Are Americans Clone Deaf?
By Ron Marr (02/06/03)
I guess I shouldn't say I know zip about cloning. I actually know quite a bit, however the veracity of my knowledge could be somewhat suspect. It arises primarily from old Star Trek episodes, Robert Heinlein novels and a plethora of made for TV science fiction movies in which a partially dressed Farrah Fawcett would get herself thrown onto what appeared to be a giant tanning bed covered with tubes and blinky lights.
Farrah would lay there and look all scared while a balding and horrible actor named John Saxon - who was in every bad Sci-Fi flick filmed between 1972 and 1984 - attempted to protect her by throwing pseudo-karate kicks at clone-crazy aliens whose home planet apparently suffered from a decided lack of blondes with that layered look.
It was downright painful watching John Saxon engage in this behavior. He could only kick about as high as your kneecap, and I'm betting his movie contract specified an on-staff groin pull specialist. I never could figure out why John was against the cloning process in the first place. You'd think that a person whose future as a thespian was less than bleak would consider a harem of hot and cold running Farrahs quite a wonderful thing.
Fast forwarding to 2003, it seems that the whole world has taken up this same irrational fear, getting all buggy because a group of brain-dead cult members claimed to have cloned a couple of human beings. That the Raelians (the cult in question) failed to provide any evidence of such a procedure mattered not. I was a tad bamboozled that the press even gave notice to this tribe. I mean, the name of their company was "ClonAid," which sounds either like a decongestant or sugary drink often mixed with grain alcohol.
Nonetheless, the bored, TV obsessed masses seem outraged over the mere possibility of a human clone, which just goes to show that our species is much more concerned with things that might well never happen than with the realities of now.
The media and the politicians all reached for their megaphones to herald the evil inherent to cloning Homo Sapiens. They screamed about moral, ethical and religious considerations. George Bush even tossed a line or two into his State of the Union address, stressing how Congress should vote to permanently forbid any further experiments. I suspect, however, that there was a political motivation behind the President's hue and cry. Can you imagine the Hell on Earth that would be six or seven Tom Daschle clones? Such a chorus of tiny, whining, egocentric malcontents would be more than the human psyche could bear without large amounts of vodka and industrial strength ear-plugs. It would be akin to cramming the entire population of Munchkin Land into the back seat of your SUV while chewing aluminum foil.
Even quite a few Democrats have warned against "trying to play God" via human cloning attempts, droning that each human life is unique, born of a miracle that reaches beyond laboratory science. I find that interesting, as there's something of a hypocritical irony in the mind-set of those liberals who are appalled by cloning but support partial birth abortion. Frankly, I tend to believe most liberals have already been cloned, for it is impossible for a regular human to be that two faced under normal circumstances.
However, I must state that, should human cloning ever become more than a hypothesis, I would come out strongly against it. My distaste for the concept arises not from the aforementioned moral, ethical or religious reasons, but merely from the fact that there are already too many people in the world and a lot of them are sort of stupid. Think about this. The only people who could afford to get cloned would be the rich, powerful or politically connected. The vision of multiple Hillaries, Barbara Streisands, Nancy Pelosies and Sean Penns is more than I can stomach.
And, lets not forget the ugliness quotient. Unlike in the movies, where you get people like Farrah Fawcett on the cloning/tanning bed, we would most likely end up seeing replicants in the genre of Al Sharpton or the old lady who starred in Throw Momma From The Train. The world currently withstands enough appearance dysfunction, and we should feel no drive to further assault our sensory organs with poorly defined bone structure, bad hair, dumb political comments and the babbling chatter inherent to those most likely to clone around.
Still, you can bet that a whole slug of people will want their cloning rights upheld, sending in the clones as it were. I can see some use to the procedure, growing new lungs and livers would be right helpful for those of us who smoke and drink...
And Lord only knows that the American left is sorely in need of a brain.
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