My story today is on how a previously undisclosed internal ACLU paper drew on science fiction to anticipate potential future threats to civil liberties and ultimately led to the group's most successful science-based lawsuit over the patenting of two genes that had been linked to breast cancer. [Warning: If you haven't seen Moon yet, and you plan to, stop reading.]
A few months ago I watched Moon, a 2009 indie science-fiction film, with a friend who works on public relations for the American Civil Liberties Union. The movie centers on Sam Bell, a solitary laborer who spends his days extracting helium from moon rocks and drawing comfort from correspondence with his pregnant wife on Earth. That is, until he discovers he's actually one of a series of short-lived and expendable human clones bred for the dangerous, repetitive work of moon mining. After Bell outsmarts the automated systems and escapes on a vessel bound for Earth, a tangle of audio broadcasts lets us know that the mining company's stock is crashing due to charges of crimes against humanity.
As the credits rolled, my friend said to me, "I'd like to think that when that guy got to Earth, the ACLU would have taken his case."
The idea of the ACLU battling a private corporation over whether clones are human beings or pieces of property may seem far-fetched. But almost a decade ago, the organization started thinking about how to do it.
It's true, though, right? After defending suspected terror detainees imprisoned at Guantanamo, what's defending a human being who just happens to be a clone? This piece sort of hit a sweet spot for me, what with the convergence of civil liberties and science fiction.
