asking because I heard a story about it on the radio when getting lunch and I thought it was the dumbest shit I’ve heard all day. people are paying $50k to clone their dead dogs?? bro they are like $50 at the pound just get a stray…
the researcher being interviewed relayed a story about how this woman got her pet horse cloned but, upon the clone’s birth, she was like “uhh I expected you to keep it until it was at least a few years old?? i don’t want a BABY clone” ngjrgthjrdgfh
Paris Hilton cloned her chihuahua into two dogs??
no one knows where they get the ‘breeding’ dogs?? apparently they ‘rent’ the dogs from breeders across the country?? and also ‘rent’ the egg donor dogs?? seems pretty fucked up!!!
anyways here if you’re interested: https://www.viagenpets.com/
this is the specific NPR podcast I was listening to on the radio (it’s the most recent ‘Should You Clone Your Dog’): https://www.npr.org/podcasts/478859728/think
the researcher’s article in the New Yorker which is also a good read: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/07/01/would-you-clone-your-dog
It’s possible to see dog cloning as merely an extension of what is already a bizarre and highly unnatural process. In Fort Worth, Texas, I met a clone of a dog called Eudoris. The clone’s owner, Jeff, who didn’t want his last name used, was on the phone as I approached, but Eudoris 2—or E2, as he’s known—turned to look at me. His body was shaped like a German shepherd’s, but he lacked the swayed back of the kennel-club German-shepherd lines, whose hind legs buckle in a way that people liken to frog legs. E2’s face was more vulpine, too. I made a sound of greeting to him, and he folded his ears back. Within half a minute, he had turned his rump toward me beseechingly, the universal dog body language for requesting a scratch above the tail.
The original Eudoris was a mix of a Belgian Malinois and a Dutch shepherd, and had been bred by Joshua Morton, a trainer of tactical working dogs, who felt that Eudoris was the ideal specimen. He had ViaGen clone him, and not just once. Thirty-five clones have been made from Eudoris so far. Jeff got E2 as a protection dog for his wife, who travels frequently to compete in rodeos. E2 was their second Eudoris clone. The first, E4, drowned in an irrigation ditch four months after they got him. Jeff and Morton felt that E4 was so special that they sent some of his tissue to ViaGen. Since then, Morton has used E4’s cells to clone yet another line of dogs, which he dubs the Red Squadron Myrmidons, called M1, M2, and so on. “The DNA of M1 is the same as the DNA of E1 through E-whatever,” Jeff said. “And the same as Eudoris Actual, the biological Eudoris.” Hearing his name, E2 began wagging his tail.
bro cloned his dog 35 TIMES??? ‘drowned in an irrigation ditch four months after they got him’ is doing a lot of leg work in that last paragraph.
anyways, discuss - would you clone your dog/outdoor cat after it gets mauled by a coyote or tire/horse/ferret??? why? is this not real ‘All that is holy is profaned’ hours???
Cloning technology is cool but pet ownership is controversial. All the animals (and even plants) that humans domesticated or tamed, it has mostly been a bad deal for them. The few species that have benefited from us are either carnivorous, invasive, or ecologically damaging in some way. There is no consensus among animal rights activists, animal liberationists, and vegans as what we should do with pets and other domesticated animals. Some popular theories include simply ending their breeding so they will die off naturally, culling them all because from a utilitarian perspective that would result in less harm overall since keeping every single domesticated animal alive without a profit to be gained would be incredibly hard and damaging to the environment, there’s some people that think we should try to integrate the animals we already domesticated into society because we owe that to them for messing with their evolution (think street cats that cities pay to keep healthy).
Now on the issue of cloning, animal experimentation is highly unethical due to the lack of consent, it was necessary in the past in the same way it was necessary for ancient humans to eat meat as hunter gatherers. But cloning is necessary for bringing back extinct animals, ending diseases, and moving beyond the binary the spectrum. Brining back a dog because you really like that dog is narcissistic, it’s not even the same dog, even if we could put the memories back in then you run into the teleporter problem because it’s not a direct continuation of that individual, just a copy. And all of this leads to another question, do people or animals even deserve to be immortal. The answer is no, everyone and everything should die. Even if we could insure consciousness doesn’t get interrupted during cloning, or we could make bodies that are invulnerable. Other than like bringing back extinct species that we need for their evolutionary niche in the ecosystem, we should not try to stop death,