Man’s best friend forever
Issue 92 - 15 March 2022 (9-min read)
Animals have a funny way of growing up on you. I have listened to my father insisting he dislikes cats all through my childhood, only to watch him now rush to pet our house cat as soon as he returns home from work, long before my mother and sister get a chance to greet him. When I call home from Tahiti, most of the call is spent watching the cat doing seemingly banal things for a very captivated audience. Often we ask ourselves, "what did we do before this cat came home?" And this is just one year of having a pet. Imagine having one for more than a decade.
Losing a pet can be as devastating as losing any other loved one. In that moment of grief, if someone was to offer a chance that we could have another decade or so with a beloved pet, the choice would come easy to many of us.
This week in The Global Tiller, we take a look at pet cloning. Why are people cloning their furry friends and what is the science behind this practice? What do animal rights groups say and what are some ethical questions it raises for our future?
Pet cloning is not an entirely new concept. In 1996, scientists succeeded in cloning the first mammal — Dolly the sheep — from an adult cell. Even if this announcement was met with trepidation (considering the logical next step would be human cloning), it raised optimism for the future of therapeutic cloning and the possibility of saving soon-to-be extinct animals.
When it comes to the technology and the acceptance of this practice, we’ve come a long way since then. Now we have companies in the United States, South Korea and China offering deals on making man’s best friend be a friend forever. All you have to do is order a kit from one of these companies and take it to your vet, who will collect a sample of cells from your alive pet and send it back for storage. Samples can be collected from dead animals too but only within a few days of their passing.
ViaGen, the pet cloning company in the US and one of the biggest players in this industry, will charge you $1,600 to store this sample until the pet parent decides to go ahead with the cloning. The actual process is very similar to in-vitro fertilisation, the eggs and embryos are created in a dish and then placed into a surrogate animal. Depending on the animal, this can cost anywhere between $35,000 and $50,000.
There are many reasons why someone would want to clone their pet. There are some who have cloned pets that belonged to a child who passed away too soon, or those who could not bear the idea of losing a beloved pet as it reached the end of its life, the most famous case being that of singer Barbara Streisand. But there is also a growing number of social media influencers who are cloning their pets, especially celebrity pets who feature prominently on their feeds, seemingly out of grief but also as an attempt to continue this financial stream.
A California photographer used to capture her wolf-dog amid the wilderness since it was a puppy, but even after it was hit by a car, her Instagram feed continued uninterrupted with its clone. Juice, a popular mutt in China who has featured in several films and advertisements, has also been cloned. His owner sees Juice as a piece of intellectual property with social influence, and sees a bright future for the new pup.
No matter what your motivations are, animal rights groups will tell you pet cloning is a bad idea. There are thousands of pets already in the world waiting to be adopted, the cloning process will cost you an arm and a leg, your cloned pet will most likely have a completely different personality than the original, there is no knowing how long a cloned animal can survive, and there hundreds of other animals that are used and abused in the cloning process itself.
But any campaigns against this practice have not been enough to stop the growing outreach of these companies. Part of the reason why could be the fact that further advances in this technology could pave the way for human cloning. Before you scoff at this notion, remember that if someone was asked in 1996 if ordinary people (with a significant bank balance) would be cloning pets within the next 20 years, they would have been dismissive too.
It’s hard to imagine the full extent that human cloning could have on our society but pet cloning today gives us a fairly good idea. A video of ViaGen’s farm in Texas showing hundreds of pregnant mares carrying horse clones is a scene right out of a dystopian film. As the hysteria around depopulation grows, would we see giant facilities housing surrogate women carrying clones of billionaires?
We’d love to know your thoughts on pet cloning, so do write back.
Until next week, take care and stay safe.
Hira - Editor - The Global Tiller
Alexander Rheeney on journalism, ethics and information
Don’t miss our latest Pacific Toks podcast episode in which we look closely at journalism in our region: what are the challenges, the specificities and the hopes going forward for a well-informed Pacific. We are lucky to have with us Alexander Rheeney, a journalist from Papua New Guinea now working as an editor for the Samoan Observer in Apia, Samoa. Alexander has been closely involved in this field through his work at the Pacific Freedom Forum, the Media Council of PNG and the Lowy Institute.
…and now what?
I am a huge dog lover. I grew up with them and had one of my own until a few years ago. Even now, I can’t help but pet and talk to every dog I see. Yes, I’m that kind of a dog lover.
When I lost my Great Dane, it was heart breaking, especially because she was only two years old when she was poisoned. I haven’t had a dog since then, but I’d love to. Sometimes I try to scare Hira by telling her I may come back home one day with a furry puppy under my arm!
As you can probably tell by now, I could be one of those people interested in pet cloning. To have my dog with me for much longer than its natural life permits, what a dream it would be! And that’s probably where the problem lies: that it is for me.
Don’t get me wrong. I do believe that it’s legitimate for science and technology to cross the boundary of what we consider, and often too loosely, the law of nature. Still, the process of cloning in itself raises questions we should not ignore. Even if it comes at the cost of not having our furry friend with us on the couch forever.
The concept of pet cloning made me think of a recent question that blogger and writer Tim Urban asked on Twitter:
It’s not exactly about pet cloning but it raises a question that perfectly fits the problem that cloning poses. Are you still you if your atomic substance is altered? Is a clone the exact same person as the original? Is a dog still the same dog? Will you have the same connection with those puppy eyes as you did with the one before? Isn’t your dog a product of its genes but also its training, environment and its experiences? Much like a human?
That brings us to the never-ending discussion of nature versus nurture. But it is a question worth asking. When we consider cloning a pet, I see two alternative visions:
One very mercantile idea that promotes the fact that you’ll have the same looking animal, with similar patterns of behaviour (to some extent). This one makes a good selling pitch, easily copied on Facebook banners and YouTube videos, and convincing enough to make your customers pay. Or in other words: Let’s not kid anyone, we’re just giving you the satisfaction of not having to process your own grief and not asking too much questions.
The other is a more engineered approach, the idea that living beings are like machines: they can be mounted, dismantled, rebuilt, rearranged and that every time the formula will be the same.
We often hear the second vision around us when people talk about the brain and our cognitive systems as 'algorithms'. Change the algorithm of your bad habits, hack your brain and off you go, you’re the master of your life! (Full disclosure: I used to say something along those lines too some years ago but that was before I turned 40. I was young and foolish!)
Living beings, whether a pet or a human, are much more complex entities about whom we don’t exactly understand everything. There are a lot of factors that must be considered and it calls for some critical, rational thinking.
That’s the basis of the principle of precaution: if you’re not 100% sure about what you’re doing maybe wait for a bit and think, observe, analyse and then move ahead, step by step, with the right protections along the way.
With pet cloning, we are facing the same issue as gene editing and CRISPR. Biotechnology is progressing at a faster pace than our regulations and ethical guidelines. The way forward may then be to make sure these innovations are guided by collective goals for the betterment of our human future, and not the desire of a wealthy person to live forever.
For now, let’s acknowledge that our pet’s life are limited, much like ours and we may not always get what we want, even if we really really want it. And since pets won’t last forever, how about you take yours out for a walk?
Philippe - Founder & CEO - Pacific Ventury
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