I'm not sure if you've seen the recent news reports about the wonder that is the new seedless lemon.

In all of the articles I read they seemed very keen to point out that this had been achieved not by some monstrous genetic modification program but rather by the lovely fluffy process of taking a cutting. Of course there was no mention that the scientific description for this would be cloning.

Yes indeed, as the article says, it wasn't the result of genetic modification. All they had to do was find one seedless lemon tree and then clone it until we could harvest a world wide supply.

The situation, unfortunately, is that "cloning" and "genetic modification" have taken on horrendous slurs so anything associated with them seems tainted. The same as asylum seekers - what most people mean when they use the term is bogus asylum seekers.

Anyway you can ponder this when you sit back enjoying your gin, tonic and seedless lemon.