by Barry Denton
View From the Backside
Clones & Groans
by Barry Denton
If you are so inclined you can get up this morning and order a clone of your favorite horse, mule, cow, or sheep. I am sure we are not far off from ordering an extra you!
On the high side of this idea you could get much more done if you multiplied yourself. However, if you succeeded in multiplying yourself, now you would have to multiply the people that are capable of putting up with you. This is where it would get tricky.
I have often wondered why God did not give us guidelines for this in the Bible. He should have known that if you give humans free will then they would try to come up with a way to get out of work.
Look at how many people we have on the public dole. If we get too many clones of ourselves working all the time will we have to have civil clones movement on our hands?
Let’s say that you want to clone your most talented horse. We should probably jump ahead 50 years until cloning is perfected. You will be able to end up with an exact replica of your good horse. Now you have two great horses.
In my book it spells financial disaster as it just made your good horse worth half as much because there are now twice as many. How do you justify what it cost you to clone him?
Perhaps in 50 years the price of cloning will have gone down as it will be so commonplace. Now let’s say you wanted all your cowboys mounted well so you clone ten of your good horse. If all the horses are exactly the same I guess you will find out who the best cowboy is.
If you had ten of the clones in a corral you would have to number them? Well, maybe not if they are all the same it wouldn’t matter which one you rode each day. It would make shoeing much easier as all the feet would be the same. You would only have to keep one size horseshoe at the ranch.
You may want to take this one step further and clone your good cowhand and cowdog. The cloning will allow us to cut down on the number of the people in the world and make hiring so much easier. Clones would eat the same so you could clone the cowhand that works the hardest and is the cheapest to feed.
I think it is quite clear that cloning is the answer to most of the rancher’s problems. I will not get into cloning the ranch wife. I will let you fellows create your own domestic bliss.
On a serious note, if you are cloning a great rope horse then it will be at least three or four years before you start using him. Keep in mind that as time goes on all competitions become tougher. So just because you had the champion rope horse in 2015, in reality a clone will not be good enough in 2019 as all your fellow competitors have had four years to get that much better, but your horse is still stuck at the 2015 level.
It might work on a ranch horse where things do not change very quickly. However, if it costs $50,000 to clone, then that is a very expensive ranch horse.
Many people will not even talk about cloning because they say it is messing with God. That is an interesting point, but God knows we are experimenting with cloning. If he made us, then what would he expect us to do?
The human race needs to move progressively forward and figure out for itself whether it is good or not. We humans have never been short on trying odd things.
Not too long ago I sat through a seminar on cloning horses. However, I was not convinced it was anything great.
One avenue where it might become great is if they could clone body parts and not the entire human. Just think if you needed a new kidney and they could go and get one out of the cooler. What if they could clone Secretariat’s huge heart? Someday you could literally meet yourself coming and going! n