Page 1 of 1

"A Number"

Posted: Fri Jan 24, 2014 9:42 pm
by Dave (imported)
When Salter's son, Bernard #2, is told that he's a result of a cloning experiment, he finds out that he's one of an unknown number of human clones. He confronts his father and demands an explanation. Why was he created? Is he an original or a copy?

Not to give two much away -- the first act is the Father (Tom Wilkinson) telling his second son that he is a clone and his reaction. The Second act is the appearance of Bernard #1 the original, and the third act is where we learn more.

The play was written at the height of the cloned sheep story -- DOLLY.

It stars Rhys Ifans and Tom Wilkins. Yes, there are only two actors.

I saw this onstage and noticed the movie when I was looking through HBO late one night. Onstage it was one act and torturous to determine what the hell was happening. It is only 77 minutes and moves so fast. It is a tour-de-force of emotion.

A few years ago, the BBC and HBO filmed it. The play is by Caryl Churchill and she did the screenplay.

Re: "A Number"

Posted: Sun Jan 26, 2014 8:58 pm
by A-1 (imported)
Call in the CLONES...

This whole 'cloning' idea reminds me of a Nazi experiment gone bad. IT is not nice to fuck with mother nature.:-|

The first clone movie/play I saw was "The Boys From Brazil" starring Gregory Peck as Hermann Mengele or some plot to that effect. The plot involved the cloning of Adolph Hitler.

I could get in to a whole nurture verses nature discussion very easily here believing as I do that humans are NOT inherently bad, but that a combination of nurture and nature creates the human (or inhuman) fiends that makes the humanity of the world shudder.

Art imitates life with the story of the town in Brazil (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... razil.html) where Mengele was rumored to have lived for a time.

Nazi angel of death Josef Mengele 'created twin town in Brazil'

The Nazi doctor Josef Mengele is responsible for the astonishing number of twins in a small Brazilian town, an Argentine historian has claimed.

Candido Godoi twins - Nazi angel of death Josef Mengele 'created twin town in Brazil'

One in five pregnancies in the small Brazilian town have resulted in twins - most of them blond haired and blue eyed

By Nick Evans in Buenos Aires

8:00PM GMT 21 Jan 2009

The steely hearted "Angel of Death", whose mission was to create a master race fit for the Third Reich, was the resident medic at Auschwitz from May 1943 until his flight in the face of the Red Army advance in January 1945.

Josef Mengele - Nazi angel of death Josef Mengele 'created twin town in Brazil'

Mengele fled Europe for South America in the face of the Red Army advance in January 1945

His task was to carry out experiments to discover by what method of genetic quirk twins were produced – and then to artificially increase the Aryan birthrate for his master, Adolf Hitler.

Now, a historian claims, Mengele's notorious experiments may have borne fruit.

For years scientists have failed to discover why as many as one in five pregnancies in a small Brazilian town have resulted in twins – most of them blond haired and blue eyed.

But residents of Candido Godoi now claim that Mengele made repeated visits there in the early 1960s, posing at first as a vet but then offering medical treatment to the women of the town.

Related Articles

Nazi sticker book up for auction

27 Jan 2009

Indian village with 250 sets of twins

11 May 2009

Josef Mengele - factfile

23 Jan 2009

Shuttling between Argentina, Paraguay and Brazil, he managed to evade justice before his death in 1979, but his dreams of a Nazi master race appeared unfulfilled.

In a new book, Mengele: the Angel of Death in South America, the Argentine historian Jorge Camarasa, a specialist in the post-war Nazi flight to South America, has painstakingly pieced together the Nazi doctor's mysterious later years.

After speaking to the townspeople of Candido Godoi, he is convinced that Mengele continued his genetic experiments with twins – with startling results.

He reveals how, after working with cattle farmers in Argentina to increase their stock, Mengele fled the country after fellow Nazi, Adolf Eichmann, was kidnapped by Israeli agents.

He claims that Mengele found refuge in the German enclave of Colonias Unidas, Paraguay, and from there, in 1963, began to make regular trips to another predominantly German community just over the border in Brazil – the farming community of Candido Godoi.

And, Mr Camaras claims, it was here that soon after the birthrate of twins began to spiral.

"I think Candido Godoi may have been Mengele's laboratory, where he finally managed to fulfil his dreams of creating a master race of blond haired, blue eyed Aryans," he said.

"There is testimony that he attended women, followed their pregnancies, treated them with new types of drugs and preparations, that he talked of artificial insemination in human beings, and that he continued working with animals, proclaiming that he was capable of getting cows to produce male twins."

The urbane German who arrived in Candido Godoi was remembered with fondness by many of the townspeople.

"He told us he was a vet," said Aloisi Finkler, a local farmer interviewed by Mr Camarasa. "He asked about illnesses we had among our animals, and told us not to worry, he could cure them. He appeared a cultured and dignified man."

Another farmer, Leonardo Boufler, said: "He went from farm to farm checking the animals. He checked them for TB, and injected those that were infected. He said he could carry out artificial insemination of cows and humans, which we thought impossible as in those days it was unheard of."

But the Nazi eugenicist did not concentrate on animals alone.

A former mayor and town doctor, Anencia Flores da Silva, set out to try to solve the town's mystery. He interviewed hundreds of people, and discovered one character who crept on cropping up: an itinerant medic calling himself Rudolph Weiss.

Dr da Silva said: "In the testimonies we collected we came across women who were treated by him, he appeared to be some sort of rural medic who went from house to house. He attended women who had varicose veins and gave them a potion which he carried in a bottle, or tablets which he brought with him. Sometimes he carried out dental work, and everyone remembers he used to take blood."

