Pet cloning
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Pet cloning is the commercial cloning of a pet animal. The first commercially cloned pet was a cat named Little Nicky, produced in 2004 by Genetic Savings and Clone for a north Texas woman for the fee of US$50,000.
[edit] Controversy
An animal clone has the same genes as its genetic donor, but that does not mean that its behavior will be identical, because behavior is influenced by environment and experience as well as by genetics. Science fiction depictions of cloning often create the impression that clones emerge full-grown from machines, are indistinguishable from their predecessors, and have even had their predecessors' minds "downloaded" into them.
People who have their pets cloned with the expectation that their new pets will be indistinguishable from their old pets will likely be disappointed. Some critics accuse pet cloning proponents of encouraging this expectation.
Commercial cloning has been decried by the Humane Society and some other animal welfare groups, which argue that it's unethical for people to obtain pets through commercial sources when so many homeless pets languish in shelters or live on the streets, and that the money spent on pet cloning would be better spent on the vaccination and care of those animals.
Critics also argue that cloning attempts have high rates of failure, that animals involved in cloning research are likely to suffer, that clones may have serious health problems in later life, and that pet cloning is a slippery slope to human cloning.
In the film The 6th Day, corporations that wanted to commercialize human cloning couldn't because it was banned. However, non-human cloning was still legal. Subsequently, they commercialized pet cloning (under the outlet name "RePet"), actually running the enterprise on a national scale at a commercial loss, in an effort to "soften up" the public's attitudes towards human cloning, while at the same time pushing for the ban on human reproductive cloning to be overturned.
In 2005, California Assembly Member Lloyd Levine introduced a bill to ban the sale or transfer of pet clones in California. The bill failed.
Defenders of pet cloning argue that pet cloning does not contribute to pet homelessness, the animals involved are treated humanely, it makes people happy, there's a demand for it, it will contribute to scientific, veterinary, and medical knowledge, and it will help efforts to preserve endangered cousins of the cat and dog.
More detailed anti-pet-cloning arguments can be found at NoPetCloning.org [1], and rebuttals can be found at DefendPetCloning.org [2].
