"Willbuuurrr, don't come near me with that swab."
The Cover of the Rolling Clone
for release 04-18-05
Washington D.C.
To hear this piece in the writer's own voice, go here
It's an old bedouin saying that once the camel gets his nose under the tent, he's IN the tent. This parable also applies to the subject of cloning. Technology is much like the camel's nose. Once it insinuates itself, there is no stopping it. The nose is part of the whole beast. When you buy the nose, you buy the humps.
We were all amazed when Dolly the synthetic ewe was born. But the camel's nose was already way inside the tent by then. Scientist had been cloning laboratory animals, like hairless mice that can be infected with AIDS, for years. Maybe the camel's nose was under the tent as soon as Mendel started messing with sweet peas. But now the beast is at least half-way in the tent.
Scientists have now cloned an Arabian show horse from the genetic material of a champion gelding. In case you are not up on your equine terminology, a gelding is a castrated stallion. A stallion is a male horse. Up until now it has been hard for a gelding to reproduce. Maybe 'hard' is a poor choice of words here. But, now, through the miracles of science, eunuchs can breed and we can have thoroughbreds issuing from the wombs of nags. It sounds promising.
We have moved from simple tissue cloning to cloning frogs and mice for lab work to cloning livestock and now showhorses and kitty cats. Surely you know what's next. The camel has at least one hump in the living room.
Smarty Jones won the Kentucky Derby and then the Preakness by fifteen lengths. He missed the triple crown by a neck at Belmont but still guaranteed himself a lifetime career in the sex industry. For the rest of his natural life they will let him fuck the prettiest mares in the land in procession four times a day. It's called being put to stud. Hey, if I could get a contract like that for just winning the Kentucky Derby, I would have my track shoes on in a minute.
But because of the advances in science, Smarty Jones may be representative of a dying breed. Yes, for the time being there is still decorum in the world of horse racing. No cloning is allowed. The stallion has to actually mount the mare in order for the breeding to be official in a thoroughbred racehorse. They can't even use artificial insemination. That's why the researchers chose to clone a show horse rather than a racehorse, which could be much more lucrative. But it's only a matter of time. You know what they call a horse designed by a scientific committee, don't you? A camel. And the camel's nose is under the tent.
It's only a matter of time before some sports laboratory wants to clone Tiger Woods or Barry Bonds or Shaquille O'Neal. They could insert a gene that automatically produces undetectable steroids. Hell, they could even dig up the bones of The Babe or Jesse Owens or Bobby Jones to get a scrape. We could clone Lenin or Kennedy or US Grant or the Unknown Soldier or King Tut. We know where their tombs are. That's why I want to be cremated.
The problem with this concept is that when we start making clones, it's just as easy to clone Adolph Hitler as it is to clone Mahatma Gandhi. And suppose we cloned Mickey Mantle? Would he still hit sixty homers in a season? If Tiger Woods was cloned would the copy shoot way under par? I doubt it. Golf is a game of skill, not genetics. A new Tiger Woods would have to spend six or eight hours a day for fifteen years practicing in order to win the Masters four times.
We could clone beautiful women and handsome men. Can you imagine spending the night with three Nicole Kidmans or seven Angelina Jolies? We could turn them out like hotcakes. Ladies, how much would you pay for a date with Brad Pitt-17 or Sean Connery-24? Celebs would have a whole new revenue stream--selling copies of themselves. If we cloned Mozart would there be another Don Giovanni in the works? Would Jimi Hendrix-6 be able to play Foxy Lady? Not without some practice. Would Robin Williams' clone know how to tell a joke? I mean, he would look like Robin Williams and sound like Robin Williams, but would he be funny? We don't know. Not until we try it.
The Poet's Eye fully expects to see human clones appearing soon. It probably won't be in the United States because of the restrictive government policies about this type of research, but sooner or later some billionaire in Argentina or Singapore will lose a beloved daughter and want a second copy. There are rumors that this has already happened.
<center> we take all kind of pills, that give us all kind of thrills
but the thrill we've never known, is the thrill that'll getcha
when you get your picture on the cover of the Rollin' Clone
CHORUS:
Rollin' Clone,
wanna see my picture on the cover
wanna buy five copies of my mother [ Yeah! ]
wanna see my smilin' face, on the cover the cover of the Rollin Clone--
paraphrased from Dr. Hook</center>
