High life
Defying the gods
Taki
Rougemont hen on a dark and stormy night on the banks of Lake Geneva the great 18- year-old Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus, she was 182 years ahead of Yvette Cooper, New Labour's mini health minister. This is not surprising. Mary had literary talent galore and an imagination to boot. Hanging out with Shelley and Byron couldn't have hurt, but hers was the only story among the three or four — I'm not sure if Polidori contributed that night in Villa Diodati to be published. Poor Mary. Poor Victor Frankenstein. Poor Prometheus. None of them suspected that defying the gods was and is a no-no. Mary lost Percy five years later, Victor was eliminated with extreme prejudice by his creator, and old Prom, who stole the fire trying to help humanity (clone it, in reality), was severely punished by Zeus by being chained to a rock and vis- ited by an eagle who ate his liver by night, a liver that grew back to its original state during the day.
Here I have an interest to declare. Prometheus and I have something in com- mon. We both suffer from liver problems. I also have something in common with Frankenstein. His direct descendant, Clement von Frankenstein, occasionally writes for me in Taki's Top Drawer. (Mary picked the F name after the Austrian ambassador to Geneva, a cousin of the Schoenburg-Hartensteins, whom the moth- er of my children descends from.) Lastly, 1 spent my youth in Villa Diodati, back then owned by the Washer family, and whose son, Philippe Washer, a great tennis champ, was and remains a very good friend.
But back to Yvette, the health ministry and New Labour. According to press reports reaching me here in good old Hel- vetia, la petite Yvette charmed her full-bel- lied elders in the Commons while defending promethean plans to clone human embryos. For medical research, that is. All I can say is, thank God for that. The world is an ugly place as it is, and the last thing we need is another Jack Straw or Robin Cook, or for that matter, another Tony Blair. Just imagine what these ego- maniacal wallet-lifters would do if they could clone themselves with impunity. I know for a fact that Cookie would clone hundreds of little Cookies in order to get used to seeing himself without feeling ashamed. Ditto Straw, whose countenance has scared the living daylights out of more children than the monster of Victor Frankenstein ever did. And what about Blair? A man so in love with the sound of his own voice, he is bound to order thou- sands of little Blairs, all telling non-stop lies. It is enough to halt medical research forever.
Mind you, having said that, cloning cer- tain parts of the human body would help Spectator readers. Like a few brain cells for the poor little Greek boy (thus improving this column) of which I have left hundreds of millions in nightclubs and places unknown. A new liver would provide Annabel's, Tramp, the GreenGo and Moomba, the latter in the Bagel, with unlimited future earnings. And elbow, knee and shoulder parts would ensure the con- tinuous amusement of sports fans the world over while I pursue my quest for ath- letic glory.
But I guess it is not to be. New Labour wants human creation without conception, not for the first time taking all the fun out of life, and to hell with the sanctity of human life. After all, the sanctity of the individual has been done away with by them, why not the sanctity of life itself? When Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley first wrote about creating a living being, she had lost one child and had a six-month-old to care for. Her story can be viewed as a reflection of Mary's fears of childbirth or having a deformed child. The Catholic Church is against cloning human embryos because it rightly believes that embryos are early forms of human life. The 'modernists' insist that stem cell research will offer unprecedented medical opportunities to relieve human suffering. The poor little Greek boy is going with the Catholics on this one. First, because there are too many of us. The last thing we need is to hang around forever. Second, because of what happened to Prometheus. (If you don't believe me, just take a trip to the Caucasus, and see for yourself. If the Chechen rebels don't get you, the sight of a very old man having his liver chewed by a bird will.) Finally, for the reasons I have listed above, Blair and his gang are bound to clone themselves, and I'd rather be chained to a rock in the Caucasus than face such a world. Happy New Year!
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