Posthuman Blues

Science's latest frontier -- headless humans

"With Californians voting overwhelmingly to borrow $3 billion to begin cloning for stem-cell research, it's just a short leap to the suggestions of an Indian scientist who proposes breeding headless humans to be used for harvesting organs and other forms of commercial exploitation."

If this becomes medical reality -- and I hope it does -- imagine the dissent from the radical religious right, who simply won't get it no matter how many times it's explained to them that the bodies are simply life-saving tissue cultures in anthropomorphic form. There will be rioting and bombings. Geneticists will be killed. Fundamentalists will line up at the gates of biomedical clinics wielding inane placards and those sloppy wheeled crosses that are becoming more and more a part of the post-W cultural landscape.

Meanwhile, those of us actually wearing new custom-tailored bodies will glance furtively at each other and wonder how long till the stoning begins . . .

(For an excellent forecast of the potential abuses of cloning technology, I recommend Michael Marshall Smith's "Spares.")