ARS ELECTRONICA FESTIVAL 99
LIFESCIENCE
Linz, Austria, September 04 - 09
http://www.aec.at/lifescience
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Spectacular media reports featuring pictures of mutants such as the
oncomouse give rise to the suspicion that genetic engineering merely
nurtures abstruse male dreams of omnipotence and reproduction, such as
those of Mr. Al-Fayed, the owner of the London department store Harrods,
who, according to the May 15, 1999 *Frankfurter Rundschau,* announced that
he wanted to have 100 clones of himself produced. Identical clones
presumably will eternally perpetuate one's power and the work one has begun.
If these fantasies would come true, then it would mean that cloning would
lead to the generation of life on the primitive level of identical cellular
reproduction of bacteria and microbes. The dream of the perfectly cloned
copy produced in an uncompromising process of selection that surpasses
natural methods and represents a perfection of mediocrity has been detected
by Baudrillard (see Baudrillard 1994). Evolutionary changes that are
brought about through modification due to sexual reproduction would then
disappear.
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