"We made a baby without a mommy or daddy!"
That's approximately the announcement made about a week ago by Brigitte Boisselier, the CEO of Clonaid, the group that claims to have cloned a baby girl named Eve from a 31-year-old woman.
Pardon my skepticism, but yeah, sure. And Anna Nicole Smith can fly.
I just wouldn't put my faith in a group that chose Clonaid as a name. It sounds too much like a bad fundraising concert from the 1990s, starring Devo, Hanson, Wilson Phillips, and the Nelson twins.
Of course, Clonaid hasn't yet offered us any evidence to corroborate their declaration and, as James Randi always says, extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. In other words, we ain't buying it just because Brigitte says so.
But there she was, all over TV and the print media, flashing her toothy grin while announcing that her company had made history. One look at Brigitte and the first thing that crossed my mind was, what's with those teeth? She may have the worst oral hygiene since Austin Powers. She's the anti-Osmond. Her company should spend their valuable laboratory time investigating the use of fluoride. She'd be better off working on Brush-Aid or Floss-Aid.
She's not the only odd-looking one involved in this supposed cloning coup. There's also Claude Vorilhon, the guy who founded Clonaid in 1997. He's also the bald-guy-with-a-ponytail (always a clue!) who founded the Raelian religion, based on an encounter he claims to have had with a friendly visiting alien on the side of the road in France back in the 1970s (check out his cult's website for the audio version of that story -- it's a scream, complete with cheesy music and mysterioso voiceover).
According to Claude, all of us on Earth -- that's you, me, and Michael Jackson -- are all descended from clones the aliens brought here some 25,000 years ago. Claude's obviously wrong on that one, because Michael Jackson only became an alien after he took off the "Thriller" zombie makeup. Nowadays, no right-thinking alien would even consider claiming him as their kin (except for Trent Lott, who thought Michael could act as a role model by starting a whole new black-to-white skin-changing trend).
In the pictures I've seen of Claude, he's usually wearing a futuristic cross between a terry-cloth bathrobe and the kimono outfit that Spock wore in San Francisco during "Star Trek IV." Why do the guys with the alien stories always have the same fashion sense? Apparently, in space, no one can hear you scream "denim!"
The close-encounters types always have the same description of the alien, too. Of course, the visitors are able to converse in whatever your native tongue is, no matter where you are. Visually, the species that allegedly spawned us has almond-shaped eyes, hands with three fingers, a slow gait, no hair. Darwin was wrong! We're descended from Homer Simpson!
Claude said in an interview with the Miami Herald that this supposed cloning is just the beginning of his group's scientific breakthroughs. He expects that within 25 years, we won't have to bother with implanting the clone embryo in a woman, waiting nine months for it to be born, and then another 18 years for it to grow to adulthood. Instead, he claims that his scientists will be able to make an exact copy of an adult human in just a few hours and then -- get this -- download the thought patterns and memories of an older person and then upload them into the clone, thus creating eternal life. Excuse me for using yet another show business reference, but Claude must have seen Arnold Schwarzenegger's movie, "The Sixth Day," one too many times, because that's the plot right there!
I just hope we can do some editing during the memory transfer, because I made a really bad automobile purchase in 1979, and no one should have to live with that flashback. Not to mention the night in college someone talked me into eating a liverwurst omelet that was about the most horrible thing anyone has ever consumed (you won't be surprised to hear that some alcohol may have clouded my judgment).
Not surprisingly, Claude hasn't offered any proof of this cloning miracle, either. But even if Clonaid has accomplished the previously improbable, they wouldn't be the first to replicate the human form artificially. Just look at the half-dozen girlfriends constantly surrounding Hugh Hefner. Now there's the scientific equivalent of the Xerox copier.Labels: columns, science