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Is Pet Cloning Acceptable?
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| Photo by Veterinary Practice News |
A company called ViaGen Pets is one of the only places in the world that permit pet cloning. It costs about $50,000 to clone a dog, while it costs $35,000 to clone a cat and there are no guarantees that the long cloning process is successful in producing viable embryos. The process of cloning first involves extracting tissue samples from the original pet while it’s still alive, or shortly after its death. The pet’s cells are transferred into a DNA-less oocyte from a donor animal. The new hybrid cell is then stimulated with an electric shock to make it divide and it is implanted into a surrogate, which will give birth to the cloned pet.
Barbara Streisand, a
widely known celebrity, is one of individuals that support pet cloning as she cloned
her dog Samantha after she died in 2017. Barbara
had a Coton de Tulear and wanted to keep some part of her treasured dog with
her. She turned to cloning and the lab managed to produce three clones of her original
dog. Although cloned dogs may have the same appearance of the original, they
will likely not have the exact same disposition or personality and certainly
not the same soul.
Pet cloning
leads to questions such as can human cloning be done for mourning families or can the technology be used to eventually create a type of designer human. In addition, pet cloning is only available for
wealthier individuals due to the hefty price tag of such a process. It is best
to halt cloning technology before it gets too out of hand. Society doesn’t need
to clone pets, since there are so many beautiful dogs and cats in shelters that
need homes. People should focus on how you
can open your home to many different loyal, lovable animals throughout their short lifespans.
Posted by “Lauren Shone” (3)
Prior to reading this post, I had heard about this sort of technology in my intro genetics class. While this is fascinating biology, it does bring about a lot of ethical concerns. There is a part of your post where you mention that this pet cloning technology could be used in human cloning. Are there any laws in place that prevent the cloning of humans? If not should there be laws put into place?
ReplyDeletePosted by: Nicholas Georgette
Since 2015, 70 countries have banned human cloning. The United States began discussing the cloning controversy in the late 1990's and early 2000's. Although no formal federal laws have been passed to ban cloning completely, cloning is not looked upon in the best light as it brings up ethical concerns of identity and genetic manipulation. Some states in the US have banned human cloning research, which should be the case for the whole country.
DeletePosted by "Lauren Shone"
I understand there are many ethical reasons why cloning in humans is not a practice. What biological factors make cloning humans more difficult than cloning other animals like rats? I am confused on what makes cloning one animal harder than cloning any other.
ReplyDelete-David Frykenberg
Cloning in humans and primates is much more difficult than other animals due to their spindle proteins being so close to the chromosomes. In animals, such as rats, the spindle proteins are spread through the egg. When these proteins are close to the chromosomes, the removal of the nucleus may take these proteins with it causing problems with cell division. Therefore, not allowing the egg to be viable.
DeletePosted by "Lauren Shone"
After reading your post, as well as the article at hand, I have to agree with your overall stance on both pet and human cloning. Cloning is unethical as it not only wastes valuable resources that can be put towards solving the climate crisis, but there is also no way to induce genetic variation in the clone, besides random mutations. As seen countless times throughout the history of the earth, a reduction in genetic variation can cause a great number of problems in a particular species. Ultimately, any decrease in genetic variation increases the risk of extinction for that species significantly. As the genetic diversity of a population decreases there is also a sharp decline in the reproductive fitness for that population, which directly correlates to a reduced ability to adapt to any environmental change. While it is unlikely that domestic pets or humans would go extinct due to the issues associated with cloning, there is no denying that producing a large amount of clones would put unnecessary stress on the species itself. Similarly, as you pointed out in your post there are millions of unadopted animals that fill shelters every year, thus it is more important to take care of these animals and make sure they have homes before we waste precious space on this earth by cloning them. Overall, I think your post did a great job at bringing attention to this delicate and important issue that is becoming more common in recent years.
ReplyDeletePosted by James Levangie
This post reminded me of Adolfo Cambiaso. He is a polo player that cloned his favorite horse six times in order to be able to (essentially) ride it for the entire match. I personally don't know how I feel about cloning animals. Do you know if the clones tend to experience any health-related complications? If they do it could be an ethical concern to clone anything. I definitely agree with you that it is something only wealthy people are able to easily do because of its price tag. And in cases of cloning pets, that money could be used to help animals that are already living instead (animal shelters, low-cost clinics, etc).
ReplyDeletePosted by "Meagan Gustafson"