Now that the Gulf of Mexico is placid as a mill pond, at least temporarily, we can turn our thoughts to things more esoteric than survival. And with apologies to John Steinbeck, the thoughts are of armadillos and their mammalian cousins, man. Armadillos have expanded their range into North America over the past century despite sharing that century with a constantly expanding population of cars and trucks. (So much for irrelevant correlations.) Armadillos, like man, will eat almost anything as long as it hasn't been dead too long. They also exhibit the twinning process, carried to a much higher level than mankind. Armadillos can deliver identical quadruplets or even octuplets, all from a single fertilized egg. That is carrying the twinning process one or two steps beyond identical twins. Human twins, although novel, are not unusual. Identical twins are less common, but much less spectacular than armadillos' identical octuplets. Because this is a family news paper, the production of fertilized eggs will not be discussed further here. However, suffice it to say, the processes are more similar than dissimilar for armadillos and humans. The point of this esoteric editorial is that the miracles of birth and cloning are related. Cloning is not a new concept. Armadillos have perfected the process. Man and woman have been doing it without even knowing it. Now scientists have refined the process. It is now up to society to use good judgment and the process, like atomic power and stem cells, for good and not evil. |
