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Private dog cloning, what are your thoughts?
I had a discussion today about the ethics of cloning your pets. It's a thing you can currently pay (a lot) of money for, but I don't really see much discussion about it, even though it's absurdly sci-fi and a little crazy to me that it's a real business.
So what are your thoughts? Is it ethical? Is it a bit weird? Is it perfectly healthy?
I personally don't really see any ethical issues related to the cloning itself. But there's a lot of shelter animals out there that need homes, so I think it's a tad unethical to be creating a new pet when you could be adopting one, regardless of the source.
I don't think I'd ever do it personally. It would somehow feel disrespectful to the animal I was "replacing", even if I did try to think of it as more of a surrogate child for the pet than a cloned replacement. I wouldn't judge anyone else for doing it, though.
I recently watched a YouTube video about how dog cloning works. It seems as though one or two other animals are also subjected to invasive surgeries in order to harvest eggs and implant the cloned embryos. This is where I think any potential immorality comes from.
I don't think it's immoral not to adopt a shelter animal.
Ah, that's a good point. The donor and surrogate animals cannot consent to being part of the procedure.
My pet boxer died a few years ago. I've considered adopting a boxer and it just feels weird to me because of how similar their personalities are. I couldn't imagine cloning him, it would feel like a betrayal.
The favorite of my family's three cats is on his way out, getting thinner and sicker. I wonder if a clone of him would go out the same way. I wouldn't want to have another cat die prematurely.
Thanks for the post. This is something I think about too, especially when my pet was sick and dying.
I am going to use I think, but not seriously, more entertained.
My cat had kidney issues and apparently in some places kitty kidney transplants is a thing, which honestly creeped me out. Hopefully this isn't what happens, but I pictured strays and difficult to adopt cats being harvested for parts. Ultimately, we all know cats can't consent.
So how nice it would be if we can just clone a kidney (not the whole cat).
Then after my cat passed, I missed her so much that I thought about how a clone of her would be. I believe it would be a bit more like raising my cat's sibling than herself, since I'm a believer of nurture. But then, I was really curious how much would be nature. The new cat would look like my cat, but will she grow to be bigger and could I socialize her better. My cat was really my and my sister's cat. She was not well socialize towards other animals or people in general. In a way, that made her feel more so our cat. Whereas I have two cats now that will probably love whoever gives them a pet and a treat.
Anyhow, then I wondered if I could genetically modify the clone to not have kidney issues.
In the end, I wouldn't clone my own pets, but would love for other people too and get back to us on how it worked out for them. I believe this can advance the technology when driven by private funds in a way that it can't be by public.
I also imagine breeders would love this.
Come talk to me when you can clone humans for spare body parts.
This is just a precursor to our fast-approaching, far-out future where we start treating the human body like a commodity in the most literal sense. It won't be long until you have a spare body laying around like a beat-up ol' Ford out in the yard waiting to swap out a panel.
CRISPR and cloning are about to redefine what it means to be human. This is just the first little trickle, a tiny taste, of what is to come.
Having a spare body is still very much sci-fi. It would take 25 years to grow a 25 year old version of yourself, which is not efficient. And you'd have to keep it on life support systems with all the issues that involves (muscle atrophy, bed sores) and somehow keep it unconscious, to store as a spare body.
That or it will be living as it's own person, in which case it's basically the same as having a twin, just in a different generation, and you wouldn't get to "harvest" this person.
What I think is realistic in the near future is growing body parts in the lab in isolation from stem cells. Like growing your own liver in lab for transplant.
Don't think you need to grow a full body when you can just grow individual organs. I can see this made in an industrial-like scale in 25-30 years
I think transferring to mechanical bodies will be more popular. More efficient to build a metal body than grow a real one. We'll all pull a Samuel Hayden.
Vanity Fair had a long, interesting article about this recently: Inside the Very Big, Very Controversial Business of Dog Cloning
If you hit a paywall, switching to Reader Mode and then refreshing seems to work.
Wow, that was a great read. Some of the questions regarding the fates of failed attempts is pretty unsettling, but it's interesting to see how research has made the process more ethical over the years, and hopefully it continues to get better. Hearing peoples' stories of cloning their dogs is pretty fascinating too. Personally I think I'll stick to adopting.
Thanks for linking the story!
I think the monies spent on reputable dog breeders who take the risk of breeding and hopefully do so with an eye towards improving the breed is better than some scientist who can clone. Many of the dog breeds need improvement and diversity in their gene pool and cloning for a future pet owners does not achieve that. I could see a breeder cloning a champion dog in order to continue improving the breed line. But a consumer? No, I think consumers should be paying the monies to dog breeders who want to improve the breed.
I'm not sure how I personally stand on this. It wouldn't be quite the same as the "real one", it would kind of stain the memories with it. I certainly wouldn't want to put any stones in anyones way if they wanted to do this.