Perfect Copy

Cloning is some of the most exciting science and one of the most keenly fought moral debates of our time. Perfect Copy is a uniquely accessible exploration this most vexed and pressing issue. In 1997 Ian Wilmut and his team announced that they had done what many thought to be impossible. They had cloned a mammal from an adult cell. This breakthrough prompted immediate calls for the new technology of mammalian cloning to be used on humans. Italian fertility specialist Severino Antinori hopes to use cloning 'within two years' to give 200 infertile couples the opportunity to at last become parents. Cloning may also solve, once and for all, the problem of rejection that bedevils transplant surgery. Perhaps it even holds the promise of eternal life. But plans to clone humans have triggered a storm of protest. Scientists including Wilmut, politicians from left and right, and theologians from almost all religions find the idea abhorrent. We cannot possibly decide who is right in this debate unless we have a good understanding of what a human clone is and how one would be created. Nicholas Agar unravels the science - and the ethics - of cloning and begins to show how we should approach this fantastically problematic area.

Elm Howells has a loving family and a distinguished career at an elite Manhattan art auction house. But after a tragic loss throws her into an emotional crisis, she pursues a reckless course of action that jeopardizes her personal and professional success. Meanwhile, talented artist Gabriel Connois wearies of remaining at the margins of the capricious Parisian art scene. Desperate for recognition, he embarks on a scheme that threatens his burgeoning reputation. As these narratives converge, with disastrous consequences, A Nearly Perfect Copy boldly challenges our presumptions about originality and authenticity, loss and replacement, and the perilous pursuit of perfection.

Analyzing the way that recent works of graphic narrative use the comics form to engage with the “problem” of reproduction, Shiamin Kwa’s Perfect Copies reminds us that the mode of production and the manner in which we perceive comics are often quite similar to the stories they tell. Perfect Copies considers the dual notions of reproduction, mechanical as well as biological, and explores how comics are works of reproduction that embed questions about the nature of reproduction itself. Through close readings of the comics My Favorite Thing Is Monsters by Emil Ferris, The Black Project by Gareth Brookes, The Generous Bosom series by Conor Stechschulte, Sabrina by Nick Drnaso, and Panther by Brecht Evens, Perfect Copies shows how these comics makers push the limits of different ideas of “reproduction” in strikingly different ways. Kwa suggests that reading and thinking about books like these, that push us to engage with these complicated questions, teaches us how to become better readers.

Richly drawn and sharply observed, A Nearly Perfect Copy is a smart and affecting novel of family and forgery set amidst the rarefied international art world. Elm Howells has a loving family and a distinguished career at an elite Manhattan auction house. But after a tragic loss throws her into an emotional crisis, she pursues a reckless course of action that jeopardizes her personal and professional success. Meanwhile, talented artist Gabriel Connois wearies of remaining at the margins of the capricious Parisian art scene, and, desperate for recognition, he embarks on a scheme that threatens his burgeoning reputation. As these narratives converge, with disastrous consequences, A Nearly Perfect Copy boldly challenges our presumptions about originality and authenticity, loss and replacement, and the perilous pursuit of perfection.

This book outlines the consequences of digitization for peer-reviewed research articles published in electronic journals. It is argued that digitization will revolutionize scientific communication. However, this study shows that this is not the case where scientific journals are concerned. Authors make little use of the possibilities offered by the digital medium; electronic peer review procedures have not replaced traditional ones, and users have not embraced new forms of interaction offered by some electronic journals.

Reproduction of the original: Prices of Books by Henry B. Wheatley