Gregory Pence is a leading expert on bioethics, and back in 2000 he was the only bioethicist to testify before Congress against a bill that would have outlawed human cloning. Pence rolls his eyes at most science fiction, which tends to depict clones that are unrealistically similar to each other, but one show that’s really grabbed his interest is Orphan Black. “Orphan Black is pretty good about the science, like 98 percent of the time, and it’s really good about the bioethics issues,” Pence says in Episode 197 of the Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast.
A career in bioethics has taught him that every medical advance from egg donors to surrogate mothers to in vitro fertilization has been met with premature cries of horror. He’s confident that human cloning will eventually be accepted as just another option for parents. “Almost all these things are tempests in a teapot,” he says. “They’re really not a big deal.”