I am an identical triplet (my two sisters and I are genetically identical because we come from one egg which split into three). Since reading the 'human clone' topic on another board I've thought of myself for the first time as part of a minority group. Multiple births aren't discriminated against, but we are definitely stereotyped. Like twins always dress the same right? And I am always feeling like I have to assert my status as an individual, something that nobody who isn't a multiple birth has to do. This led me to wonder, does anybody who isn't a multiple birth understand what it's like? When people look at me do they only see my similarity to my sisters or the differences? I know those that know me well know my individuality, but first impressions are always worrying for me.

DOES being genetically identical to another human being, a natural clone, deny me so much of an individual status? Referring to myself as a clone makes me feel uncomfortable but it has to be faced up to because it's exactly what I am. And because cloning has come up in the media lately I've been thinking about it more. This baby clone which they've allegedly created people seem to think of as alien. In fact they're nothing more than their mother's twin, although if it's true they may have aging abnormalities like Dolly the sheep. On the human clone board the subject came up of using human clones in war because that way 'no-one would get hurt'. This creates a lot of paranoid feelings in me. Am I seen as nothing more than a photocopied human, am I expendable because I have two sisters so like me? No, of course I'm not, but it makes me scared to think that anyone might see a clone that way. Would artificially creating human clones be an excuse to treat them as less than human, or conduct experiments like the Nazis conducted on Jewish twins in the holocaust? null

It is easy to forget that cloning is nothing more or less than twinning, and that in fact 'clones' have been around forever. Please don't forget that we are human too and purely ourselves, not a copy.

Bex

I tried to post a link about the Nazi experiments but it didn't work: http://www.modcult.brown.edu/students/angell/mengele.html