Chapter Text
HUMAN CLONES WERE THE RESULT OF HUMAN EXPERIMENTS?!
Unnamed researcher has exposed human rights violations within Dr. Wen Junhui’s famous “World’s First Human Cloning” experiment, Dr Wen allegedly conducted a living experiment on humans for the results of substantive research.
Dr. Wen Junhui, who received global attention in 2016 for succeeding in human cloning for the first time in the world and even successfully experimenting with cloned humans due to rapid embryo growth, has been embroiled in controversy over biological experiments. The controversy began with a disclosure, which shocked the world as it said that a disregard for human rights came to play within Dr. Wen’s commitment to biological experiments which lead to the rapid achievements of the research.
The person who revealed this information is an anonymous researcher who claims to have worked at Dr. Wen’s lab during the past cloning experiment.
The informant expressed mixed feelings when posting the revelation to meda outlets, saying “He is the devil. There were no ethics there. The years I worked with Dr. Wen focused on consequentialism are the dark ages of my life.” The following is the full text of the revelation from the informant.
“Hi, I’m a researcher who studied human cloning with Dr. Wen Junhui, and I’ve been thinking a lot about whether to say anything or not before I wrote this. I thought about withholding the truth and instead riding on the victory of my research with Dr. Wen due to it receiving a lot of attention worldwide, but I am writing this after a long thought because I cannot abandon my ethical part as a biotechology researcher.
When I joined the research it was around the middle of the human cloning experiment. At that time, the atmosphere in the lab was encouraging because the cloning of the embryos was successful, and just participating in said research would make my name known in one of the biggest breakthroughs in biotechnology, I couldn’t hide my excitement.
After the initial success, Dr. Wen gradually became insane. He disappeared somewhere, saying that he needed time to concentrate on himself in order to achieve an even bigger success. The media reported that all the findings came from Dr. Wen’s team, but in fact, all the research was conducted by himself. The rest of the researchers were just looking for the theoretical data he requested, and most of the experiments were conducted independently by Dr. Wen, and none of the researchers knew what he was doing or where even allowed access to his research journal. Sometimes there were calls to pick a time and place to bring the academic data we worked on in the lab, but when I went out to the meeting place, a strange man received the data. Then one day, Dr. Wen came to the lab and took the data, and said, “I have made a breakthrough in human cloning.” to the researchers who asked how he had been doing so far. He told us that we could take responsibility for the experiment. The way his eyes glistened while he spoke, it was clear he was not a normal person anymore. And there was one thing that caught my eye when looking at him, and that is why I am writing this statement. There was a red liquid on his sleeve that didn’t match the white gown he was wearing. I secretly followed Dr. Wen, who left immediately afterwards, he mumbled something about the research needing to be completed in a hurry.
I followed his car down an ominous country road. Soon after, he stopped in front of an abandoned building. It was already close to midnight and there seemed to be no people around, until a familiar person walked out of the building. The strange man, who always arrived at the appointment, greeted Dr. Wen as if they were colleagues, and after I watched them walking into the abandoned building together, I sneaked into the building because I was curious about what research was being done there.
The building was shady and had a fishy smell. When I went further inside, I found what appeared to be a space where Dr. Wen di research, and the research journal was full on one side of the desk which I looked at out of curiosity. The content was insane, it was filled with bodies and each description of the subjects was even more crazy. “Subject XX complains of pain over drug administration”, “In the end, it lost consciousness”, “I gave electrical stimulation to the brain of the subject, but it died in pain due to failure to regulate voltage” and “I assumed that it was growing but the development stopped at the age of three, it couldn’t speak words.” While I was reading, I heard noises by the door and saw the unfamiliar person and Dr. Wen moving something big, I had no idea what it was, but when they moved and were exposed to the moonlight, I had to swallow an exploding scream. It was a person, who was unconscious and thin. And the last thing I remember was running out of the building.
For a while after that, I couldn’t come to work because I was feeling unwell. One day, while I was reliving the memories of the night, Dr. Wen was on the news. The world’s first adult clone success… It was good news, but I couldn’t forget what I saw.
To this day I experience nightmares and find it difficult to rejoice in my colleagues victories, my victories. I spent my free time trying to find the person that I saw Dr. Wen and the strange man move, but it was difficult as noone else witnessed the scene. And after the success of the experiment, I had no choice but to keep it to myself. I had tried to turn a blind eye, but the scene still haunts me. I hope the truth is revealed now. I hope a police investigation into Dr. Wen will be launched to find out of everything I know and think I know is true, and if it is, I hope that he is prosecuted for his crimes and that the biotechnology community can go back to ethical ideology.”
The news report sat idle on the laptop screen, it had only been a few hours since it had been posted yet it already had hundreds of thousands of views, everyone knew of the heinous crimes of Dr. Wen Junhui.
Truthfully, the researcher had wanted to be one hundred percent transparent, he wanted to give the reporter his name and insider details on his own work, but he knew that it would never go the way he wanted, the safest place he can be while still doing good is in anonymity.
Xu Minghao was his name, and he had read the article a hundred times in the time it had been out, seeing his own words reflecting back at him felt wrong still, like he’d just made the biggest mistake. Especially when none other than Dr. Wen Junhui himself came walking into his room.
“Minghao!” He grins, and slides into the seat beside him. Minghao jumped from his seat and clicked off the tab. “How’s my favourite researcher doing? Found anything interesting yet?” The researcher shakes his head, bowing it slightly, he still struggled to look him in the eye after that night. “Something troubling you?” After he doesn’t receive a response, Junhui looks up at his computer, gaze immediately landing on the article’s tab. He clicks on it.
“It’s not true.” He says, even though they both know it’s a lie. “You know I would never do anything like that.” Lie, again. He stares down Minghao, yet he still refuses to look up. “I’m going to find whoever wrote this and fire them, this lab isn’t a place for fiction, it’s a place for turning it into reality. But, of course, you’d know that being my best researcher.” He nudges him lightly, and Minghao finally looks up and forces a, what he prays looks geniune, smile, which Junhui returns. There was something offputting about his grin, from the first day Minghao had seen Junhui there was something behind it, and he couldn’t shake it, at least he knew why now.
“So quiet today.” He commented and shuffled closer, his head lying against Minghao’s shoulder. He couldn’t fight the way his body tensed under it, the hair pushed against his neck prickling like thousands of thorns, it wasn’t the first time he had done this and usually it was easier for him to hide his discomfort, but today was different. And it was clear that Junhui was picking up on it.
“Sorry,” he finally croaked, nausea rose up in his stomach. “Just feeling a little unwell.”
Junhui nods and pats him on the head, “it’s okay,” he says. His hand lingered in the researcher’s ashy blond hair, running back and forth like he was his pet. He murmurs something that Minghao doesn’t catch, but by the way his sinister smirk stretched along his face, he was certain he didn’t want to know.
After a few agonising minutes of silence, Junhui finally leaves, but not without handing over an unlabelled small tub of pills, that he assured were cold and flu tablets that he kept on him just incase, and waited until he took them with a swig of water. The second the door clicked shut he spat out both the water and tablets into his bin and washed his mouth out with water, he was not taking any chances.
Minghao was never sure where he had gained the title “best researcher” from, he was far from it, by the time he joined most of the groundbreaking results had already come out. But something he was sure about was that it began the first time he saw Junhui after that night, that he had insisted they worked closer together and to call him by his name rather than title. He couldn’t shake the feeling that perhaps he saw him that night, and that he was toying with him, seeing how far he would go with the information that he’s learned. But if that’s true, Junhui had to have known that Minghao was behind the exposure, which meant that something very bad was about to happen. Very soon.