Bokanovsky's Process

Bokanovsky's Process is a fictional process of human cloning depicted in Aldous Huxley's 1932 novel Brave New World. The process is described as being applied to fertilized human eggs in vitro, causing them to split into identical genetic copies of the original. The process can be repeated several times, though the maximum number of viable embryos possible is 96, with 72 being a "good average".[1]

Details

The process is described in the first chapter of the book. Humanity is divided into five social classes in the novel; the process is not applied to embryos of the elite Alpha and Beta classes, but is reserved for the Gamma, Delta, and Epsilon classes.[2]

One egg, one embryo, one adult – normality. But a bokanovskified egg will bud, will proliferate, will divide. From eight to ninety-six buds, and every bud will grow into a perfectly formed embryo, and every embryo into a full-sized adult. Making ninety-six human beings grow where only one grew before. Progress.[2]

In the highly controlled social world, the ability for the government to control the number of humans is important, as is the ability to control the function of those humans.[3] Bokanovsky's Process, combined with Podsnap's Technique for speeding up the maturation of unfertilized eggs from an ovary, is used to produce massive numbers of a genetic group: "Fertilize and bokanovskify ... and you get an average of nearly eleven thousand brothers and sisters in a hundred and fifty batches of identical twins, all within two years of the same age."[4]

It is thought that Huxley named the process in reference to Maurice Bokanowski, a bureaucrat who believed strongly in the idea of governmental and social efficiency.[5]

gollark: Oh, it found 4715 domains now somehow.
gollark: The crawler somehow got to "download.savannah.gnu.org".
gollark: I'm very confused about where many of these domains the thing found are coming from.
gollark: "GOODNIGHT"™.
gollark: 🐝, almost 300 domains?

References
  1. Huxley, Aldous; "Brave New World and Brave New World Revisited"; p. 19; HarperPerennial, 2005.
  2. Huxley, p. 17.
  3. Huxley, p. 18.
  4. Huxley, p. 19.
  5. http://www.shmoop.com/brave-new-world/allusions.html

Bibliography
  • Bokanovsky's Process "The principle of mass production, at last, applied to biology." Lecture 19, History 135E, (Instructor: Dr. Barbara J. Becker), Spinning the Web of Ingenuity, An Introduction to the History of Technology, Winter Quarter, 2004, Department of History, University of California, Irvine
  • Bokanovsky's Process, A very early description of cloning, Technovelgy.com
  • Cloning in Brave New World, 123helpme.com
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.