Gallery Submission

Click for Larger Image

Name:

Mitch Dushay

E-Mail:

Send e-mail to this artist

Concept:

As one who has dedicated his life to Science, I have firm belief in technology. Dolly the sheep was cloned in 1997, and human stem cells were isolated from embryos in 1998. Human cloning is not ethical or even possible today, but this may change. It may be possible to devolve human cells from a mature differentiated state back to stem cells in the future. For that reason, I propose to place samples of my cells in a -80°C freezer. Not merely sperm bank-type specimens, these may be the germs of full-blown Mitch clones. The combinations to the locks would be held by trusted colleagues at the NIH until the technology is available and the time is right. My preserved brain will sit on top of this freezer in a crystal jar.

In addition to the freezer and jar, my crypt will contain a comfortable seat and a mail slot. Visitors will be encouraged to sit down and drop a note. An inscription will describe how I kept up with people with postcards. I hope family and friends all over the world will continue to send postcards posthumously and thereby refresh my memory. Future clones thus will have mail waiting for them at incept; welcoming them into the world, giving them a sense of who they are, where they came from, and adding meaning to their lives.

Bio:

Mitch Dushay was born in Syracuse, New York in 1959. He graduated from Brown University in 1982, studied at SUNY Buffalo, and received his Ph.D. in insect behavioral molecular genetics from Brandeis University in 1992. Postdoctoral work in insect immunity took him from UC Riverside, to Stockholm University in Sweden, to Notre Dame, to the University of Maryland and so forth. His papers have been published in scientific journals such as Genetics and PNAS.