Re-Pet a Reality 482
tigerdarklord writes "The Sci-Fi concept of pet cloning has become a commercial venture. Genetic Savings & Clone now not only offers genebanking for your pet (alive or recently dead), but a full service cloning shop. Although they started by producing two clones of the CEO's cat, they have now produced their first commercial clone for a woman from Texas. GSC has modified their cloning procedure to overcome the resemblance issues demonstrated when the College of Veterinary Medicine, Texas A&M, created CopyCat. The technology looks promising but the $50,000 price tag will prove to place the service out of the reach of most pet owners."
More money than brains I guess (Score:5, Insightful)
The technology looks promising but the $50,000 price tag will prove to place the service out of the reach of most pet owners.
... and they get a pet that looks like their deceased pet yet isn't. "Mittens 2.0 scratches my furniture, Mittens 1.0 didn't."
If these people really loved animals and would quit trying to relive the past with a facsimile-pet the $50K (or less) would be better used if donated to a pet shelter for food and sterilization programs. And while they're there they could take home an animal currently on death row.
Yes, but... (Score:2, Insightful)
Not getting what they pay for - your cat is DEAD (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:More money than brains I guess (Score:0, Insightful)
If these people really loved animals, they wouldn't be sterilizing the poor things. Most pet-owners are not animal-lovers, they're just selfish bastards who want to have companions that they can control.
Re:More money than brains I guess (Score:2, Insightful)
It seems to me that it's just a way to stop the grieving process to some extent
Sure, it's natural to want to end personal suffering but the wait for the new animal and the eventual letdown of it not being identical to the clonee can't be healthy either. Grief is a natural part of being human. Yes, it sucks and that's why we have so many people medicated now (Feel Good Forever!)
When my cat (Baby, 13 year old silver tabby I found as a wee kitten) dies, I know I'll be devastated. But having a Baby 2.0 running around isn't the same. I'd pick up another cat once I'm over grieving for her.
Re:This should solve a dilemma (Score:3, Insightful)
Identical twins have existed throughout history, and yet the controversy still persists. This is hardly likely to provide any conclusive evidence.
Re:More money than brains I guess (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, they could. Of course, people who loved animals could take the $3000 they spent on a new computer to replace their barely-a-year-old computer and donate it to a pet shelter as well. People spend money. The vast majority of it goes to things that other people think are "wasteful," at least in this country. The only thing that changes is the perspective.
As to the wisdom of spending $50k on a cat - any cat - I'd say that it depends a lot on your overall financial picture.
And as for cloning, well, that's another debate entirely. Two debates actually, one on the ethics of it and another one on the effectiveness. Ah, joy.
Mortality (Score:3, Insightful)
Anyway, this is still a clone -- it's a different "instance" of the original animal (even if it's made via a copy constructor.) It won't have "genetic memory" of its new owner, it will be a completely different pet. Why spend $50,000? Why not spend $100 at the pound, or a few hundred from a quality breeder, or even a "FREE KITTYS" from a farm?
I see this as only catering to the clinically insane. The rich, clinically insane, but insane nonetheless. Oh, well, I suppose if there's cash to be made, why not make it? ...
Re:More money than brains I guess (Score:3, Insightful)
Exactly. Having Pet Dog V2 running around would just be a constant reminder of V1. Your pet dies, you deal with it. I have lots of pet dogs and it never ever ever gets easier, but death is an important part of life.
Re:More money than brains I guess (Score:1, Insightful)
In fact, we should appoint grub Emperor, so he can make sure we all always make smart decisions. I'd hate to be caught spending my money on things I want instead of using it for a charity that has grub's favor.
Thanks for your valuable input.
-Peter
What about pure-bred animals and Dog/Cat Shows??? (Score:1, Insightful)
And continue the thought, what happens then when we start cloning ourselves and we have 6 Micheal Jordons playing against 6 Larry Birds? Doesn't each clone have the right as an individual to play if they want? Should rules about clones apply or not?
Re:Unethical (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Looking forward to the spinoff technologies (Score:3, Insightful)
- safe and affordable organ transplants from our own cloned tissue
- endangered species returning.
- extinct species returning.
- opportunities for better cheap foods
- ultimately contributing to our immortality
Getting cloning out of the hands of a few drug companies who want to profit from the rest of the world's ignorance will create industries and opportunities we can't even imagine today.Once the price falls from $50000 to $50, and they clone organs of humans, medicine will never be the same.
Re:Is the RIAA ok with this? (Score:3, Insightful)
Symbol of our society (Score:3, Insightful)
No, just another example flagrant consumption -- commodity fetishism at its worst. Even life has a price for those who can afford it. As other have pointed out, $50,000 could have helped relieve a lot of suffering for people and animals alike.
Looked at another way, its just another example of our society's pathological fear of death. The Egyptians also had an major death fear/fetish and they even mumified their pet cats once in a while -- but at least they buried them!
And American soldiers are dying by the score to help preserve that way of life. Another sad day for the planet.
Re:More money than brains I guess (Score:5, Insightful)
...the $50K (or less) would be better used...
The odd thing about money is that it follows a conservation principle... it's never destroyed, it just changes form.
$50k was just liberated from somebody who didn't need it. Half of it went into taxes (on the operation, the materials for the operation, the salaries for the employees etc), the other half was distributed among those who performed the operation.
