Having woke myself up on the middle of the night with a coughing fit (the cold is on its way out now, we're into the "annoying" stage but as of 2 a.m. completely drug-free and not drowning in green slime), I lay there staring up at my ceiling and cast about for something to think about. Since it was the middle of the night and generally the higher intellectual capacities of my brain are not fully engaged until after my first Diet Coke in the morning, one shouldn't be surprised that my brain insisted on thinking about the upcoming movie "The Island". Actually not precisely the movie itself but altogether delightful prospect of Ewan McGregor in skin-tight white spandex.

Ahem. Yes. Well. There's a point to this. Trust me.

The premise of "The Island" revolves around the issue of cloning. Specifically, the people living in hopes of being chosen to go to the "Island" of the title are clones who have been produced for purposes of organ harvesting. Only they don't know it.

So then I'm laying there thinking two things: Ewan in spandex, and the various moral and ethical dilemmas involved in cloning. Most women I guess would be entirely content to devote all their half-asleep brainpower at 4 in the morning to any thoughts of Ewan at all, much less the idea of Ewan in spandex. He is, after all, a fine specimen of humanity. But being myself, the higher intellectual capacities soon overpowered the baser instincts, zip-tied their hands together, and tossed them in a small dark room where they could ponder such thoughts without interrupting the ethical speculations proceeding apace elsewhere.

It seems to me that the same people who go on and on about the evils of cloning generally have no problems with people (or themselves) donating organs after death. This is generally seen as an admirable thing.

To produce a clone for purposes of organ harvesting is, on the other hand, seen as darkest blasphemy and completely evil. Creating life simply for spare parts?

Say somebody is in a horrible car wreck and arrives at the hospital brain-dead. No brain activity, possibly unrepairable brain damage, this person will never recover or wake up. The body is working, but the brain is gone. This person has previously indicated they wish to donate their organs. The doctors go to it, and the family is of course in grief but in some small way happy that their death will be able to save the lives of many others.

What if, in the future, the scientists are able to produce a clone that from the start has no brain? They modify the egg cell prior to the cloning procedure to cut out the gene sequences that produce the higher brain parts, leaving only the parts that account for running the body. They grow the clone -- but it never has a brain. It is never self-aware. It is simply a living machine fit only for growing replacement organs and tissue.

One wonders if those who fear cloning would approve of that kind of procedure.

What, if any, is the difference between a person rendered brain-dead from accident or mischance and a clone produced without the capacity for consciousness?

This is not an idle question. We've sequenced the genome. Someday this kind of procedure will be possible.

If those who fear cloning find this kind of procedure acceptable, then what exactly is it they're trying to protect? Obviously not "life" -- the brainless clone would be alive, breathing and with a beating heart, accepting sustenance and theoretically capable of reproduction. A "soul"? If they can accept a brainless clone, then that would imply they believe the "soul" to reside in the brain, since elsewise all other aspects are equal. If a "soul" resides in the brain, where is it? In what part, what region? If there is no part of the brain that can be pointed to as the place of the soul, then where is it? If you can't point to a soul, then aren't we all just biological machines?

If there is no soul, then all we are is spare parts anyway.

Yet I suspect people would regard such things -- brainless clones -- as yet more scientific horror. Even though it's considered a noble thing to donate one's organs after death. Is it better to make a conscious, informed decision to do such, or to produce a clone that never need make that decision?

Though I must say, if you're going to produce a clone of anybody, Ewan McGregor is right up there on my list. With or without the white spandex. Heh.