Genes And Jeans: Rag-trade Ethics No Match For Clones
Sydney Morning Herald
Tuesday December 5, 2006
THE FIRST HUMAN CLONE 11.25pm, ABC: Efforts to sideline God and cobble together a human being (or its metric equivalent) from generic - or rather genetic - material are widely deemed obscene by those who fear for our species, not to mention the majority who fervently believe sex has its uses beyond the recreational realm. It's not just the Boys from Brazil scenario that concerns them. The prospect of subspecies - something like H. G. Wells's Morlocks - being churned out to do the dirty work, act as "furniture" (as in Rollerball) or fight wars (as in any number of cyborg flicks) is too awful to contemplate. It's easy enough to find a new yellow Wiggle without cloning the old one, so are there any genuine benefits for humanity in bypassing natural processes? An interlude with question time from the Reps (1.15am on Wednesday) suggests the traditional method of creating human life does have some shortcomings.
CHINA BLUE 8.30pm, SBS: Nice pair of jeans! How much did they cost? Less than $100, perhaps. Women who labour in the Chinese garment factories where they are made would have to work 100 shifts of 16 hours to be able to afford a pair at those prices. Are the cost benefits of cheap labour passed on to consumers? Not really. What is passed on, in every stitch, is the perpetuation of appalling conditions for denim workers at garment mills such as the Lifeng factory in Shaxi. This doco - some of it shot secretly - revolves around Jasmine, a 16-year-old thread cutter who is part of the largest labour pool in the world. Motivated by a desire to help her family, she lives in an assembly-line environment at the Lifeng barracks, where the days are never short and the pay is never high - Jasmine makes about six cents an hour. Western companies ruthlessly exploiting their advantage in a buyers' market should be taken outside and shot. There's always been a lot of invisible sweat in the rag trade, never more than now.DAVE HUGHES SPECIAL 10pm, Nine: Hughes was looking rather iron-eyed during the go-for-broke finale of The Glass House last week. Did he drink from a cup previously used by Richard Alston? Wil Anderson had some sort of eye problem, too, and Corinne Grant experienced ocular dampness in the closing barrage of silver confetti. This comedy special, which no doubt was held back from screening until Hughes's Glass House gig had concluded, promises to be a cheerful hour - and a useful intro to Penn & Teller's BS at 11pm, with a scarifying and sceptical look at the war on drugs, a $20 billion enterprise which, like the war on terrorism, hasn't been what you'd readily describe as an overwhelming success.SHALOM IN THE HOME Noon and 8pm, Discovery Channel: A new series involving a former rabbi and family counsellor from Oxford University. Rabbi Shmuley Boteach is also a best-selling author who visits families in crisis, delving into personal relationships and family histories seeking solutions to problems. With eight children of his own, he is undoubtedly well experienced. It may sound like a cringeingly awful sitcom but this is a reality program, pitched somewhere between The Supernanny and Dr Phil, with a whiff of Clive Robertson and his Agony Aunts.
© 2006 Sydney Morning Herald