
Inside the Business of Dog Cloning - pseudolus
https://www.vanityfair.com/style/2018/08/dog-cloning-animal-sooam-hwang
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alonmower
I have a dog, have lost dogs in the past, and understand how sad it is. But
man, there are so many dogs in shelters getting killed because of overcrowding
that it boggles my mind that people can be so selfishly fixated on their needs
that they don't think about the costs of their decisions (suffering of the
surrogate dogs, the clones that don't make it, and the disgustingly high
monetary costs here).

Life is full of death and sadness, people and animals you care deeply about
don't live forever. Being able to deal with grief and continue living your
life is an important skill to develop. I'm not sure that grasping to maintain
what is ultimately unmaintainable is a healthy way of handling it. The clone
won't be the same dog, if anything it's going to make it harder to grieve and
move on with your life.

~~~
r_smart
I have two rescues and think it is good if people adopt more of them, but I
also thinks it's wrong to shift the moral condemnation to people who want dogs
(puppies, clones or whatever) from whoever is abusing these dogs in the first
place. I'm not angry when nobody wants to adopt a dog, I'm angry because
somebody treated them so poorly in the first place. Owning a dog isn't a human
need, so getting one just to treat it like trash -- and have it wind up in a
shelter -- is disgusting.

Not to mention rescues can come with a lot of problems, physiologically and
psychologically. I can understand why people might shy away.

~~~
discreditable
As a rescue dog owner this article made me wonder how different he could be if
I had the chance to raise him with love instead of neglect. Then I realized a
clone would look the same but it could be an entirely different dog otherwise.

~~~
r_smart
Yeah, I got wondering the same things. One of our dogs is getting older, and
we love her so much. I wouldn't, and couldn't afford to, do something like
this, but I can understand why people might.

How different would she end up? There are a lot of mannerisms that seem pretty
common to beagles, and then there's some of the weird stuff she does that is
unique to her. Would we lose all that? Would it feel weird having a dog that
looked just like her but acted different?

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kschlagel
I’ve been fascinated with this since I first heard about it on NPR about a
year ago. I love my dogs almost as much as my human family. In fact, I usually
find myself trusting in my dogs more than other people and am that guy you see
at the local dog park all the time. Point is I am the kind of person that
would do this if I had the money. But i wonder how similar the dog’s
personality would be to the one i loved. In some ways, seeing a dog that is
identical to one i loved but acting completely different would be harder than
dealing with the loss itself imho.

Better to just cherish the life while it’s there.

~~~
katzgrau
I appreciate your love for dogs, but don't you think that cloning a dog
because of your love for the original is ridiculously self-centered? It's
basically creating and imposing life to satisfy one's own emotional needs.
It's taking living-thing-as-property to another level.

By the way, I love my dog but kind of struggle with the ethics of simple
ownership of a living thing.

~~~
icebraining
How is this different from people who own animal farms and purposefully breed
them? Is it just because it's satisfying an emotional need rather an a
financial one?

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ghostbrainalpha
People talk about this because it is a disgusting display of wealth, and
morally immature to say the least.

But all technologies like this, meant ultimately for humans, will be tested on
animals first.

If we are going to learn and refine cloning on dogs anyway..... they
scientists might as well bring back "Captain Fluffles".

~~~
blacksmith_tb
True in a sense, but much like dogs, cloning humans seems quixotic as we don't
have any shortage of humans, either. Cloning organs and tissues has more
potential, granted.

~~~
alexgmcm
Yeah - but I guess it could help understand things better that may lead to
further advances and so on.

Science is so unpredictable that we shouldn't restrict progress just because
it feels 'creepy'.

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jaytaylor
This is very close to being a real life form of the "PetStuffers" radio ad in
Grand Theft Auto [0]!

Highlight:

    
    
        Petstuffers: when you just can't let go,
        and coming soon: Grandparents forever!
    

[0] Audio:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xpZbQsHSHU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xpZbQsHSHU)

[1] Full Transcript + original longer rant I wrote because this $100K to clone
your pet thing rubs me the wrong way:
[https://gist.github.com/jaytaylor/92a52144d1fec39ef41a6fb941...](https://gist.github.com/jaytaylor/92a52144d1fec39ef41a6fb94118ca9a)

\---

P.S. Does this fall under the category of "it's okay to do creepy shit, as
long as you're R$CH"?

Consider these 2 scenarios:

1\. Some guy clones his deceased dog in his garage.

Reaction: _That sounds creepy_

2\. Barbra Streisand pays $100,000 to clone her deceased dog.

Reaction: _Socially acceptable_

