Cloning Our Lord

The Associated Press recently ran an item with interesting implications. Datelined Washington, the story (Christchurch Star, May 4) told of efforts by a panel of geneticists to obtain for analysis samples of cell material from Abraham Lincoln. Because Lincoln was shot, bits of his brain, with samples of blood and hair, were preserved from the surgeons' attempt to save his life.

The panel wants to know whether Lincoln suffered from Marfan's syndrome, an affliction that makes people long and spindly. More generally, the experiment could "set a precedent for molecular studies on historical figures that could determine their susceptibility to inherited disease and, ultimately, personality traits that may have influenced their decisions."

Such reasoning is hollow — no blood test is going to tell us why Saddam Hussain invaded Kuwait, unless there's a gene for thinking you can get away with it. But there remains the intriguing idea of genetic reconstruction, and this indeed is what the scientists have in mind for Lincoln. "Once recovered," Lincoln's DNA "would be cloned to produce sufficient quantities for research."

"If the tissue samples were found to still contain recoverable DNA...a library of Lincoln's genetic makeup could be recreated," the geneticists say. But why stop with some cultured cells in a petri dish? Armed with a full genetic library, we eventually might go on to clone Lincoln himself and re-raise him from infancy.

The ramifications of this test-tube Abe would be remarkable. American parents have traditionally told their sons, and lately their daughters, that if they work hard enough they might grow up to be President. Think of having to tell your kid he used to be President. The

Lincoln administration would be a tough act for any lad to follow.

But my mind is running more in the direction of another historical character whose blood, if you believe the Shroud Crowd, is still available.

Imagine if we could clone the being whose blood is found on the Shroud of Turin, recreate him as a test-tube baby, and raise him in our culture. What would this kid be like, and how would people react to him? "Why, you don't look Jewish!" "All right, so Scientology was a disappointment to you. Why don't you just walk away rather than insist on reforming it?" "You always hang around with those strange guys — how about finding a nice girl and settling down?"

I'd welcome a DNA test for the Shroud, just as I looked forward to the carbon-14 test, and suspect that the Shroud groupies once again would be in for a shock. For there's every likelihood that the clever fellow described by Bishop d'Arcis in 1389 as having concocted the Shroud of Turin did not use human blood to tart it up, but blood from a slaughtered beast. Perhaps he waggishly meant to give a literal reading to traditional Christian allegory about the blood of the lamb.

If at some future date Shroud blood is cloned into something that prefers "Baaaah" to King James Aramaic, we can only guess at the catalogue of Shroud Crowd excuses — the philosophical: "Oh, science is fallible" (religion obviously isn't). The historical: "The only cloth Joseph of Arimathea could find was an old butcher's apron." The theological: "What more fitting way for our Lord to reveal Himself to the modern age than as a cross-bred Merino wether?"