The Samsara Project - David Burgess (early reader books .txt) 📗

nine eleven attacks the American and UK governments, behind closed doors, freely admitted that the terrorists had the upper hand and that they would do so for the foreseeable future. It was also agreed that whatever steps were taken, however much money was spent on manpower and resources that a small but determined group would be able to launch a successful attack on America or the UK. Obvious security measures at airports and other ports of entry would deter a large number of potential threats but all agreed that it did not matter how many of those threats were stopped only one had to succeed. A ninety nine point nine percent success rate was not good enough. The governments also knew that the point one percent would happen sometime, any time. They had to be prepared.
It was at one of these meetings that Samsāra Project was agreed. As you said earlier John, we normally think of ourselves as coming into being when we are born and as perishing when we die. According to Hinduism, however, this current life is merely one link in a chain of lives that extends far into the past and projects far into the future. This process, the chain of births and deaths is called Samsāra. The chain of births lets us resume our pursuits in accordance with the actions performed and the dispositions acquired in the past.
In short Samsāra is from the Hindu religion and means re-birth, or in Western terms, a very advanced cloning technique. Up until nine eleven no one really took that much notice of cloning. Governments were aware that it was being researched into but did not expect any great result from it. Nor could they see any potential benefit to be gained from it. What they could see though was huge problems, ethical and religious problems that would come about if this researched ever did produce viable results. In essence it became a watch and see exercise. After all you never know when something unexpectedly useful might come along. What came along though was nine eleven and that changed everything.
The first major cloning success was Dolly the sheep in nineteen ninety seven, and although this was only a limited success it was the first time that an exact copy or clone had been produced. You have to make a difference here. Dolly was not conceived in any conventional way she was genetically engineered from start to finish. There was no male or female involvement in this conception or birth. The whole process was controlled by scientists in a lab. This was a first; it made headlines all over the world, at least for a few days. Now, except for the odd quiz question Dolly the sheep is never mentioned, in fact if you think about it the whole cloning debate has been very quiet. That is not a coincidence.
Dolly asked more questions of scientists that she answered, in some ways she was a great success, in others a massive failure. The biggest problem that had to be overcome was the time scale. Cloned animals also start their existence a baby and then grow up as any normal creature would. They may look identical to the original but they are not. Despite what Hitler’s followers thought, it is impossible to recreate an exact duplicate of every second of someone’s upbringing and create an identical person. We are not called individuals for nothing. Can you imagine the Nazi party’s horror in finding their cloned leader was actually a peace loving man who believed in world harmony, cultural and racial integration? Something better was needed and as with most of the world’s greatest discoveries it came about by accident.
Believe me it is no coincidence that stem cell research, DNA research, growth hormones, steroid development etc have all received massive increase in funding. All the major drug companies immediately received a fivefold increase in federal funding and this increased at a rate of twelve percent per year. Four years ago and twelve months before the London bombings the first tentative breakthrough happened. One company was working on three projects overseen by three departments. All projects were compartmentalised so no one area knew what another area was working on. By a quirk of fate that no one could predict the facility suffered a massive fire. The fire was even on a Sunday when staffing was nonexistent and even the local fire department was on low occupancy. The result was a chronic shortage of space. The solution, the three projects had to share lab space, after all they could not stop work on any of them, government funding required results or at least the promise of results. Let‘s not forget the greed of the American corporate body. When it comes to profits against secrecy it is very rare that secrecy wins. In this case though and without knowing it they did the right thing, when people work together they talk, three unknown projects now working in the same vicinity to each other, all working towards the same goal. I can just imagine it was something like;
“Hey guys, let’s have a meeting and sort this out.”
However it came about, the meeting happened, ideas were discussed, exchanged, debated, ripped apart, refined and the best tried.
Over the past two years what came out of those meeting have advanced medical science at least two hundred years. So, do you want the long scientific explanation or the shorter layman’s one?”
“The laymen’s version please,” replied John. DCS Hughes nodded in agreement. Both men had a thousand questions they wanted to ask but neither wanted to interrupt Peter as he continued.
