Would you clone a beloved pet? How much would a cloned pet be worth to you?
A biotech company in northern California called BioArts International is auctioning off five chances to have a cloned dog. The auction begins on June 18th and bidding starts at one hundred thousand dollars. BioArts calls the project “Best Friends Again”.
The chief executive for BioArts International once ran Genetic Savings & Clone, a company that offered to clone pet cats for a mere fifty thousand dollars. The company folded in 2006 because few pet owners could afford to pay that much. So why try again with dogs? BioArts believes that the market for dog clones is strong — because they believe that the bond between dog and human is more intense than the bond between cat and human.
BioArts International has been granted the sole license for cloning dogs, cats, and endangered species using the patented processes used in cloning Dolly the sheep — the world’s first successful clone.
The BioArts research team has successfully created three clones of the BioArts owner’s dog Missy, who died in 2002. Independent testing performed at the University of California’s Davis Veterinary Genetics Laboratory confirmed that DNA samples taken from the three puppies appeared to match DNA from the original Missy. The family reports that the clones have the same personality and taste quirks as the original — including a love for steamed broccoli.
Some people fear that cloning pets will open a gateway to human cloning. Other opponents worry that the dog cloning process will result in miscarriages and/or the birth of malformed puppies. BioArts claims that dogs are much less likely to have problems, compared to other breeds.
So… what do you think? If you had the money, would you use it for a cloned pet?
As much as I loved my dog Miko and wish we had more time together, I don’t think I’d want a clone of him. There are just too many homeless pets out there for me to spend that much money on a high-tech dog.