As the science of genetics presses on, its potentially humanity-changing implications trickle down through pop culture. At the same time I was thinking about how Captain America’s super-soldier serum works, Chinese scientists announced that they had edited the first human embryos using the very same techniques. Such steps forward show us how far we’ve come since Mendel and his pea plants. Today, we have all the science we need to make a show like Orphan Black a reality.
In the video above from It’s Okay to Be Smart, biologist Joe Hanson explains everything that we know about cloning so far, and how far we could run with it. In short, we know enough about manipulating human genes that the next obstacles to overcome will likely be ethical, not scientific, ones.