Columnist Scott Dickensheets: A little genetic tinkering can go a long way

Scott Dickensheets

Tuesday, June 16, 1998 | 2:34 a.m.

MEMO TO THE biotechnology industry:

I've been following the exciting advances in genetic engineering, and I have a few suggestions. Nothing drastic, just things you can do to make life easier, or, more precisely, make my life easier.

I'm aware you people have many important items on the old to-do list -- cloning barnyard animals, battling diseases, finding new ways to keep Strom Thurmond going -- but I thought you might be able to work in some of the following; maybe on your lunch breaks. It's mostly tinkering and tune-ups.

1. Build a better bookstore clerk: I was scanning the newsstand at Borders Book Shop on Sahara the other day and noticed that the previous week's weeklies -- Time, Newsweek, the New Yorker -- were still on the shelves. It was Wednesday! Newsweeklies are like milk -- they have a limited shelf life and need to be out before that. I hailed a clerk sitting beside a cartful of publications.

"Do you have the latest New Yorker," I asked.

She shook her head: "It might be in one of the boxes in the back."

"I don't suppose you'd want to go look," I suggested, trying to sound apologetic for making her get up and --

"No," she replied flatly, staying seated. I've made similar requests of clerks in recent months. They've all refused.

So, if you could rejigger the Borders staff so they'll embrace the mundane aspects of customer service -- take the "nay" out of their DNA, as it were -- I'd be darned happy.

2. Devise a public spelling gene: When I first saw the old Texas Station billboard along U.S. 95, bearing the phrase "Filler up" instead of the correct "Fill 'er up," I knew this was a job for guys in lab coats. Alas, I didn't know which cutting-edge scientists to turn to then; in retrospect, those reproductive biologists were no help.

This should be simple for people with your R&D budgets; with just a bit of chromosome-tweaking, you can create an exciting new world in which decent people need not encounter, as I have, Chinese menus offering "chow main."

3. Can you rewire Magic Johnson? A simple adjustment to the why-not chromosome that prompted him to get into late-night TV. He needs a gene to remind him that exhibiting charm in American Express commercials isn't a springboard to Letterman land. Despite pulling in better ratings than either Sinbad's "Vibe" or Keenan Ivory Wayans' show, "The Magic Hour's" vapid content has rightly been savagely dismissed by TV critics.

4. Can you create less savagely dismissive TV critics?

5. Temper NBC's basketball broadcasters. This may be the gene-engineering equivalent of rebuilding an engine with your feet, but can you do something with Bob Costas, Ahmad Rashad and Isaiah Thomas? Perhaps block their manic endorphin release at the sight, sound, smell, mention of, proximity to or mental image of Michael Jordan. During the recent NBA Finals, they sounded like monks competing to devise the best proof of God's existence. No rush here; you have a year to work this one out.

6. Lastly, can you make me better-looking? And skinnier? And a better writer? And richer? And a smooth-talking so-and-so? This is a rush job.

So there you go, biotechnology industry. I hope at least some of it is possible. I'd ask what you could do with editors, but I know science has its limits.