Lyrics are below the video.
Lyrics
Chorus
I want a clone, I don’t want to be alone
I want to talk to a younger me on the phone
I want to sing harmony with a younger me in the same key.
I want a new companion who’s the closest of kin,
A 50 year younger identical twin
I’m going to the cloning lab to make myself a copy of me
Back in ‘62 Sir John Gurdon took the nucleus from a body cell of an adult frog,
Poked it in a egg cell that had its nucleus removed–this fused cell grew to be a pollywog,
That pollywog was a clone of the adult — the first scientifically created animal clone,
And 50 years later, the Nobel Prize committee made a million dollar call to Mister Gurdon’s home.
We’ve all seen clones before, identical twins are clones, two separate people with the same DNA,
Or if you’ve ever made a cutting from a plant you’ve done some cloning, but not quite in Mr. Gurdon’s way,
He took a single cell from the body of an adult, and from it made a being, genetically the same,
A brand new approach to animal reproduction, a huge shift from Mother Nature’s game.
So If I want a clone I’m heading over to the lab where they’ll extract a nucleus from a somatic cell,
That’s any cell that’s not for sex it could be bone or gut or muscle or my epidermal cells could do as well.
‘Cause all these cells despite their different look and feel possess all of the genes required to make a new you or me,
And this idea that’s key to cloning underlies the principle that all cells have genetic equivalency
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Next I’ll get an egg cell, which I can’t of course provide, and we need to ensure it has no genes inside,
Cause my clone’s a clone of me I want fidelity and nothing besides.
One way we can enucleate the egg is to irradiate it shine some u.v. light on it which ruins the DNA in it
Now put my nucleus in it so that the DNA in it is mine and only my genes that to my new clone I will transmit
And now electric zap provide so that this cell starts to divide, no longer just my zygote clone it starts to be an embryo
It needs a place to grow so to a surrogate mom it’ll go
And nine months later, my clone’s new life begins, though half a century apart identical twins
We’ll be on Letterman and Leno and we’ll fly to San Francisco, and everywhere we go we’ll be the center of the show,
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If this sounds like just a story, remember all the glory
Ian Wilmut got in ‘96 for cloning the sheep Dolly,
And then another volley, genetically modified Polly,
Every single cell she had contained a human gene oh golly!
In years that followed camels, deer and ferrets mice, and cows and hogs
Pet owners have paid $50K to clone their cats and dogs
And even Rhesus Monkeys which are primates just like we are
It’s completely doable you see the technique’s come so far.
But now I’m here inside the lab I’m starting to think “maybe not,”
My clone of course would be a person not my minion or a robot,
And what if my genes don’t activate correctly and there’s problems and
Instead of singing harmony a sick bed’s where my clone will be
And I’ll be there right by his side, sick with regret not feeling pride,
My narcissistic grandiosity had got the best of me,
My self-absorbed preoccupation with genetic duplication
Simply has no place in a world with 7 billion population!
Modified Chorus
I don’t need a clone, it’s okay to be alone,
When I need someone I’ll talk to a friend on the phone
I want to sing harmony with the people who I find around me
Come back soon when I follow this lesson,
With a song about regenerative medicine
A way that we can clone that brings some benefit to humanity
And just a tiny preview of the kind of things we might consider
Imagine if for some reason, you needed a new liver
Instead of finding donors and running the risk of rejection
We clone your cells and grow you a liver that suits you to perfection.
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