clone clone clone
Still playing catch up with the cloning debate, I am, as the birth of "Eve" overlapped with Christmas in Ireland when the public prints there were filled with acres of end-of-year rubbishy quizzes and vapid quotes, and my farmhouse Net connection was fickle. POV: as a committed futurist, I'm all for medical innovation but surely caution is called for here. After all, we haven't successfully cloned animals yet. Remember Dolly and all those other ovine and bovine clones? Well, they've all experienced organ failure or are dead. Ooops! And all probably suffered terribly as well. Cloning is simply too unreliable for humans at the moment. So who, in their right minds, would want to do this to a child?
Single-handedly, Brigitte Boisselier, the scientist who heads Clonaid, "the first human cloning company", which has links to the daft Raelian sect that believes aliens created humans by cloning, has done more damage to the field of cellular therapy than all the reactionary anti-abortion activists and regressive legislators put together. By associating cloning with talk of "alien life-seed" (ugh!), stem cell research that could lead to important new treatments and cures is now endangered. Legitimate researchers must distance themselves as quickly as possible from the charlatans who are hijacking reproductive science.
Diarist of the day: Captain Robert Falcon Scott, 15 January 1912"It is wonderful to think that two long marches would land us at the Pole. We left our dep?oday with nine days' provisions, so that it ought to be a certain thing now, and the only appalling possibility the sight of the Norwegian flag forestalling ours. Little Bowers continues his indefatigable efforts to get good sights, and it is wonderful how he works them up in his sleeping-bag in our congested tent. (Minimum for night -27.5?). Only 27 miles from the Pole. We ought to do it now."
