#flash cloning

the SPARTAN-II project got the green light by the top brass within the Office of Naval Intelligence, who concluded that the lives that could be saved far outweighed the risks involved. The project was initially granted funding for 300 candidates, though funding was later reduced to half this number. By 2517, 150 suitable candidates had been identified through DNA gathered from the CAA's Outer Colony vaccination program, but funding was further reduced to support again, only half that number. 

A grand total of 75 children, five or six years old and of both genders, were kidnapped by ONI recruiters. In order to preserve the program's secrecy, the children were replaced by flash clones which would perish soon thereafter due to numerous medical complications associated with flash-cloning a human being.

[ Flash cloning is a medical process performed in human medicine in the 26th century. It is a more advantageous form of cloning where organs or other body parts go through accelerated ageing to match the age of the donor. The biggest fault by far in flash-cloning of humans is metabolic cascade failure, a syndrome characterized by degeneration of the body. Due to the sheer complexity of cloning an entire human, a series of defects show themselves within months. As they accumulate, the clone inevitably dies from degenerative disorders potentially in every organ as the body essentially collapses. Their deaths from this syndrome are inevitable, and many die within a year. With medical assistance life can be extended further.  ]

At the age of fourteen, the children would go through the toughest part of their training: the biological augmentation procedures, which would kill 30 of the 75 conscripted children and render 12 more, who would "wash out" of the SPARTAN-II program, paralysed. Additionally, while the procedures were taking place the subjects were unconscious, a state where they should have felt no pain, the Spartans felt enormous pain throughout the process, with each augmentation having its own type of pain. 

Subsequently, some of those which were adversely affected by the augmentation process went on to join the Office of Naval Intelligence, while others were given an honorable or medical discharge; aside from the 33 which survived the procedures with no physiological deformities. The bodies of those candidates who died were placed in cryo-suspension, in the hope that they could some day be resuscitated. At least some of the candidates who were crippled were eventually rehabilitated.