CHAPTER 10

Nature, Nurture, and
Clonal Identity

I don’t know about you, dear reader, but in watching Orphan Black, most of the time I believe that I am watching different actresses, not the same woman in different hairstyles, clothes, and accents. And even though I knew it was coming, I was still shocked when the bearded, transgender clone Tony appeared at the start of episode eight of season two, a real tour de force of makeup and acting. That one brilliant actress could play so many different roles so well is a testament to Tatiana Maslany’s acting, to be sure, but also an illustration of the power of small, theoretically cosmetic changes—a “play within a play,” if you will, about nature and nurture. That one woman, with help, could make the same body at the same age seem so different in so many contrasting ways gives us insight into what much larger forces, such as families, countries, and institutions, could accomplish in shaping the same “material.”

By having many babies originated by cloning from the same ancestor, gestated by different women, and raised in different places, Orphan Black dramatically shows us the difference such changes can make in the way that DNA is expressed. The cloned Leda women are not identical multiples of the same ancestor, but rather “variations under nature.”

NATURE VERSUS NURTURE AND IDENTICAL TWINS

In the last chapter we touched on whether a great historical figure would, if cloned, be great again, and determined that there were no guarantees. Just because a person’s genotype— their DNA—is identical to some past individual’s does not mean his or her phenotype—the result of DNA’s interaction with its environment—will be. But we don’t have to clone someone in a lab to prove that. We know for sure this is not true because we have studied nature’s clones—identical twins.

Studies of identical twins are the mother lode for determining exactly how much genetics influences adult character. And identical twins who were separated at birth are the most valuable of all in untying the famous nature-nurture knot, because the same genotype is raised under sometimes radically different environments.

Given that the orphans of Project Leda and Project Castor are, effectively, later twins of their ancestor, Kendall Malone, and are one another’s genetically identical siblings, what do studies of twins reveal about how such people might be the same, or different, as adults? Which is more important to their development, genes (nature) or upbringing (nurture)?

Whether nature or nurture affects a person’s adult character more is a long-standing debate in academia. The battle is ancient and pits giants against each other. Whole institutions and whole fields of study have staked out territory on both sides. On one side, and in fashion today, is genetic essentialism, the “Genes ‘R’ Us” view that the genes we inherit inevitably shape the people we become. On the other side is the view, whose popularity peaked in the 1970s, that external factors shape us far more than genes—that reinforcement and socialization, family and culture, matter more to who we become than biology.

Politically, a lot hangs in the balance here. Liberals and egalitarians believe, or hope, that biological inequalities (along, of course, with social inequalities) can be mitigated, if not eradicated, by education. Hence programs like the one we discussed last chapter, Head Start, and the establishment of universal, free, public K-12 education. On the other hand, conservatives believe that human nature is set and can only be guided by education, not overturned.

What does the science say?

WHAT TWIN STUDIES TELL US

Some studies of identical twins separated at birth and later reunited reveal stunning results. The Springer twins were adopted at birth in Ohio by different families and both families were never told, like the orphans of Project Leda, that their child had a living twin. When the two met as thirty-nine-year-old adults, they found that both had been named Jim; married and divorced a woman named Linda, then married a woman named Betty; had a dog named Toy; liked Miller Lite and smoked Salem cigarettes; and weighed 180 pounds and stood six feet tall. Both liked carpentry and mechanical drawing and spending time with their families at the same beach in Florida.

This sort of eerie similarity isn’t the norm, however. The most widely known scientific project regarding twins is the Minnesota Twin Family Study, started in 1989, which follows over eight thousand identical twins born in Minnesota between 1936 and 1955 and between 1961 and 1964, plus five hundred eleven-year-old twin pairs, born in 1989, who were added to the study in 2000. (Chances are that it is no accident that sestra Cosima is, when we meet her, a graduate student at the University of Minnesota. Perhaps this university’s noted Center for Twin Studies will be used in future seasons of the show.) Most of these twins were raised together, but some were raised apart.

In summarizing the findings of the study in 1990, head researcher Thomas Bouchard looked at the likelihood that two identical twins would be alike as adults, and whether it mattered if they were raised apart or together. Researchers studied similarities in patterns of marriage and divorce, academic ability, personality, substance abuse, leadership, and personal interests. Amazingly, the research showed that twins had a 50 percent chance of being alike as adults, even when raised apart and growing up in different cities with different families. Bouchard concluded that similarities between identical twins were mainly of genetic, not environmental, origin.

ETHICAL ISSUES IN TWIN STUDIES

Twin studies do have a significant limitation: Like all studies on human beings, they are subject to the limitations imposed by ethical standards of research, especially studies of vulnerable human beings such as children. As such, we can only observe (if allowed to, with consent of their parents) what happens to twins in the haphazard conditions in which they grow up.

To provide the clearest, most scientifically significant results, an ideal (but unethical) study would need to be carefully designed from the beginning so that identical siblings would be separated at birth and each raised apart under controlled conditions, in which none were told the truth. Fortunately, no institutional review board would ever approve such a lifelong experiment, partly because, for many people, being deprived of a twin would seem like a harm.

Nevertheless, if you consider the value of the information twin studies can offer, you can understand why some scientists would be tempted to circumvent the rules. One experiment involving children, which followed many abandoned orphans in Romania after the fall of the dictator Nicolae Ceauşescu, raised profound moral questions because scientists obtained foster parents for some orphans but left most behind as controls. Although this “study in nature” did not itself harm the orphans left behind, critics felt the visiting scientists could have done more for them.

ARE THE LEDAS AND CASTORS A NEW MINNESOTA TWINS STUDY?

The value identical twins separated at birth offer to scientists would be multiplied many times over by larger groups of identical siblings—like a set of clones. In fact, we could say it would be priceless, a psychological master key that might answer, once and for all, the question of whether genes, or family and culture, contribute more to who we are. A group, say, of eight clones of the same ancestor, gestated by different women and raised in different countries by different families, would provide an incredible base to describe how varying uterine environments, kinds of families (or the absence thereof, in Helena’s case), and cultures influence the expression of the underlying genes.

Surely this is one reason that Dyad and Topside employ monitors and keep such a close eye on each of the Ledas. For psychologists studying development, such studies would be immensely fruitful. And for evolutionary biologists and neuroscientists debating the nature-nurture question, such a study might answer some questions once and for all.

No wonder everyone is so interested in the Ledas!