Wooly Bully

I was reading a NYT article about a group of scientists speculating about resurrecting an extinct mammoth, à la Jurassic Park III. I found the article interesting for a couple of reasons. There are the sciency aspects of the story, and being the nerd I am, that type of thing fascinates me. I also got a kick out of the way the scientists seemed to throw out (seemingly arbitrary) monetary figures about how much such a project would cost. Like these guys were contractors you've called up to get an estimate on that new deck you're installing. "Sure we could build ya a wolly mammoth. It ain't gonna be cheap. That'll run ya about, say, ten million, give or take." Scientists also speculated that if one could clone a mammoth, a Neanderthal couldn't be too difficult either.

It was a geniunely fascinating article. Until i got to end, where I read this bit:

"Catholic teaching opposes all human cloning, and all production of human beings in the laboratory, so I do not see how any of this could be ethically acceptable in humans," said Richard Doerflinger, an official with the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.

What is that quote even doing in a science article? You never read a story about a church bake sale being interrupted with an interview from some Nietzschean saying "God is dead, cookies are pointless and futile." And, you know, it's not like the Church has this great track record when it comes to science, what with all that flat earth, center of the universe, burn the witches type stuff in their cannon.

So quit spoiling my science articles with b.s. about whatever some schmoe from some church thinks about atoms, or black holes or cryogenics or anything.