“The building block of life is DNA but this is not really correct. DNA is the blueprint, the plan of how everything is to be put together, what goes where, when and how. Stem cells on the other hand are the bricks and mortar. You see stem cells have the amazing potential to develop into many different kinds of cells. If you like they are the body’s mechanics; they use the bloodstream as a road network to get from one part of the body to another. Stem cells have the ability to divide as many times as required in order to get the job done. When a stem cell divides it has the ability to remain as a stem cell or become another type of cell with a more specialised job such as a muscle, blood or brain cell. Also there’s no going back for spares with them, they bring everything they need all neatly packaged. The only requirement that is the person needing repair is still alive. Stem cells don’t do dead people, or at least that is what is generally accepted. Researchers here discovered a way to re animate stem cells not just in a dead person but from a tissue or blood sample.
That was the first breakthrough, the second involves DNA. Have you any idea when DNA was discovered?”
“Probably within the last twenty to thirty years I would think,” replied John. DCS Hughes shrugged.
“That’s what most people think, and they only think that because DNA is now used by law enforcement as a way to identify suspects. In fact DNA was discovered by Friedrich Miescher, a Swiss physician in eighteen sixty nine. Scientists have been working on the mystery of DNA ever since but it wasn’t until nineteen fifty three that Watson and Crick suggested what is now accepted as the first accurate DNA model, in fact in nineteen sixty two they won the Nobel Prize for their work.
DNA is a nucleic acid that contains the instructions and functioning of all known living organisms. Simply it is a set of blueprints to construct components such as cells, proteins and molecules. In order for an organism to grow, cells have to divide, but when a cell divides the DNA must also be replicated. Now despite all the research carried out on DNA we only understand about ten to twenty percent of it. The rest is known as Junk DNA, it is a kind of catch all term for the DNA portions that has no identifiable function. Our scientists though have identified at least ten percent of this junk and when doing so they discovered something that no one expected. DNA has memory, it remembers everything. DNA is the body’s hard drive and it forgets nothing. This memory is not just colour of hair, eyes, height weight etc. but all our memories, thoughts, feelings, beliefs, everything. DNA structures determine not only what makes a human a human and a cat a cat but what makes a human an individual, what separates one person from another.
The third research project was about cloning. Human cloning is a very complex issue not just scientifically but morally and governments around the world have spent countless hours debating the issue, in general though human cloning research has been legally possible since nineteen ninety seven. The cloning technique is now very well known. First you need a donor cell which has the original DNA extracted and discarded. Next you add the nucleus from the desired animal to be cloned then implant the combined cell into the animal that the donor cell came from, the result, one cloned animal.
There were a lot of problems and failures to start with, in fact outside of this facility there still are. Only two percent of all attempts at cloning resulted in success, that’s a massive failure rate and one that for our purposes would be unacceptable. Also time, it takes the normal amount of time for a cloned animal to develop, in the case of a human that would be nine months, and then it has to grow and develop, again a time scale unacceptable for our use. Are you still with me?
“I think so,” replied DCS Hughes.
“I’m fine,” replied John.
“OK then,” continued Peter, “back to the junk DNA, a breakthrough discovery was made within the junk DNA that makes what we do possible, DNA has a time code built in. This is the code that determines how long our natural life will be, and that is different for all of us. We all talk about our ‘body clock’ and without realising it we have all been right. We do have a body or doomsday clock built in and even we cannot do anything about when it will go off. Like any clock though it can be moved forward in time, not back though just forward and we now know how to move it forward at a very fast rate and to an exact time within its pre set life span. Put everything together and we have the knowledge and ability to produce a cloned individual from nothing more than a blood sample. We have developed an artificial womb and this will keep and nourish the cloned individual until they have reached their programmed age.”
DCS Hughes interrupted, “How long does this procedure take?”
“Over the years we have refined the process; it now takes an average of six days from conception to completion.”
“I suppose that on the seventh day you rest.” John quipped.
Peter smiled. “We’re not playing God here; we’re simply ensuring that people have the ability to live out their natural lives as they are supposed to. This is an above top secret government funded project. They pay the bill they decide what to do with the end results.
All the government leaders of the western world are aware of this project; others are part of it without knowing it; such as top cabinet ministers and fringe members of the Royal Family. Every week they all give a small blood sample. They think it is to monitor their cholesterol levels. We tell them they have to have the checks and no one argues. The blood is then kept