Three Men On a Boat

If you were alive and knew what the world was about in 1978 then the news of Louise Brown's birth would have had you sitting up and taking notice. The world's first test-tube baby was born and there was celebration as well trepidation, sometimes all in one breath.

Her mother had blocked fallopian tubes and... Ok that part of the story is boring.

But indeed we got into a new realm that started a new race. How could we begin to eliminate nature from the process of child-birth. That gave birth to the thrill of the late 90s and 2000s in cloning which in turn gave us that infamous Korean bloke who claimed to have cloned and yet hadn't.

Now I am not one prone to conspiracy theories and as far as I know, Louise who is 30 today, has done well, now living in Bristol somewhere with her husband and 18-month old child. Also, even though hundreds of thousands of babies have been brought into this world in the same way since then but it doesn't stop me wondering where we are going. What happens next and what are we setting a precedent for as a race? I am sure that there is some level of merit to some of this development but where does it put us?

I am not taken to religious fundamentalism but what arena may we have entered into with such radical development as a human race. It is great that we do think outside the box but do we have to live outside the box as well? And have we forgotten that the only reason we think outside the box is so that we can fix the life inside the box?

Do we really want to deal with where this might go? It is odd coming from this member of the crew given that the ambition that burns from within me would cut through a galaxy of titanium but one cannot help but wonder...

And while I wonder... I could ask one question only. But even if it were asked, the world would not suddenly apologise for being wrong. Unless they came in the form of Akon