Artificial Cloning

**Artificial Cloning** is the creation of a genetically identical copy (or clone) of another organism, be they sentient or not. The term is generally used to refer to artificial sentient cloning, which is the reproduction of sentient beings cells and tissue. It does not refer to the natural conception and delivery of identical twins. The possibility of sentient cloning has been a subject of controversies and ethics debates across the galaxy for centuries, in fact, these ethical concerns have often led nations across the galaxy to pass laws regarding the matter and its legality.

There are two types of artificial cloning, therapeutic cloning and reproductive cloning. Therapeutic cloning is the most common method, often used for medicine and organ transplants, but its' also used in food production as well, often viewed as a more ethnical manner for meat production, and is often created through the Terran methods of somatic-cell nuclear transfer and pluripotent stem cell induction, although another variant of therapeutic cloning exist in the form of Strandcasting, a considerably more complex cloning system. Reproductive cloning, on the other hand, is much different, as it involves creating an entire cloned individual instead of just specific cells or tissues, this method is most commonly seen in the Republic's Clone Legions with its' various clones all being the identical, or near-identical, copies of the donor in question.

## Methods

### Terran

#### Institute Synth Program

Despite the name, and the incessant terminology on various official Institute of Parkin documents relating to it, the Institute's Synth Program, while its' early iteration of the program was advanced robots, became a cloning program in the sixth generation onward, although the Institute would continue to call these clones "synths" in both official documents and even surviving writings and personal documents made by Institute personnel, but it would appear that the term is continued to be used as a tool for propaganda by the leadership of the Institute. While these sixth gen synth and on were clones, the Institutes clones are unique in the methods used to create them, unique to both preexisting Terran methods and wider galactic methods.

Specifically, the only parts of the Synth that are cloned are the muscles, nerves, and more fleshy parts of the body, the same can not be said of the skeleton. In fact, from surviving Parkinian documents it appears that the Institute quite literally contracted the skeletal frame with pseudo-bones, before its' stitched flesh on it and finally dipped into a vat of liquid meant to grow skin onto the body itself. Furthermore, the sixth gen synths (and generations after) appear to be biologically immortal, as they noted to not age at all after they are created, in fact, Institute "synths" do not grow or gain (nor lose) weight, with only a select few synths purposefully designed after a particular individual, and all sixth gen synths (and beyond) are born sterile, although there are exceptions via a number of Institute projects where the synths were designed to be fertile. However, large aspects of program that also begs various questions, like the brain of a Institute sixth gen synth being more akin to a heavily cybernetically enhanced brain, as well as a unique component that appears to be design to release a chemicals into a synth's brain that effectively causes limited brain-damage. Another aspect that's unique to these clone synths is the fact that all of these clones are therapeutic, meaning each and every clone have entirely unique DNA from each other, not to mention physically different as well, making them one of a handful of clone types that are therapeutic in nature rather then the more common, and more easy to create, reproductive clones.

The Parkin's Synth Program was ended when the Institute of Parkin was finally dissolved following the joint Republic and Imperial Invasion of Belsavis in 14 ATC/36K.383 CE, but plenty of the Institute's clones survived the experience and began to roam the galaxy at large enjoying a sense of freedom never afforded to them in the millennia since their early creation. But by the time of the Second Galactic War, many of these synths have since been killed, for a variety of reasons, but three notable surviving Parkinian clones are E4-51, Juliana Hendrikx, and Roul Woodrow.

Oddly enough, the one thing all Parkinian clones share in common is a preference for sweets, something that even Institute scientists and researchers were confused by.