Legal jumpstart emerges for human cloning.

WASHINGTON, D.C. Human cloning is morally repugnant, widely condemned, and shunned by the World Wrestling Federation -- but that hasn't stopped corporate scientists and marketers from pursuing it. Lost in the fuss, however, is the need for a thorough informed consent statement to prevent lawsuits stemming from the procedure's unfortunate side effects. According to Hugo Gurl -- a geneticist and trial lawyer at the South Acapulco Center for Biological Enhancement and Tanning Parlor -- an up-to-date statement should read as follows:

We the undersigned do hereby declare that human cloning may produce undesirable side effects. These include but are not limited to: the growth of two or more heads, the replacement of the original human's head with that of a fly, a head that will neither stop talking nor lower its voice, a head that turns in circles and makes a "woo-woo" sound whenever surprised or startled, genitals on the wrists and ankles (these cost extra in California), a shag haircut, tattoos' that cover the body in a replica of a lime-green leisure suit, cardboard fingernails, fluorescent blood, dinner-plate-size ears made of flexible Dacron that allow for flight on windy days, an insatiable craving to be publicly humiliated by that stern British lady who hosts The Weakest Link gameshow on television, a third eye in the right armpit, a form of halitosis that no known breath freshener can eradicate, and diarrhea.

"This could all change as new research on cloning becomes available," Gurl said at a Capitol Hill press conference. "For now, cloners can be confident that my proposed informed consent statement covers all the legal bases."