By Don Kidd

Scientist Claims Humans Will Be Immortal, But At What Price?

Famed author and scientist Rae Kurtz sees a future where mankind will attain immortality, possibly as early as next December, but there is a price.

"The price of humankind's immortality will be enslavement to microscopic robots. These 'nanobots,' blood cell-sized robots, will swarm through our body repairing organs and installing corrections to our genetic code. Yet, what will they want in return?"

Thomas Perlsof-Wisdom, who works in Harvard's Cloning Lab facility, sees immortality attained not through nanobots but by having spare bodies to provide organs to continually update our bodies. "I'm not calling Rae a quack. But I am calling him stupid and smelly. The future of our race is being realized right now in our Cloning Lab. Already we are at work to create a so-called 'Science Woman,' a woman who can excel at science and math, something God in his wisdom has been unable to do."

"Harvard's Cloning Lab is now, but what about tomorrow and the day after that? Mind-controlling robots are the future," Kurtz counterattacked. "The reason I smell is because of all the life-prolonging supplements I take, such as yak intestine extract and snail vomit jelly which I rub on my balls. But let's return to the subject. Once we control the disease causing genes, it is only a matter of injecting millions of tiny robots in our bodies and giving up our free will and body function control to them. Who knows what they will ask for in return? What if they want us to sit in small cubicles all day like accountants? What if they turn us into a world full of vampires and demand we consume the blood of others of our race? These ethical questions must be discussed by philosophers and theologians, people who have so few other useful functions to contribute to society."

"If only Kurtz could give me a sample of tissue from his body; an eye or a gonad, perhaps we could begin the cloning process," Perlsof-Wisdom explained. "There is no need to be afraid. Your immortality would be preserved in our cryogenic liquid nitrogen tanks, which are maintained by workers who slave in an underground facility, not too different from that depicted in Fritz Lang's 'Metropolis.' I for one don't want tiny metal creatures coming out my wee-wee when I go to the bathroom. Wouldn't it be painful, anyway?"

Kurtz shook his head spastically when asked about Harvard's cloning technology. "Death is a tragedy, at least for smart people. For the creatures who do little but drink beer and fornicate it is useful, for lawyers too. But for artists, poets, scientists, and cheerleaders, why not preserve them forever? Imagine a thousand Einsteins hooked up by special tubing to a great thinking machine. Of course they would need a very large blackboard to write down their ideas and some sort of arm mechanism to do the actual writing, but what ideas they would develop. Man could solve mysteries unsolvable up until now: What happened to Michael Jackson's nose? How does Ted Kennedy's liver keep up with his alcoholism? Why didn't Hilary give Bill more sex? How many more films is Woody Allen going to star in?"

Lee Silvertarnish, a Princeton biologist, doesn't believe in the future predicted by Kurtz; "The problem with being immortal is that people are involved. When you get people trying to protect their own interests you will have a world of war and famine, just like we have now. So really, what's the point? The gap between the haves and have-nots would widen. A united humanity would be as elusive as a hit single for a yodeler with a swollen prostate. It would require a change in human nature. Not until we take the 'human' out of human nature can it be possible."

"Besides, I don't want robots swimming up my pecker."

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