Just Cloning Around

The big news in science this summer is that South Korean researchers cloned a dog. They created a genetic identical twin of an older donor dog. They claim their purpose is not to allow pet owners to reproduce their pets, but to use their research to help cure human diseases. But if you think that pet owners are not going to line up for "Xeroxing" their aging pet, think again. There's a company in Northern California (where else?) called Genetic Savings & Clone that's already cloning pet cats. If cats and dogs are being cloned, how big of a leap is it for people to clone their beloved Aunt Martha?

The South Korean cloned dog is an Afghan puppy. A Labrador was the surrogate mother. I wonder if they made the Lab sign a paper swearing she'd give up the baby even if she got attached to it. The puppy was delivered by Caesarian section, adding to the debate about whether there are too many Caesarians these days. For you dog owners who want to sign up to create a dog just like the loveable one who sheds all over your house, relax. It took these guys in South Korea three years, and cost about a million dollars. That doesn't even include the leash and collar.

Because of their unusual reproductive systems, dogs are considered to be the most difficult animal to clone. Apparently, cats are a snap. If you want to clone your cat, Genetic Savings & Clone recently lowered its price to a mere $32,000. That's $32,000 for an animal that doesn't even catch a Frisbee.

But will making a genetic copy of your pet really produce another pet with all the qualities you love? Most of us don't just like the way our pets look. We like their personalities. Is there a guarantee that a younger genetic twin will do all the exact same cute things that our beloved pet does?

When it comes to cloning, the big worry is always about whether human cloning is just around the corner. Do we really want to encourage a technology that will make exact copies of certain individuals? My feeling is that dogs might be the most difficult animal to clone, but people are the easiest. Our society already has too many cloned humans.
Go to a chain restaurant, and the food, the décor, and the servers seem the same as those in the chain's restaurant in any other neighborhood or city. If you're in a strange city, you know exactly what to expect from the local Cheesecake Factory or McDonald's, and that's exactly what you'll get. Nothing more, nothing less. You might even forget what city you're in because there's no local flavor there. It's a genetic copy of the original.

The world of entertainment has long been into cloning. If they can't afford Tom Cruise, they want a "Tom Cruise type." If they feel Stallone's too old, the call goes out for a "young Stallone" — just like that younger identical twin puppy. There are all those "Law & Order" and "CSI" clones. After the success of "Friends," all the networks rushed to get sitcoms on the air with twenty-somethings who sort of lived together and sort of dated each other but who definitely drank a lot of coffee. They might have been "genetic duplicates" of the originals, but they couldn't duplicate the size of the audience.

Walk by any high school and you'll see many kids who look exactly the same. They dress the same, their hair is the same, and they talk the same. To the outside observer, they appear to be interchangeable clones.

Go out to lunch and you'll see all those young executives wearing identical stylish clothes, eating identical salads, and talking on their identical cell phones. At first, it looks as if they may be talking to each other, and then you realize they're talking to someone else who probably looks and acts just as they do. Many politicians seem interchangeable. They speak in the same intentionally unclear way, they take the same risks that their pollsters tell them to take, and they even wear the same kind of ties and hairstyles.

So, I'm not just against future human cloning, I'm against present human cloning. We have to make it desirable for people to be "different." Maybe our society should concentrate on how to create people who are individuals, not copies. The good news is, we already have the scientific technology to make that happen.

By Lloyd Garver