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BUDDHA: KEEP WATCH FOR ABE'S DNA COMEBACK


>From erstwhile Buddha-subscriber and New York correspondent, Andrew Horton.

Hey little Camper!

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>From the NY Daily News, 5/16/96:

KEEP WATCH FOR ABE'S DNA COMEBACK

Four score and seven years ago, Americans never would have imagined they'd be
able to buy President Lincoln's DNA-and wear it.

Come August, they'll be able to do just that it StarGene Inc. in San Rafael,
Calif., has its way. The company plans to replicate Honest Abe's genetic code
and encase it in a collectible pocket watch. It's the brainchild of Dr. Kary
Mullis, the eccentric 1992 Nobel Prize-winner who was once listed as a DNA
expert in the O.J. Simpson trial.

The company obtained a lock of hair from Lincoln, and, through the polymerase
chain reaction that Mullins discovered . . . chromosomes from the late
President's hair will be replicated and encased in a plymer gemstone in the
watch.

"The DNA was in a hair sample taken by a Dr. Leale, a physician who examined
Lincoln at the time of his death," said StarGene's Carole Zimmerman. "It's
been in a beautiful sealed box all this time." 

StarGene has an exclusive contract with University Archives in Stamford,
Conn., which houses 80 locks of hair once adorning the heads of Elvis,
Einstein, JFK, Charles Lindbergh and others.

Scientists in the StarGene lab are authenticating the Lincoln sample this
month, with tests to be completed Monday. If all goes well, StarGene will
reproduce a limited edition of 5,000 watches, selling at about $195 apiece. 
"DNA is the blueprint of the soul," Zimmerman said. 

The company is hoping to offer reliquary-like jewelry bearing the DNA of
Marilyn Monroe, Robert E. Lee, Geronimo, Napoleon and others. 

"We are interested in a line of Mary Pickford earrings," Zimmerman said. 

Mullis, who surfs daily and has admitted to experimenting with LSD, was asked
if this might not lead, with improved technology, to President Lincoln's
being cloned by scientists who get hold of the watch.

"I'm not worried about that," Mullis told The News. "Maybe someday in the
future. He was a pretty good President. But the cost would be prohibitive.
And really, what you'd get is the little, baby Lincoln, and you'd have to
raise him in a log cabin all over again."

But would the private company consider producing trinkets bearing at least
the partial DNA of someone as evil as Hitler?

"Why not?" Mullis said. "People could take the DNA and boil it every
morning."


TEXT ENDS

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