Be a Clone! Be a Clone! Be a Clone!

I heartily beg the pardon of anyone infected with my last post. It seems that it just kept coming out and wouldn't quit. Next thing I knew, it was approaching epic proportions, though I doubt anyone will ever put it in the class of literature with other epics. It was long but The Iliad it's not. Something it did, however, was to get me thinking about some other technology stuff that is rapidly developing.

About 30 years ago I worked as a shipping/receiving clerk in the warehouse of a hospital. (I also had a shipping/receiving job at a toolbox manufacturing firm in Arkansas, but the only thing I received there was a hard time. Ba da bump.) Anyway, even in that age long ago, it was amazing the number of artificially produced replacement parts there were for people.

We routinely received hips, knees, replacement lenses for eyes, valves for hearts, and God knows what else I'm forgetting. I worked at another hospital in Minneapolis in the surgical pharmacy and that dude that invented the artificial heart came to do some transplants. Jarvik was his name? Not even talking about transplanting the real deal here. We're talking about mechanical replacement. Nobody is going there anymore. Too many real transplantable hearts, livers, kidneys, etc. available, and mechanical stuff is only a temporary solution until the real deal is available. Talk about your rejection of foreign bodies. But I digress.

The current direction of research in that area is cloning. A great many serious scientists now believe that we can take stem cells and grow whatever spare part you need, and with all the requisite DNA to match your own so you don't get that nasty rejection reaction and have to take those drugs that shut down your systems that protect you from infection by foreign bodies, etc. Personally, I'd like a full body transplant. Gotta keep the brain I was born with, but I could surely use an upgrade on the body it came in. Real doggone tired of being a short, fat dude with thinning gray hair. Looking for something in a 6'2" Adonis style with something other than this Northern European inherited pigmentation. Something more Mediterranean say. Now if the cloning dudes could get me that, I'd be happy, as undoubtedly would be my wife.

What got me off on this tangent was a piece I read in the newspaper a week or so ago, regarding the growing of pork strips from pork stem cells. Cool. Who needs "Soylent Green?" Who needs to get grossed out about the fact that real animals have to be killed so we can eat them? Just harvest some stem cells and put them through the process and "Voila! Ham. Pork chops. Pork tenderloin." For you islanders out there in the Pacific who are still addicted to Spam, I'm sure we can come up with something that replicates that. Sorry Hormel, the biochemistry lab is putting you out of business. Porky can avoid the slaughter now. Unless, of course, Hormel goes into the cloning business and subsequent manufacturing of cloning based meat products. Invest now. The stock is only going up.

And that's just pork. Won't be long until the labs will be producing beef, turkey, mutton, and scads of meat-like substances that "taste just like chicken." Ain't science grand? We can figure out incredible ways to feed every person on the face of this planet, and make our bodies healthier, but we can't figure out how to stop killing each other and the people with the money to reap all these high-tech benefits want to keep it all to themselves. Universal healthcare? Forget it. Cloned body parts for poor people? Let them clone their own damned body parts. Mass produced high protein food substances for all the 6 billion plus people on the planet? Well if they can afford it. Hey a guy/gal has to make a profit. How else do I pay for my 6 cars/trucks/SUVs/airplanes/boats/spacecraft? How else do I pay for my new swimming pool and all the domestic help?

Know what that means? I'm not getting that 6'2" Adonis body. Cheap meat that comes from cloned stem cells will only mean that a few rich people will have it available at Whole Foods sometime in the next 50 years. Meanwhile if you need spare parts for your body, I hope you have a really good job so you can afford the health insurance that will get them for you.