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Inside the Business of Dog Cloning

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11–20 of 33 posts

Re: Inside the Business of Dog Cloning

#11

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…

Can the same argument be applied to adopting children over biologically conceiving them?

Re: Inside the Business of Dog Cloning

#12
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

[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...

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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

Re: Inside the Business of Dog Cloning

#13

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 [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/92a52144d1fec39ef41a6fb…

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.

Re: Inside the Business of Dog Cloning

#15

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

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).

Re: Inside the Business of Dog Cloning

#16
post #11

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…

Can the same argument be applied to adopting children over biologically conceiving them?

To a certain extent. Certainly some people might have a more rigid stance towards parenting a child that is not theirs from birth compared to this situation.

Re: Inside the Business of Dog Cloning

#17
post #13

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 [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/92a52144d1fec39ef41a6fb…

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.

> 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.

Re: Inside the Business of Dog Cloning

#18

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.

> 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?

Re: Inside the Business of Dog Cloning

#19
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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 movi…

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.

Re: Inside the Business of Dog Cloning

#20

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.

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!

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