~~~
taneq
I think it's more that it's OK to do creepy shit if you're in a clean,
brightly lit, sciencey looking place and you have attractive smiling people
advertising your expensive services.

"Rule 1: Be attractive." applies to companies as well as people.

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _I think it 's more that it's OK to do creepy shit if you're in a clean,
> brightly lit, sciencey looking place and you have attractive smiling people
> advertising your expensive services._

I wonder if it is still, though. The spacious, sterile looking, brightly-lit
white rooms inhabited by attractive, perfectly dressed and groomed staff have
been a synonym to "some sick dystopian shit is going on here" in books and
movies for quite some time now.

~~~
taneq
Fair point, there's a pretty strong association in pop culture between that
kind of science-lab-stock-photo type place and morally questionable scientific
experiments.

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pjc50
Cloning is perhaps less alarming than some of the regular practices of dog
breeding, which produce breeds with chronic respiratory or joint problems.

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alex_young
What about the surrogate dog "mothers"? I imagine that role is a pretty
disgusting one to ponder.

With a mortality rate as low as 66% for a full litter, one has to wonder how
realistic our dreams of human cloning really are.

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _With a mortality rate as low as 66% for a full litter (...)_

Is that because of technological limitations, or simply because they don't
care if the mother survives?

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samfisher83
The Chinese have cloned a monkey. I am wondering who will be the first to
clone human. Maybe the Chinese have already done it but are keeping quiet
about it. Its a Brave new world.

~~~
jillesvangurp
Keeping it quiet might be a thing given the moral outrage this would trigger.

The main obstacles here are access to donor eggs and surrogate mothers willing
to carry. This may already have happened. Additionally, failure rates
acceptable with dogs and livestock are going to cause moral outrage. Though if
you look at IVF, the success rates there are not great and it is considered
acceptable anyway. Never mind the discarded embryos, miscarriages, etc. Many
couples try for years before succeeding.

Ongoing progress might make a few of these things easier. E.g. producing egg
cells from normal cells might become feasible. Also there is some progress
with artificial wombs. Add to that improvements to gene manipulation and you
are looking at industrial scale production of clones of all sorts of species.
I see this more as a question of when than if. Human cloning is inevitable.

The main obstacles for this are entirely non technical. There are enough
religious and political constraints that this will have to happen under the
radar and in less strict countries for a while. Barbara Streisand cloning her
dogs sort of moves us toward that though.

Puppies are cute and so what if they were cloned? Are human babies so
different? You can bet that there are some dictators, billionairs, etc. out
there that would love to have a "mini me". It's the ultimate in narcissism and
hedonism. Trump might be interested, just saying ;-). He's insensitive enough
to not give a F __* what everybody else things. This baby is going to be
great. I will be the best child ever!

~~~
icebraining
Why is cloning more narcissistic than regular procreation? We produce half-
clones already, this is just adding the other half.

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thebigspacefuck
I would like to clone my dog but I am waiting for the price to drop.

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megaman22
I love my dog, but a clone would not be the same dog, with the experiences
that make her the way she is.

I cannot think about dog cloning without remembering Fry's speech upon
throwing the fossilized remains of his faithful Seymour into the lava beneath
Planet Express, and it tears me up everytime.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jurassic_Bark](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jurassic_Bark)

~~~
whoisjuan
I cried the first time I watched that. Futurama has many episodes like
Jurassic Bark that hit an emotional nerve, but the incredible thing is that
most of them were written by different writers (Eric Kaplan, Ron Weiner, Ken
Keeler, Eric Horsted, Michael Rowe, etc).

