Rev. Cwirla's Blogosphere

Dolly, the world's first cloned sheep, died last week at the age of six years and seven months. Actually she was "put to sleep," veterinary medicine's euphemism for a lethal injection. She was suffering from arthritis, obesity, and a progressive lung disease more common to animals twice her age.

Dolly's untimely demise confirms what anyone who runs a copy machine already knows. A copy is never quite as good as the original. When Dolly was born on July 5, 1996, she was a lamb with six year old DNA. In other words, she was genetically middle-aged the day she was born. This may bring a small measure of comfort to the doom sayers who fear that someone may one day clone a Hitler. Given Dolly's experience, Adolph II probably would retire to a nursing home with Alzheimer's long before he could wreak any noticeable havoc on the world. Besides, given today's crop of world despots, who needs to clone a Hitler?

The idea that a copy is better than a genetic original flies in the face of all we already know about the birds and the bees and decent art. Who wants a numbered copy when you can have a signed original?

If you're an evolutionist, cloning is a heresy against the fundamental dogma of your religion, namely, that survival of the species depends on genetic adaptability and mutability. Cloning is a genetic dead end. If you're a creationist, cloning runs counter to God's design. God intended for species to "be fruitful and multiply" by bringing together male and female through romance, instinct, or good old dumb luck. Every conception is a fresh roll of the genetic dice, a new opportunity to improve on the original, or at least shove some bad stuff into the recessive genetic background.

Cloning has a darker side. It smacks of the master race concept, the perfection of humanity through science. This quest for perfection runs deep in us, as does the desire for immortality, two things science-as-religiion promises but only Jesus delivers.

Cloning also renders fathers obsolete. Dolly's chromosomes came from another sheep, not from the mating of male and female. All Dolly needed to be born was the assistance of a surrogate mother. This is nothing short of the extinction of fatherhood. Who needs to mess with dad when you've got immaculately conceived clones? Happy Father's Day, guys! Your time is running out.

The Raelian cult claims to have cloned a human. The Raelians are a gnostic UFO sex cult founded by a French journalist who used to race fast cars and write about them before encountering an extraterrestrial who revealed to him, in fluent French no less, that human beings are an extraterrestrial science fair project. Now he conducts "Sensual Meditation Camps" where participants seek enlightenment through uninhibited sex. L. Ron Hubbard meets Hugh Hefner. Leave it to the French.

The Raelians run a company called Clonaid, which claims to have cloned a human baby. The birth announcement came at Christmas time last year. The allegedly cloned baby was a girl named Eve. Eve, means "life" in Hebrew. In the Bible's book of Genesis, Eve was so named because she was the "mother of all the living." The Raelian's immaculately conceived little Eve now resides in obscurity in Israel with her mother. No father in sight. It wouldn't surprise me to learn that Eve's mother is a carpenter building kitchen cabinets in a suburb of Nazareth. Give little Eve a chance to grow up, and I'll bet you dime on a dollar she'll be paraded about as the female messiah of the new age. Wacky, you say? Just wait and see.

Cloning is one of those technological parlor tricks best left undone. Having demonstrated we can pull it off with sheep and cats, we'd be better off calling it a day and having a drink. Nothing creative ever comes off a Xerox machine. Biologically eliminating fatherhood won't lead anywhere constructive. A nation full of dead-beat dads and single moms on welfare already proves that beyond a shadow of a doubt. Utopian aspirations of a scientifically engineered master race ought to give us all a case of the shivers. And any notion that we could eventually clone an inventory of our own spare parts is just plain silly. Who needs a liver that's as genetically old as the original?

So rest in peace, Dolly old girl. We're sorry for turning you into a freak show in our circus. You deserved better. You didn't live nearly as long or as well as we'd hoped. I'm happy to hear that you learned to stand on your own hind legs and beg candy from the idly curious, even if the extra calories did go to your hips.

Thanks, Dolly. You reminded us all that we make second-rate gods.

William M. Cwirla, 2003