Sorry, another long post! I quote below a short passage from the book which for me categorises it as an alternate history tale likely diverging from real history in the early 1950's, after the 2nd World War. I think it also establishes the basis of the divergence which lead to the cloning. This basis is the great breakthroughs in Science in the early 50's. These breakthroughs are not explained, only their result, that is, "all these ways to cure so many previously incurable conditions". Through organs. The demand for organs in this dystopia is not necessarily just for transplant. They are needed to be used in some unexplained fashion to produce the cures. This is the rationale underlying the dystopia. Previously incurable diseases can be cured, but only by use of organs, whether by transplant or otherwise. And the demand for such organs is significant, which tends to imply that the mechanism for the cures is not simply transplants or other one to one applications. For instance organs could be essential ingredients of curative medications. Organs are also required for research, which is hardly surprising if they are capable of producing cures. This is the clones only purpose. Using a very unpleasant analogy, Hailsham is like a free range chicken farm. The conditions at other schools and outside the schools is only hinted at, but the worst case scenario is children being raised like battery hens with no education until they are old enough to donate.
How indeed could you ask a world that has come to regard cancer as curable to put away that cure?
Personally I doubt anyone who at all understands history and human nature can dismiss the possibility of such a society arising.
Excerpt from Book
Quote:
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‘From your perspective today, Kathy, your bemusement is perfectly reasonable. But you must try and see it historically. After the war, in the early fifties, when the great breakthroughs in science followed one after the other so rapidly, there wasn’t time to take stock, to ask the sensible questions. Suddenly there were all these new possibilities laid before us, all these ways to cure so many previously incurable conditions. This was what the world noticed the most, wanted the most. And for a long time, people preferred to believe these organs appeared from nowhere, or at most that they grew in a kind of vacuum. Yes, there were arguments. But by the time people became concerned about … about students, by the time they came to consider just how you were reared, whether you should have been brought into existence at all, well by then it was too late. There was no way to reverse the process. How can you ask a world that has come to regard cancer as curable, how can you ask such a world to put away that cure, to go back to the dark days? There was no going back. However uncomfortable people were about your existence, their overwhelming concern was that their own children, their spouses, their parents, their friends, did not die from cancer, motor neurone disease, heart disease. So for a long time you were kept in the shadows, and people did their best not to think about you. And if they did, they tried to convince themselves you weren’t really like us. That you were less than human, so it didn’t matter. And that was how things stood until our little movement came along. But do you see what we were up against? We were virtually attempting to square the circle. Here was the world, requiring students to donate. While that remained the case, there would always be a barrier against seeing you as properly human. Well, we fought that battle for many years, and what we won for you, at least, were many improvements, though of course, you were only a select few.
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