My stomach was starting to feel better (see recent blog post), until I read the articles today about the human cloning. Just what humankind needs, another moral and ethical dilemma. As if there were a shortage of children created via the good old fashioned mechanism.
The whole thing has a gothic science fictional quality to it, reminiscent of The X-Files and “V”. I.e., the nightmare you can’t wake up from. An alien child was born, and more are on the way. Clonaid spokesperson Brigette Boisselier would seem right at home on one of those shows. Not that I was a huge X’er or V’er. Both shows were a bit too violent and graphic for my cotton-candy soul. But the Raeliens, with their talk of alien masters, and Ms. Boisselier, with her smooth words trying to make it all seem just fine, do have a creepy aura to them. I’m sure I’m not the first blogger to notice that.
All kidding aside, I think that this is a bad moon rising. It’s bad science at its baddest, an experiment that could have terrible physical, emotional and sociological consequences. Sure, there are potential up-sides, but as with Nazi medical experiments, the down-sides and the unknowns are way too steep right now to be messing with individual human lives. I hope this is just a hoax. But I have that weird feeling, like the one a lot of us had about 9 am on Sept. 11, 2001 when the first disjointed media reports came in, that this could be very serious.
P.S., back to the light side for a moment. As an old guy without kids around, I’m not really sure why a lot of adults are talking about Sponge Bob these days. Nevertheless, they are. So, I checked some search engines to see if any attorneys specializing in helping people clean up their criminal records were taking advantage of the potential pun. But my search for an “Expungement Bob” came up blank.
P.P.S. A few days later, I read that Clonaid is pulling back it’s offer of DNA proof. Hopefully, little Eve is going to grow up as a genetically unique person after all, just a footnote to the history of public hoaxes.