Thursday, 26 June 2008
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Clone your dog: Would God Approve Cloning?
by mr. oak
I ran into bestfriendsagain.com which is a website that offers to clone your dog to the highest bidder. Starting bids are at $100,000 and start July 5th. As a science guy, I was instantly intrigued by this - first of all, I think the technology and science behind cloning is amazing. As someone that has done genetic manipulation on developing mice in a lab, I fully understand how difficult it is to actually clone a full organism. It's an amazing feat.
Jokingly I IMed "GROMIT CAN LIVE FOREVER." to my wife a thousand times. This reminded me of the "repet" program featured in the movie "sixth day" which now pretty much lives on the tbs television network aka movie graveyard. The movie predicts that in the future, you can walk to your local mall and have your pet cloned instantly - fooling kids into thinking the dog never died in the first place. Seeing this, seems like we're not too far from that.But we all know because of experience or nurture, even a cloned dog will never be the same dog. You'll basically get all the same parts, but the personality is...well, up to you.
So here we are at the end - the ethics of it all. I've heard countless times people screaming about the ethics and how we're playing God - and then there's the flip side that we've been using science to extend people's lives cure genetic cancers etc...and this is just the next progressive step in science.
What do you think about cloning your family pet?
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Comments (31)
Oh, by the way, a lot of people seem to think cloning an 8 year old dog would give you another 8 year old dog, but you'd actually end up with a puppy, just as in normal reproduction. So your kid would have to be pretty dense to not get suspicious when Fifi goes from being half-blind and barely able to walk, to a young, excited puppy.
I would rather take in an already existing dog that is in need of a home, then pay thousands to have my old dog cloned
i would absolutely LOVE for my pet to be reborn and me able to love her again.
but i could never clone her. she wouldn't be the same and she'd have to die all over again.
and then i'd have to go through that pain all over again.
what's the point?
I think, like the bible says, God formed you in your mother's womb and planned you. It might be the same for animals. I'm not really big on the thought of cloning. I definiately think it's wrong in humans, and is something I would never do to an animal either. I've heard they canc lone organs which will lead to medical benefits like skin grafts and organ transplants and such, but anything more than that I think we should leave in God's hands.
i miss her every day since she passed away. if the vet had told me that i could restore my dog to perfect health if i cut off my arm, i gladly would have... in a heartbeat. but cloning her really would not bring her back. just like cutting off my arm would never have brought her back. and if i cloned her... i think i would be unfair to the clone because i would never see that dog for who she really was... i'd just see Shadow. and even though she would be a clone of Shadow... she wouldn't be the same dog.
cloning my dog would probably end up giving me a complex. i think God would disapprove of all the self-inflicted mental damage that this exercise would cause. the science stuff... i don't think God would view that as such a big deal.
Well, I can't speak for God....
Cloning really interests me, because I am majoring in pharmacy.
Cloning has medical applications, which can really help those who are sick. Cloning the cells/organ a person needs from their own DNA would mean that the person wouldn't reject the cells, which happens when taking a donation from another person.
As for cloning whole animals, people, etc...there are many things to consider:
First, it's very dangerous, and the "experimental" clones that result before the process is perfected may suffer.
Second, I think it would be wrong if the clone had to replace the animal or person the original DNA was from. I once read a book called "Anna to the Infinite Power," in which a famous scientist was cloned so that her clones would have her scientific/mathematical talents and complete her work. (I read this while I was in elementery school -- on my own, not for class -- and I think it was the first book about cloning that I read.) The main character finds that, although she has a talent for math, she also has an interest in music and other things, because of her environment. (The whole nature vs. nurture argument.) The clone may want to be his/her own person, not just replace the original DNA donor. It would be like one twin being forced to replace the other twin
Third, would the clones be considered people? Would they have the same rights as the rest of us? If we were just creating these clones to obey what we tell them to do and not let them have rights, I think that would be wrong. If they could be individuals, with rights, it may be okay.
Fourth, we already have so many people on the planet and there are people who don't have enough to eat, clothes to wear, etc. that we'd just be making the problem worse by creating more people. If there were very few people and cloning could be used to increase the population, that may be useful.
I love science (and read lots of science fiction) so I support scientific research. I'm just saying that once the science is developed, we have to careful how we use it. The same technology can be used for good and for bad. We have to be careful.
Jedi Master 713