Clone this, clone that!

The Mad Scientist was on the phone.
"Hey, Corbett, TMS here, are you ready to be cloned?"
"Uh, what?" I muttered, trying to wipe the sleep from my eyes.
"Do you want to be cloned?" TMS bellowed.
"Come on, who is this?"
Then the Ol' Columnist, warts, bumps and all, realized he was about to get another lecture in genetics.
It seems whenever there's a "cloning," such as the introduction of Snuppy, the world's first cloned dog, earlier this week, TMS wants this planet to know that humans could be next on the list.
It seems unreal, but there's a possibility if you take a look at the cloning data: Sheep in 1996; Mouse in 1997; Cow in 1998; Pig in 2000; Cat in 2002; and now Dog in 2005.
Being uneducated in The Clone Age, I tapped into the details about the Sheep named Dolly -- the first mammal to be cloned from an adult cell -- back on July 5, 1996 at the Edinburgh-based company PPL Therapeutics. In a BBC article, it read stockmen involved in the delivery thought of the fact that the cell used came from a mammary gland, so they gave her the name after country and western singer Dolly Parton. The cloned Dolly, bred normally on two occasions, according to the report, with a Welsh mountain ram called David. She first gave birth to Bonnie in April 1998 and then to three more lambs in 1999. However, a progressive lung disease led to Dolly's demise in February, 2003 at the age of six.
Then there was the Cloned Mouse in 1997. That would be Cumulina, who died of old age in August, 2000. According to the University of Hawaii medical school, Cumulina died in her sleep of natural causes at the age of two years, seven months. It corresponded to age 95 in human years.
Of course, since farming is my life, how could I forget about the cow, known as Kaga, No. 2, born in 1998. The cloned cow made headlines on July 11, 2000 when she gave birth, through artificial insemination at a research centre in northwestern Japan, to a newborn female, weighing 58.3 pounds. It was the world's first reported example of a calf being born to a cloned cow.
And now for those little artificial "oinkers."
It seems the scientists who created Dolly, also had a hand in creating five pig clones in March 2000. The PPL Therapeutics people said they hoped it would help meet the demand for pig organs if "they are approved for use in human transplants."
Incidentally, I almost forgot to name them: Millie, Christa, Alexis, Carrel and Dotcom.
In February, 2002 came the announcement out of Texas A&M of the first pet to be cloned -- a kitten called CopyCat, known as CC for short. According to a news report, CC was "a copy of her genetic mother, and not the tabby surrogate cat that actually gave birth to her."
When someone named Derek Conway from 'Cats Protection' heard about CopyCat, he said: "The cloning of cats interferes with nature and raises serious questions concerning whether a pet can ever truly be replaced."
It's certain some dog lover will have similar thoughts after Snuppy arrived on this planet via cloning.
This Afghan hound, created by controversial South Korean pioneering stem cell scientist Hwang Woo-suk, has obviously reignited a fierce ethical debate since scientists used a skin cell "plucked from another hound," according to the most recent issue of Nature.
With such an announcement, there have been renewed calls for "a global ban on the cloning of humans to produce babies."
Ian Wilmut, one of those "brains," who created Dolly from an adult cell in 1996, added fuel to the fire by saying, "Successful cloning of an increased number of species confirms the general impression that it would be possible to clone any mammalian species, including humans."
While the cloning of Snuppy appears to have re-opened the controversial door into the world of genetics, Dr. Hwang tried to shut it just a little bit by stating that cloning of humans was "unsafe and inefficient." Whatever that means. Of course, in South Korea, "human reproductive cloning is already banned."
However, that doesn't mean other scientists, in other nations, won't attempt to try to clone human beings.
SPEAKING OF CLONING, PART II: Whatever happened to the U.S-based company Clonaid or Dr. Brigitte Boisselier? It seems the controversial company and Boisselier have vanished into thin air, after announcing the birth of a "healthy cloned baby girl nicknamed Eve" back in December 2002? Clonaid and Boisselier were linked to a sect called the Raelians, fronted by Claude Vorihon, who called himself Rael, and claimed that humans were the result of a genetic engineering project run by "super-intelligent extra-terrestrials." So "beam me up, Scotty."
GETTING HIGH ON CURLING?: It's not a new story, but Joe Frans, who curled second on Wayne Middaugh's Ontario rink, received a two-year suspension for, get this, a doping infraction committed at the Brier in Edmonton. Said Frans: "I don't believe it. I drink a lot -- I'm a curler -- but I don't do drugs."
BELIEVE IT OR NOT: (From Uncle John's Bathroom Reader): The Inch in its earliest form was the width of a grown man's thumb. In the 14th century, King Edward II of England decreed that "the length of an inch shall be equal to three grains of barley, dry and round, placed end to end length-wise." This evolved into today's standard measurement ... So what about the Foot? Originally the length of a person's foot (obviously), it was later standardized in English-speaking countries to be 12 inches long, In other parts of the world, however, it could be anywhere from 11 to 14 inches in length.