Not Getting Any

A report on BBC News24 had me choking on my freshly dunked bourbon biscuit this morning. It seems that scientists in Newcastle have successfully bio-engineered their own sperm.

And by their own sperm I don’t mean, like, you know, their own sperm – cos, let’s face it, every bloke I know (with the possible exception of Michael Jackson) bio-engineers their own sperm on a regular day to day basis. It kind of comes naturally. Sorry. No pun intended.

No, these guys have bio-mechanically engineered a whole bunch (gaggle? shoal? flock?) of spermatazoa in a laboratory – possibly in a petri dish, possibly in a test-tube, certainly not in a tissue – from human stem cells.

Now, I know I’m being glib and flippant in my approach to this and I know that the impetus for this research is to help men with low sperm counts bestow the bounteous joy of children upon their female partners but my first thought was: are these scientists utterly mad? They are making men’s role in the procreation of the species totally totally redundant.

Yeah. I know. Some females among you will (quite rightly perhaps) say that we men have been a negligible ingredient in this endeavour for years. Let’s face it a dirty mag, a willing donor and a turkey baster is all a woman really needs to get a bun in her oven.

But where’s the fun in that – for anybody?

You see, my fear is that any kind of scientific research – no matter the honourable motivations that lie behind it – can ultimately be abused and used to the detriment of our species. And in fact probably will be.

I’m amazed this didn’t occur to the research scientists. I mean they have literally rendered the existence of men (except maybe for plumbers) completely unnecessary. Why would they willingly do this?

My theory is that the scientists involved are highly geeky and have never had and never will have girlfriends. They are being motivated by disenchantment and “rejection anger”. Because they are not getting any they’re going to see to it that the whole concept of any is totally removed from the equation of ongoing human life on this planet.

Now some of you women might shrug and say so what, who cares? But the heterosexual woman among you need to bear one thing in mind. If us straight men aren’t getting any. You’re not getting any either.

It’s time to resurrect the Luddites! It’s time to smash the machinery! Before our own machinery de-evolves into redundant protuberances of skin and tissue matter (like the appendix) through lack of use...

Out Of Africa

A short while ago – in zestful arrogance – I wrote a sarcastic email to some poor enterprising con man in Burkina Faso. I took the mickey out of his risible attempts to get me involved in a multi-million dollar scam and scoffed at the very idea that my Great Aunt Matilda could have enjoyed sexual congress with a tribesman of that region a century ago producing an off-shoot of the family tree that would, in 2009, name me as a the sole heir to his dubiously misbegotten fortune.

Of course I was aware of the scientific theory that we all ultimately descended from a single tribe in central Africa many thousands of years ago but ignored it in favour of cutting edge satire and a cheap joke about Kunte Kinte being my long lost cousin.

I now bow my head in shame.

Dr Alice Roberts (if my doctor looked liked her I’d become a hypochondriac) has investigated and, to my mind, proven the theory as fact beyond all shadow of a doubt. Her programme, The Human Journey, has been essential Sunday night viewing for the last 4 weeks.

And what a terrific gig for Dr R.

She got to sashay her pert little tush across every continent on the planet and got her hands wrapped around some amazing looking bones. Lucky girl.

But it wasn’t all sun screen and sultry pouts to camera for Dr R, Oh no. She worked bloody hard too. She risked a night alone in the African bush, fingered lots of ancient skulls in dusty museum store rooms and correlated and produced a work of such superlative televisual research that it stopped me mourning the absence of Lark Rise To Candleford.

It seems that we did indeed – all of us – descend from one single tribe that emerged out of Africa about 50,000 years ago. A tribe that gradually worked its way up into Europe, jogged across into Asia and Australasia and finally made the big leap into the Americas about 14,500 years ago – spreading its bounteous seed like wild oats as it went. Genetically the theory has also been proven. Undeniably. Irrefutably. The men in white coats say so. Their scientific barcode thingies prove it.

We are all of us related.

You are all of you – including the con man in Burkina Faso, including Dr Alice Roberts – my brothers and sisters.

Technically we’ve been inbreeding for years.

No wonder the planet is in such a God-awful mess.