I Worry About Death a Lot Mine and Everyone Else S. My Old College Roommate, Bob Ruthman

Cloned

I worry about death a lot – mine and everyone else’s. My old college roommate, Bob Ruthman, used to worry that they’d find a cure for cancer the day after he died of it.

I hate the thought that they’re going to find a cure for death the day after I die.

The news from Scotland this week suggests they may be making some progress. Dr. Ian Wilmut cloned a sheep. He produced an exact, genetic replica of a sheep, which he named Dolly. The next logical step is to clone a human being. You know, like me and possibly even you.

If we can make duplicates of ourselves, we’re going to do it. Don’t tell me it’s immoral or unethical. Human beings always do anything they find out how to do whether it’s immoral and unethical or not. We made the atomic bomb.

We could start cloning the best of us. It would be nice to have more capable, creative, honest people on Earth.

We’d have ourselves hundreds of men as smart as Stephen Hawking, as straightforward as Colin Powell, as talented as Itzhak Perlman. We could have a bunch of Walter Cronkites…lots of men as strong as Arnold Schwarzenegger. We’d clone the defensive line of the Green Bay Packers. We’d have plenty of women as bright as Madeleine Albright who looked like Candice Bergen. We might clone every college professor. Every Olympic champion.

I’d hope some of us on 60 Minutes might be cloned so the show could go on forever. I wouldn’t mind having a clone stand in for me so I could take a month off without worrying about being replaced.

There’s been a rumor that Diane Sawyer’s coming back to CBS. If they cloned Diane, she could be on both 60 Minutes and Prime Time Live. They’d have to clone her paycheck.

The big problem with cloning is, who picks the people to be cloned. We couldn’t clone everyone. We already have too many people…what we need is fewer but better and that raises the specter 幽靈 of Adolf Hitler.

1 There are a lot of people we wouldn’t want two of. Even one of some is too many. We could take two of my old college roommate, but we don’t need two of anyone convicted of murder. Someone’s bound to suggest we not clone any high school dropouts or illegal immigrants. No one with a traffic ticket. That would leave me out.

So, that’s going to be the big problem, who decides who gets cloned.

Cloning is all done with genes in a laboratory. Theoretically, that could mean the end to producing babies the old-fashioned way…but I don’t think so.

From Andy Rooney, Years of Minutes, pp. 359-360.