Human Cloning in the Arts

Artists

Geneticist and artist Hunter O’Reilly paints biological themes. She created an exhibit entitled Radioactive Biohazard, which reinterprets science as art by examining biotechnology from a positive perspective. In this specific exhibit, O'Reilly confronts issues related to human cloning, stem cell research and the human genome project, among others. This and other O’Reilly work is available at http://www.artbyhunter.com.

There is an online display, adapted from the exhibition Multiplicity: 24 artists look at cloning that features the work of 24 artists at Central Saint Martin’s College of Art, London, who collectively call themselves frIendly fIre. It is available at http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/en/old/MISexhTWOmul.html.

Novels that deal with cloning

James BeauSeigneur
In His Image: Book One of the Christ Clone Trilogy
(Warner Books, 2003)
A mix of fact and fiction, this book tells the story of Christopher, a baby cloned from cells stuck to the Shroud of Turin.

James BeauSeigneur
Birth of an Age: Book Two of the Christ Clone Trilogy
(Warner Books, 2004)
The coming of a new era, promised by Christopher Goodman (a man cloned from DNA on the burial shroud of Jesus Christ), seems highly unlikely as humankind experiences unparalleled pain and suffering in this second of three books taking place in the end times.

James BeauSeigneur
Acts of God: Book Three of The Christ Clone Trilogy
(Warner Books, 2004)
In the conclusion to the Christ Clone Trilogy, miracles are happening and and the world as we know it is completely changing.

David Brin
Glory Season
(Bantam Books: New York, 1993)
Set in a world where almost everyone reproduces through cloning, this book traces the life of a "variant" born through sexual reproduction

Mark Garon
The Sacred Helix: Do We Dare Do the Unthinkable?
(Writers Club Press, 2000)
This book tells the story of a top-secret governmental cloning project that extracts DNA from the Shroud of Turin and clones Jesus Christ.

Kathleen Ann Goonan
The Bones of Time
(Harper Collins, 1999)
This ambitious 1996 novel takes place in 2034 and focuses on the attempt to re-create genius for the benefit of humanity.

J.R. Lankford
The Jesus Thief
(Great Read Books, 2003)
This book chronicles an attempt to clone Jesus using DNA stolen from the Shroud of Turin (believed by many to be the burial shroud of Jesus Christ).

Ira Levin
The Boys From Brazil
(Dell, 1977)
This novel is about a scheme to clone Hitler.

William Patrick
Spirals
(Houghton Mifflin, 1983)
A researcher in a commercial gene lab must confront the work he is doing when his daughter falls ill. This book carefully weaves in questions throughout the book about the impact of cloning on others.

Peter Senese and Robert Geis
Cloning Christ: A Challenge of Science and Faith
(Orion Publishing & Media, 2003)
A genetic scientist discovers what is believed to be the cross that Jesus was crucified upon and confronts the effect that cloning Jesus will have upon modern-day religion.

Daniel Steele
The Klone and I
(Random House, 1998)
The heroine in this romance novel is a divorced woman who falls for a clone.

Movies that deal with cloning

Godsend
After their eight-year-old son dies, a married couple allows a shady geneticist to clone the boy, but the new child begins to exhibit strange behavior.

Johnny 2.0
The protagonist wakes up in a hospital only to learn that he is a clone and he only has one week to live due to a flaw in the cloning technique. He must find his original because his original has developed a software program that corrects the flaw.

Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones
Ten years after Episode I, Padm1 Amidala, now a senator, resists the creation of a Republic Army to combat an evil separatist movement.

American Ninja 2
A drug dealer is kidnapping Marines on an unknown tropical island in order to genetically engineer “super ninjas,” and the American Ninja is dispatched to control the situation.

Alien Resurrection
Scientists on a space colony have cloned both an alien and Ripley (Sigourney Weaver), who died in Alien 3; the scientists, however, have accidentally mixed alien DNA with Ripley's human chromosomes.

The Clonus Horror
A man tries to break out of a high security government research facility. He has learned that the government is freezing people so that their body parts can be used to make clones of them.

The Fifth Element
This film posits the question: What if an opposite form of life existed in another dimension — one that is an embodiment of all that is evil? Scientists recreate the whole body of an alien from just the remains of a hand

Jurassic Park/The Lost World
Two films that introduce the reality of cloning and illustrate the chaos theory in typical Hollywood fashion. Yet they raise the question of how to “control” what has been created.

The Boys from Brazil
Violence and greed rule the minds that tap into the scientific world of cloning. An attempt to bring to life a clone of Hitler is diabolically played out.

Additional movies that touch on cloning or use it as a plot point to further the story include: Multiplicity with Michael Keaton and Andi MacDowell,Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Blade Runner, and Judge Dredd.

Television shows from the X-Files “All about Eve” episode to the soap opera Guiding Light have featured clones.

Cartoons that deal with cloning

Cartoons about human cloning are located at http://cagle.slate.msn.com/news/cloning/4.asp and also at http://www.pritchettcartoons.com/clone.htm.

More Biotechnology in the Arts

Gene Patents in the Arts
Genetic Discriminiation in the Arts
Germline Intervention in the Arts
Nanotechnology in the Arts