ONE WHALE OF A CLONING CONCEPT

Here at Save the Wales, we will now don our favorite pair of genes and wade into the quagmire of cloning.

Why?

Well, mostly because it’s a Friday afternoon and, frankly, we’ve got nothing better to do.

Then, too, the National Weather Service is currently forecasting about a bazillion inches of snow for later today, so no matter how much we tick anyone off, the odds are good that no one will be dumb enough to get into their car and drive all the way out here to pummel us!

Anyway, this whole cloning thing came to light back in the mid 1990’s when a group of Scottish scientists succeeded in cloning a sheep named Dolly.

Of course, the real surprise here was the revelation that the term “Scottish scientists” is apparently not the oxymoron that most of us might have imagined it to be.

Until Dolly came along, it was generally accepted that the sum total of Scotland’s contributions to the world had been the invention of bagpipes, scotch whiskey and haggis: a bizarre culinary concoction consisting of assorted internal sheep organs boiled inside a sheep’s stomach lining.

While that is not exactly the holy trinity of scientific (or epicurean) accomplishment, it is clear that all those inventions were inter-related.

After all, unless you’d consumed an incredibly large amount of scotch whiskey, you’d never voluntarily listen to the bagpipes, let alone go anywhere near a steaming plate full of haggis.

By successfully cloning this particular sheep, those Scottish scientists not only averted any possibility of a worldwide haggis shortage, they also provided mattress manufacturers with a ready-made cast of characters for TV commercials that are still running today.

(It’s anyone’s guess as to whether it was those commercials or the prospect of a virtually limitless supply of haggis that drove even more people to drink, but let’s face it, the price of a bottle of scotch has nearly doubled since Dolly made her first appearance in 1996.)

Here in the United States, however, the cloning debate rages on.

Some folks rail against it on religious grounds while others question the process on more sectarian ethical grounds.

Save the Wales, however, is wildly in favor of cloning.

For example, our homonymous cousins, the whales, could certainly benefit from a cloning campaign.

Granted there are blue whales, gray whales, right whales, pilot whales, beluga whales, killer whales and even humpback whales out there, but not in the numbers there once were.

(Meanwhile, before any of you Clint Eastwood fans bring it up, there are not now nor have there ever been any Josie whales out there in the ocean, so give it a rest!)

Here at Save the Wales, we believe that if a bunch of whiskey-soaked Scottish scientists can come up with a way to clone a sheep, good old American know-how ought to be able to take that process a few steps further and start cloning something a good deal more important than a walking, bleating ingredients list for a plate of haggis.