BEAUTY SHOP TALK

by

Vicki Charmaine Bunch

Cloning is in the news again. Is it evil, insane, or a great gift idea? People are always saying things like, "Vicki Charmaine, you're just as cute as a bug. I wish you would get cloned like that dog at A & M."

As darling as I am, even I would never consider cloning myself. You'd have to be an egomaniac.

The dog's owners are paying A & M a trillion dollars to clone it. The pooch is getting lots of press, as is Richard Seed,<qc> the homely physicist who is threatening to clone himself. "Little Richard" might not be much to look at but, if he's a chip off the old block, he won't suffer from modesty.

Most people know enough about themselves--their flaws and foibles--to preclude their doing unto some poor baby what was done unto them. In fact, it's almost impossible to find anybody around town who holds himself in such high esteem as to consider himself worth cloning.

The closest you could come is Berke Smyfe who deliberately married a woman with his same color hair. Berke believed his pompadour was the ultimate expression of human glamor and that it would be a sin not to pass it on to future generations. As their rug rats tumbled forth with every hair-do shape and color, Berke correctly surmised that his wife's flaxen locks came from a tube but by then it was too late. So much for genetic engineering.

But was Berke's hair superior? It's easy to convince yourself you have the world's best dog when so little is at stake. Okay, so Fido pees on the sofa. Big deal. Weird looking ears? No problem. You love the way he licks up all the kitchen spills, saving you from boring household chores. And he's got the cutest paws. Go for it--clone yourself a whole house full of Fidos.

Recreating yourself, however, is another matter. You are committing premeditated evil--condemning another human being to the tortures you endured in junior high. You know the horror. You've heard the taunts a thousand times. "Fatty!" "Bucktooth!" "Hairball!" Just like the kids called you. Your clone won't be able to dance, catch a ball, or get a date. Or she'll be doomed to thunder thighs, zits and that phobia about escalators. Or premature baldness, knock-knees and congenital halitosis.

It's child abuse to knowingly subject an adolescent to such agony.

How much more humane to take your chances, to bet on the roll of the dice. To have normal sex in hopes that Mom's gene for a nice scalp will whup Dad's dandruff gene. That the four good noses of your grandparents will cancel out your husband's pig snout gene. That big butts are recessive, despite all the evidence to the contrary.

Trust me. A baby stands a better chance when a myriad of disparate genes duke it out. May the better man win.

Besides, there are technical considerations. Everybody says, "Vicki Charmaine, why don't you just go clone yourself?" A beautician performing a cloning procedure--even if she is a member of Mensa--is about as dumb as a physicist deciding to do it. (Plus, I wouldn't wish this short neck on anybody.)

Cloning is no picnic. It's tricky getting those little do-hickies just right. Dr. Seed apparently considers himself up to the task--even though he did not go through rigorous medical training like Dr. Frankenstein.<qc> But Seed is not deterred. What's next from this jack of all trades? Giving perms? Modeling for the Gap?

It's kind of like Jack Kevorkian,<qc> the pathologist who converts living people into the inert matter with which he is accustomed to working. Would you want a petroleum engineer--even a good one--drilling your teeth? Sure, Seed has three Harvard degrees. But does a doctorate--in Russian literature, for example--automatically confer expertise in life and death matters? Yes, actually, but that's another column.

Back to Richard Seed. What about Little Richard? What about the commotion that will attend his life--the thing that happens after birth, even if you're a clone.

I don't know about Little Richard but, if I found out I was a clone, I would be pretty pissed.