August 7th, 2003
Damn Fundamentalists
The first horse has been cloned. One would think that most people would be impressed by this amazing scientific achievement that will allow us to clone winning geldings like Funny Cide, but check out the results of this MSNBC survey:
What do you think of the prospects of cloning horses?
It should be forbidden. : 38%
It's OK, but there should be restrictions on cloned racehorses. : 27%
There should be no restrictions. : 22%
Don't care or don't know.: 13%
Someone please tell me, what the hell is wrong with cloning horses?? In the immortal words of Cornelius Vanderbilt, the public be damned!
Anyway, I thought this part of the article was interesting for more than one reason:
THE SMALL, sturdy work horse is now 2 months old, weighs about 220 pounds and is in excellent health, said its creators. Their announcement beats a Texas A&M team awaiting the birth of its own horse clone.
The cloned Haflinger horse is named Prometea after Prometheus, the character in Greek mythology who stole fire from the gods and gave it to humans.