You could argue that it was a $50k investment towards the practitioners of vetrenary science, which I'm sure bennefits the rest of society somehow.
I have no problem with wealthy people spending money on frivilous things. It does bug me though when they spend it on things which hurt everyone else... like gas-guzzling cars, old growth wood, clothes made from slave labour, stuff like that.
IMHO, the greater harm was done just by creating another cat rather than saving one from a shelter... the $50k is better liberated regardless of how or why... and the harm done isn't that big a deal.
Points on flawed logic (Score:2, Insightful)
Your advice assumes the following:
The pet owner actually had their pet as a companion, instead of as a status symbol.
The dead pet isn't a purebred that already costs close to $50k
A cloned pet won't become the SUV like status symbol of the next decade.
Said Pet owner actually loves animals instead of using them as accessories.
People understand that memories and training are NOT part of what's cloned.
People understand that any similarity in behavior between the clone and the original pet is coincidental
People have brains.
People care about shelter animals.
Now, I can understand making these assumptions. You sound like the kind of person where these assumptions apply. You clearly care about animals and want to see them cared for and happy. Good for you. I applaud you and your intentions.
Just remember, there is most likely enough wealthy people who do NOT meet the above assumptions to make cloning pets a profitable venture.
Re:Mortality (Score:3, Insightful)
Witness religion, countless billions of men who are so bent on not-dying they've invented fairy tales about how death really isn't.
As for cloning, I couldn't agree with you more. What you are getting is at best the equivalent of a twin of your old animal. Twins, even identical twins, can be very different people.
Re:This should solve a dilemma (Score:3, Insightful)
A better question to ask is how delusional the client is.
Look, my partner I have a cat (or maybe vice-versa). We're damned fond of her, and we like to pretend we understand her, but we're both smart enough to know that our perception of her personality is massively garbled by the fact that we're human and she's not. There is no friggin' way that this woman's claim that Little Nicky's personality is "identical" to Nicky's is anything other than wishful thinking.
Our cat is dying. When she's dead, we'll miss her, but she will be dead. Even if $50,000 was pocket change to us, we wouldn't clone her because it'd be a really shallow way to treat our memories of her.
Re:Mortality (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Mortality (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, people that buy weird things must be insane. /sarcasm
Oh, well, I suppose if there's cash to be made, why not make it?
"Why not indeed!?!" -Bender /humorous quotes
1. Is this stupider than feeding the original cat caviar three meals a day? It's their money.
2. "Diciplined" people accept death? I never thought of 'diciplined' and 'wussy' as synonyms.
3. When vets/genetic researchers/Jurassic Park people use this type of technology to do something good/useful (OK, scratch the JP people), and it's easier/cheaper to do since the businesses already exist, what will you say then?
Also, this may not be perfect, but why not annoy the Grim Reaper a little, right? :)
Yndrd1984
Re:Mortality (Score:3, Insightful)
Very dubious ethics (Score:2, Insightful)
The cloned pet will probably suffer from health problems like infamous Dolly did.
On the other hand how many animals could have been saved if this lady would have gotten another cat at her local pound and donated the $50000 to it?
It is hard for me to think of anything else more egoistical than subjecting your next pet to physical suffering just because you are too immature to handle the loss.
Re:More money than brains I guess (Score:3, Insightful)
Do you own a microwave?
Re:But how long will it live? (Score:1, Insightful)
I would have thought that people who read about cloning would actually be more likely to know about this than people who don't.
Re:Immortality? (Score:3, Insightful)
I hate that sentement. It's given rise to uncountable generations of children being forced into attempts to live out their parents dreams. I'd find it great if we did live on through our children, but we don't. It'd be even more correct from both a biological, and psychological standpoint to say we live on in surviving siblings. We share much more geneticly with them, and were raised in exactly the same environment. If I took a bullet to the head, it wouldn't give me much comfort to know I had a brother as 'backup' though. Ideas of religious afterlife aside, when you're dead I don't see one living on as anything. You're only living on in the sense that the easter bunny is living on.
Re:More money than brains I guess (Score:1, Insightful)
For instance, my father is a cowboy, and the horse that he used to have was the last of its breed. He was quite intelligent, and was basically able to herd cattle by itself just like a sheep dog would herd sheep, as he had memorized the layout of the land and the position of the corrals. During the summers while I was in elementary school, I used to help them out on branding drives, which basically meant I would sit on the horse, hold on tight, and just let him do the driving
I wouldn't expect a clone of that horse to share that horse's personality. On the other hand, there are some common attributes/tendencies that definitely are affected by an animal's breed/genetic makeup. For instance, border collies are generally quite intelligent, and rottweilers have a tendency to be aggressive. The article's assertion that the personality of an animal is completely unaffected by its genetic makeup is pure unfounded BS. Breeders have been selecting both for and against personality traits with great success for hundreds (if not thousands) of years. There will be outliers, of course, but good breeders are able to create a noticeable (i.e., statistically significant) change in the frequency of occurence of the target attribute. The ranch at which my father works has been selecting against aggressive behavior in their cattle for decades, and it shows. Likewise, bulls bred specifically for use in rodeos come from lines that have a strong tendency towards aggressive behavior.
That horse was like a family member to us, and I would never expect a clone to replace him, but preserving his genetic makeup is something that I would have considered if given the chance. This kind of case isn't very common, of course, but there definitely are uses for cloning. You just have to understand what it can and cannot do.