Monday, March 28, 2011

my DNA can beat up your DNA

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As if labels and logos on shirts, shoes, jackets, gloves, pocket books and on and on ad nauseam weren't enough to make you wonder about people who have difficulty finding an identity, now comes word that it is possible to insert bits of wisdom (and idiocy no doubt) into the DNA.

People get tattoos, so why not spiff up the DNA with wise quotations from Buddhism or baseball or, I suppose, the Ku Klux Klan? The experiment was done as a means of identifying synthetic DNA, but I can well imagine trend-prone parents slipping in a little biblical or other 'everlasting' oomph if they had a chance.

The trouble with tattoos, of course, is that their beauty and importance wear out. What was kool and sleek and wise and with-it yesterday is sagging both literally and metaphorically today.

I'm not entirely sure if inserting bits of 'wise' DNA would create a person who then became a slave to his or her own synthetic wisdom, but even the idea strikes me as somewhere between ludicrous and horrific.
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