The people of Candido Godoi now largely accept that a Nazi war criminal was an inadvertent guest of theirs for several years in the early 1960s. The town's official crest shows two identical profiles and a road sign welcomes visitors to a "Farming Community and Land of the Twins". There is also a museum, the House of the Twins.

While the twins birthrate varies widely in different countries, it is typically about one in 80 pregnancies – a statistic that has left Mr Camarasa certain in his claim that Mengele was successfully pursuing his dreams of creating a master race, a real-life Boys from Brazil.

"Nobody knows for sure exactly what date Mengele arrived in Candido Godoi, but the first twins were born in 1963, the year in which we first hear reports of his presence," he said.

🍑👋

Re: "A Number"

Posted: Sun Jan 26, 2014 9:15 pm
by Dave (imported)
{snip}
A-1 (imported) wrote: Sun Jan 26, 2014 8:58 pm I could get in to a whole nurture verses nature discussion very easily here believing as I do that humans are NOT inherently bad, but that a combination of nurture and nature creates the human (or inhuman) fiends that makes the humanity of the world shudder.

{snip}]

The play was written during the time that "Dolly the Cloned Sheep" had been in all the news over and over and over.

And yes. The play does deal with the question of nature and nurture in a very sly way. the audience gets to piece together why the cloning happened and it is tragic.

Salter the father of them all emotionally explains some of it.

Bernard #1, Bernard #2, and Bernard #3 who all make an appearance in the play have different personalities, sort of.

Re: "A Number"

Posted: Tue Jan 28, 2014 11:25 pm
by A-1 (imported)
...just so long as EACH of them did not have Three personalities...

Re: "A Number"

Posted: Mon Mar 10, 2014 3:43 pm
by Arokthis (imported)
I vaguely remember a movie YEARS ago that started with a married couple had a son who was from invitro or adopted. He either got sick, disappeared, or died. (I think he died.) One of of them worked (low level) for a biotech company. When the boy was gone, the company transferred them to a different branch elsewhere in the country. They saw a boy who looked EXACTLY like their son at a playground fall and (I think) scrape his knee. They managed to get into the boy's house when nobody was there and found a band-aid and sent it in for DNA testing. It was an exact match to their son. She created a "Have you seen my son?" kind of website and gout TONS of replies, all saying "Where did you get this picture?" or "Who are you?" It turned out ALL of the couples had one or both working for the company. One of the final scenes was the original couple publicly confronting the CEO at an office building with one of those lobbies that can be seen from several floors up. As he tries to deny everything, over a dozen copies of the same kid (with "parents" behind them) start coming up to the railings to look down at him. I don't remember what happened after that. I wish I knew the name of the movie so I could watch it again.

Re: "A Number"

Posted: Wed Mar 12, 2014 9:59 pm
by A-1 (imported)
Did you hear the one about the Doctor artificially inseminated his patients with his OWN SPERM? (http://www.marymeetsdolly.com/blog/?/ar ... women.html)

75 suspected children...

Fertility docs using their own sperm to impregnate unsuspecting women

I came across this story in the Center for Bioethics and Culture's 2009 Winners and Losers. Dr. Ben Ramaley was a "loser" for allegedly using his own sperm to artificially inseminate a woman in his care. The woman and her husband did not know of the switch but became wary when their twins were suspiciously fair-skinned. The father is African-American. Dr. Ramaley denies the charge.

A quick search over the Internet turns up other cases where fertility doctors were found to have impregnated women using their own sperm. It has been confirmed that Dr. Fortier of Las Vegas used his own sperm to impregnate at least one woman without her knowledge. He practiced medicine beginning in 1945 and some experts suspect that their could be dozens of other families that have no idea that Dr. Fortier was their "sperm donor." Dr. Cecil B. Jacobson was convicted of 52 counts of fraud and perjury for inseminating unwitting patients with his own sperm and for telling them they were pregnant when they were not. Prosecutors charged that he may have fathered as many as 75 children. Dr. Jacobson practiced at George Washington University Medical Center.

Most people think that such shenanigans in the infertility arena are a relatively recent occurrence. Not true. In fact, the fertility industry began with them. The first documented case of a woman becoming pregnant by artificial insemination was in 1884. A Quaker woman and her merchant husband, not able to conceive, approached Dr. William Pancoast of Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia. When Dr. Pancoast presented this couple's case to his medical students, one of the students suggested:

… that semen should be collected from the "best looking" member of the class, and used to inseminate the woman. Dr. Pancoast agreed to the experiment. Without informing either the woman or her husband of his intentions, he called the merchants wife back under the pretense of doing another examination. The woman was anesthetized, and the procedure was carried out. It wasn't until it became evident that the woman had actually conceived that her husband was informed.

There are few important aspects of this case. First, in the absence of the actual act of sex between a husband and wife, procreation by artificial insemination is reduced to a “shopping list” of desired traits. Second, the fact the doctor and his medical students did not deem it necessary to inform the wife or husband is evidence of a mentality that continues to pervade the business of creating life through artificial means: try it first and ask whether it is ethical later. Third, the woman was never told of what was done to her. I think it is typical of an industry that regularly uses woman desperate for children as guinea pigs for whatever new procedure a doctor can think up.

Why doctors do this to unsuspecting women is beyond me, but clearly there is a medical precedent. My guess is that it is a combination of a desire to help the patient, a "because I can" attitude, mixed with a huge amount of arrogance.

Re: "A Number"

Posted: Wed Mar 12, 2014 10:01 pm
by Dave (imported)
I can't resist this for A-1

APATHY, APATHY IS OUR CRY

A

P

Aw the hell with it!