California Company Offers to Clone Dogs For 5 Highest Bidders
This is pathetic! I understand wanting to have a treasured furbaby supposedly returned to you but clones are NOT the original dog!
There are certain dogs who’ve been in my life that I would love to have back alive and healthy. But part of loving a dog or dogs is the knowledge that you will outlive them. Its a sad fact. Trying to bring a dog back via cloning is wrong on so many levels.
First, expecting a cloned dog to be the original dog is not fair to him or you. There are so many experiences you shared that built the bond between you that the clone has not experiences. Yes, the clone can look like your beloved furbaby but he or she is NOT the dog you love.
Second, there are so many needy dogs in shelters and with rescue groups that creating a clone seems wasteful. Unlike responsible breeding, cloning is not done to improve a specific breed. Dogs are cloned to serve the emotional needs of the humans.
Thanks to the Associated Press for this article.
Company offers to clone dogs for 5 highest bidders
By MARCUS WOHLSENSAN FRANCISCO (AP) — A Northern California biotech company announced Wednesday that it will clone dogs for the five highest bidders in a series of online auctions. Some ethicists condemned the offer, fearing it could lead to human clones.
Opening bids start at $100,000 for the service being offered by Mill Valley-based BioArts International. The cloning process is to be performed by a South Korean scientist who suffered international disgrace after being found to have faked research.BioArts chief executive Lou Hawthorne formerly ran Genetic Savings & Clone, which offered to clone pet cats for $50,000 but folded in 2006 because few were willing to pay so much.
But Hawthorne said in a phone interview that another service his old company provided — the storage of pet DNA for future possible clones — showed him the market for dog clones was strong.
“The average dog owner has a different relationship with his dog than the average cat owner,” Hawthorne said. “The level of intensity on the dog side just dwarfed what we saw on the cat side.”
To conduct the clonings, BioArts has partnered with a South Korean research team that recently created three clones of Hawthorne’s family dog, Missy, who died in 2002.
Follow this link to read the rest of the article.
I think this is pretty sick. I feel it is part of life to lose loved pets and people.
Oh good grief!
If people want to spend the money who cares…
If the dog is fully grown and cloned, is the cloned version fully grown? I hate dog clones, i will never identify my dogs apart if i have lots of clones. I don’t care no matter how much money will the scientists give me just to clone my dog, we can find money thru being Dog Shelter owners/operators.
Joy, you’re clearly convinced that the reason a dog lover might be interested in cloning is to “bring a dog back.” No doubt some people have seen science fiction movies that give them the mistaken impression that this is what cloning means, and no doubt some people would like nothing more than to have a beloved dead pet live again. PLEASE don’t assume that everyone interested in cloning suffers from such delusions — it’s simply not true. Personally, I think cloning is terrific because it enables us to have new pets that are genetically identical to old pets. Think of it this way — someone whose dachshund dies may choose to get another dachshund, not because he thinks it’ll be the same dog all over again, but because he’s partial to that breed. Right? Well, someone whose mutt dies may choose to clone the mutt, not because he thinks he’ll get the same dog but because he wants another dog of that same “breed” (which in the case of a mixed-breed dog is a breed of one). And of course it’s not necessary to wait for a dog to die before cloning him or her. A filmmaker named Liam Lynch decided to have his cat cloned a couple of years ago, and you might find it enlightening to hear what he says about his decision and about the results… just google “frankie forcefield” (the name of the cat he had cloned).