[Paleopsych] Nature: Biologists come close to cloning primates

[Werbos, Dr. Paul J.]

For some reason or other -- I am reminded that it's not just
politicians who forget to tie their shoelaces or totally lose touch
with reality, regularly.

It is shocking to me that even world-class biologists talk about cloning to 
themselves and to others
without discussing telomeres. Though I am curious what happened in the past 
few years
to the black projects on teleomeres -- the reality has some resonance 
with  a wild novel Greg Bear wrote years ago.

At least ONE of the TV shows on cloning a few years back did try to explain 
the facts
of life. "Could it be that this cloned sheep, young on the outside, is old 
on the inside?"

Scenario: rich couple sneaks off to idealistic doctor in the Virgin 
Islands, a cult hero to many,
who offers to clone the big rich sugar daddy outside the repressive borders 
of the US.
The clone comes home to the US with great fanfare... but in his teens his 
knees start to go,
his hair grays, and he becomes a regular Dorian Gray horror show. About what
one would expect, really, when people do cloning with special telomere 
technology and associated
p52 and whatnot stuff.

It's all basically solvable... but the same is true of our energy policies.

And indeed, the current energy discussions in elite policy circles all over 
the world
do offer some argument for paying more attention to the hereafter... 
because, after all, what chances
will the here have if they don't show radically different behaviors?

But as for those guys... there is no reason to believe they know one whit 
more about the hereafter than
about the here. The former merely offers more opportunity to disregard 
empirical reality and get away with it,
politically...