63 THERAPEUTIC CLONING Michael D. West, Ph.D. On a warm, still summer’s night in August 1999, I stood in an Indiana hospital intensive care unit and turned my head to look at the clock. It was nearly 2am, the dark and deep hours before the morning light, when most human deaths occur. My dear mother’s heart raced at 140 beats per minute, but that was about to end. She was dying, the woman who had given me life. I had long devised a plan that I hoped would one day help her, a plan some 20 years in the making. It was a plan to profoundly intervene in the biology of human aging. But I must say my best efforts seemed impotent at that moment, staring into the icy face of death. At my request, a nurse pinched her fingernail bed one more time with a hemostat, squeezing her tender fingertip with the force of a pair of pliers. She winced, though imperceptibly. That was enough for the attending physician. She ordered the respirator that periodically forced air into my mother’s lungs to be turned off along with the intravenous dopamine that was driving her heart. My eyes were fixed on the moni- tors. Mom’s chest flattened. Her heart at first maintained its steady rhythm of 140 beats per minute and then slowly began its descent, drifting downward like a falling leaf in autumn – 140, 125, 110, 100…