Fun_People Archive
1 Apr
Clone info!

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From: Peter Langston <psl>
Date: Tue,  1 Apr 97 20:37:25 -0800
To: Fun_People
Subject: Clone info!

Forwarded-by: House of Unruly Fish <carosue@iguana.ruralnet.net>
Forwarded-by: Susan (the Neon Nurse)
From: Ed Uthman, MD <uthman@neosoft.com>
Forwarded by permission of author for non-commercial use!

Dear colleagues,

I am sure you were all as stultified as I when it was announced recently
that in the UK a sheep had been cloned from an udder cell of an adult ewe.
Not to be outgunned in the clone wars, abashed American researchers upped
the ante by quickly throwing something together in the lab, dosing up on
coffee and phen/phen, pulling an all-nighter, and cloning a monkey. As any
veteran watcher of science fiction movies knows, whenever an experiment is
conducted on a monkey, it will be done on a human within a few days. So
let's face it: the clones are coming!

But never fear. I have done some serious research on this subject by
undertaking extended expeditions to both Blockbuster _and_ Hollywood Video.
Here are the startling conclusions of what the ability to clone humans will
mean.

1) The average everyday decent person will find the whole idea of two
genetically identical humans completely beyond the realm of human
experience, and therefore totally repugnant. In fact, all people -- black
and white, Christian and Moslem, Brahman and Sudra -- will consider the
whole concept of selective breeding of humans to be morally abhorrent.

2) At first, only megalomaniacal dictators (living or dead) will be cloned.
Then, the cloned dictators will clone soldiers.

3) Anyone who is to be cloned will have to submit to a phlebotomy that is
performed by having a machine simultaneously puncture his or her forearm
with four orthogonally-positioned trocar-sized needles.

4) Clones will be grown in six-foot-long glass cylinders, preferably
oriented in the vertical position. Those that are grown in the horizonal
position will be kept in drawer-type freezers until mature.

5) Clones will be grown from zygote to adult size in a few days.

6) On emerging from their cylinders, the fully grown (but for some reason
hairless) clones will be emotionless, murderous zombies.

7) The cloning of women will include only tall, thin, beautiful ones. The
cloned women will sport more makeup, wear more expensive clothing, and have
fancier hairdos than the women from which they are cloned.

8) If a good man happens to be cloned, the clone will be evil. The good man
will go to prison for crimes committed by the evil clone.

9) The scientist who performs the first cloning will be killed by a clone.

10) The scientist will be killed by having his face crushed into a control
console in the cloning lab. This will ultimately cause the entire lab to
blow up.

11) Eventually, all the clones will be killed, except for one young boy,
who will be spirited away and secretly raised by monks. He will ultimately
cause trouble, but not for another twenty years or so.

Anyway, I hope this clears up everyone's fears and uncertainties about human
cloning. ;)

Ed

© 1997 Peter Langston