If you were cloned today, nine months from now a woman would give birth to a baby with your genetic endowment. The cloned baby would be your identical twin, delayed a generation. Some fear the specter of mass cloning of one individual, especially cloning of sadistic monsters, as in The Boys from Brazil, Ira Levin's nightmarish projection of cadres of young Hitlers spawned from the dictator's genes. A person's essential self is his mind-that in him which thinks, values, and chooses. It is one's mind, not one's genes, that governs who one is.
Man is the rational animal.
One's basic choice is to think or not to think, in Ayn Rand's famous phrase, and the conclusions, values, and character of individuals depend upon the extent and rationality of their thinking. Genes provide the capacity to reason, but the exercise and guidance of that capacity is up to each individual, from the birth of his reasoning mind in infancy through the rest of his life. Neither genes nor environment can implant ideas in a child's mind and make him accept them. Cloning the body will not clone the mind. A mind is inescapably under the individual's own volitional control.