Hillary Rodham Clinton was mocked violently for theorizing in her recent interview with Talk about why her husband cheats. She may be vindicated, though, by some other Southern marriages that have been living under a microscope. Just as Hillary traced Bill's cheating to the struggles between his mother and grandmother, these other males' philandering instincts were also treated as deeply hard-wired. And like the Democrat who out-Republicaned the Republicans, these males proved able to change according to the whims and needs of those they served.

But the male mice injected with the "monogamy gene" escaped the struggle that almost cost Clinton his presidency and, one presumes, his marriage. When Emory researchers spliced DNA strands from monogamous prairie voles into promiscuous mice, the latter became more bonded to their mates, sticking around even when the mousewives weren't in heat. Tom Insel, a psychiatrist on the research team, was quoted as saying, "What is really intriguing about this is that a change of a single gene can lead to a new pattern of expression in the brain and a profound difference in behavior."

Hillary had to like the sound of that. Though the country warmed up to her as a wronged wife, her accounting for her no-account spouse backfired and required days of damage control. But she should stay the course, because the monogamy gene could validate her original version: Bill's inability to keep it in his pants in the presence of big hair may be a kind of genetic disease. And you don't leave somebody who's sick; you get him treatment.

Maybe Bill Clinton doesn't want to be the first human test subject for monogamy gene therapy (possible drug names: Luvone; PantzOn; Noagra). Maybe he thinks those scientists down in Atlanta should just stick to pussy-whipping mice and let boys be boys. Tough. He owes her, big time: She reinvented herself for him, took the hit for the failure of his health-care plan and had to do the betrayal-and-forgiveness dance on TV at every bimbo eruption.

Bill the guinea pig could put Hillary's Senate campaign over the top. New Yorkers might vote her in just to watch the drug trial unfold. A digital display in Times Square could keep track of the days without a "slip," as they call it in AA. Hillary, meanwhile, could campaign without worrying about a new scandal, and Bill -- now undistracted by the hunt for poontang -- could touch up his legacy and find a new job. The scientific researcher vote, at the very least, would be sewn up.

A genetically tethered Bill Clinton could help Al Gore's campaign, too, by laying down the medical gauntlet. A vaccine for cocaine, which would block the drug's effects, is expected soon: Clinton could challenge George W. to 'fess up and take his medicine like a man. Gene therapy, the new fiber in Clinton's yo-yo diet of sinning and pleading, could complicate religion's role throughout the campaign. As the presidential candidates trot out their up-close-and-personal relationships with God, they would need to address the very nature of free will and determinism. After all, if it's suddenly clear that the Sixth Commandment is a matter of genetic predisposition, how are we to account for the other nine?

But even if the experiment works below the belt, how would Clinton survive the loss of all that sex for power's sake? How would the urge to stick an expensive cigar into a subordinate be rechanneled? Giving $10,000 speeches and stocking his library ain't gonna scratch that itch.

Working, say, in some high-risk, high-stakes business, where he can crush rivals in front of pretty secretaries, might stand in for his most swinish sex. But the "love me" Clinton, the one Gennifer Flowers says eats pussy like a champ, would need a place to play too. Assuming Hillary's still angry, he could devote himself for a while to winning her back. Given his love for his mama and the intellectual gulf between his Missus and his mistresses, Clinton probably suffers a virgin-whore complex like that of John Leguizamo in "Summer of Sam" -- the kind that precludes anything kinky with the wife.

The Clintons would just have to get over that. As his term winds down and her campaign heats up, the two could play sexually with the shift from prez and first lady to senator and first man. For Hillary to fuck him with a dildo would not only pass the baton of power but would claim him in a post-prairie vole way, cross-strengthening the gene therapy's bond. If Hillary's diagnosis in Talk is correct and he needs to repeat the trauma of pleasing two women, perhaps she could get a dark wig and other accouterments for an alter ego.

In short, he'd have to do what most married people do: figure out ways to keep sex with one person interesting. Even the estimated 60 percent of Americans who cheat on their spouses generally don't cheat as continually as Clinton, and they achieve some workable system of monogamy. The president, the last two speakers of the House and most of the Kennedys hold a distorted mirror up to the rest of the country. They show us a nation of rutting rodents, men constitutionally unable to remain faithful.

Would there be a market for a monogamy drug outside the Extremely Powerful club? Priapic cartoons like Clinton, Warren Beatty and Mick Jagger don't resemble men I know -- any more than the passive mommy voles look like my female friends and colleagues. Granted, whenever I read that 87 percent of Americans believe that Adam and Eve are their great-grandparents and that homosexuals are going to hell, I remind myself that my educated little circle in my Eastern city isn't any more representative of the United States than, say, Salon's readership is. Maybe I'm naive, maybe it's not just a power thing, maybe all the Joe Sixpacks in Kansas do have babes on the side. Since I don't know any of them (or Clinton or Beatty or Jagger, for that matter), I couldn't include them in my monogamy gene survey.

About 20 men responded to my e-mail question, "Would you take a drug that would make you content with your mate and never want to fool around with anyone else?" Most wanted the absurd premise clarified; they particularly wanted to know if the drug would keep you bonded to someone you no longer love. My favorite follow-up question came from a single straight man: "Are all males so required to self-medicate, or would there be a class of roving [polygamous] CEO dudes picking off the mates of contented drones?" Such responses suggest that my friends spray the bushes just like Clinton, Gingrich and most rodents, but with a self-awareness that breeds restraint. Most of the gay men surveyed said they would take the drug if their partner did too.

Several respondents suggested that the loss of desire would ripple far beyond the romantic dyad. One divorcee said a monogamy pill could knock out "FTD, Dr. Ruth, Oprah, Springer, sports, Playboy, music, painting and poetry." A straight serial monogamist toed the Camille Paglia line, declaring "the way one conquers [women] is through information, inspiration, imagination and ambition." Both these men maintained that insecurity and competition animates romance as well as other achievement, but neither advocated open marriage to foster this.

The married men in my survey -- the target market -- uniformly condemned a monogamy drug as "castration" and "lobotomy." (One said, however, if he did have "the Clinton disease," he would take the drug so as not to lose his wife and son.) "The conflict between lust and monogamy helps me understand the responsibility I've undertaken by being married, a responsibility that goes well beyond fidelity," one relative newlywed reported. Another friend who's been married 12 years and has two kids wrote, "Surplus longing is good for sharpening existential dread. Happiness is 'always already' relative, even for the naturally sanguine. Thus we endure our contentment as well as our pangs of lack." Fantasy, trust and the struggle to stay faithful make a bracing cocktail that these husbands would not want to dilute.

I'm skeptical about the monogamous paradigm -- I've seen it turn honest people into liars and happy people into the cast of Sartre's "No Exit." But my married friends' e-mails cheered me up considerably. These guys suggest that sexual denial can be rich and conscious and paradox-embracing, not just Puritanical repression or blind submission to a social more. Their reflections give the lie to biological determinism as well: Human maleness is not a disease to be cured, and monogamy can be something better than the path of least resistance.