It’s in the news today, that Rebecca Smith a British woman, won a competition to have her pet cloned and she now has Minnie Winnie a clone of her 12 year old dachshund Winnie.
This set me thinking about the cloning of animals and doing a PoC search I found this article Michael wrote a while back, it must have slipped under the radar as it has no comments.
I must have missed it at the time as it’s a very well written article and I’ve found it very interesting. Would you clone your cat? I wouldn’t, for many reasons, the main one being that we have no right to interfere with Nature this way, it’s going too far!
Imagine cloning the very first cat we had in our lives, what about when the clone grew old, would we/could we clone the clone? Each and every cat we have/have had in our home has been/is special and unique and much loved.
I don’t see how a cloned cat can grow to be exactly the same as the cat he/she is cloned from, because they will grow up under different circumstances.
My first extra special soulmate cat was Bert, I was in my twenties, he died when I was in my forties and a very different person to who I was when he came along and different again to who I am in my sixties, because with age we get experience and learn from our mistakes.
If we had cloned our first cat that would have been an already living breathing cat denied a home. For every cat cloned that’s one less home for another cat needing a home.
If cloning became popular and affordable there would be even less homes, more cats than ever would die unwanted.
I imagine cloning has been modified since Dolly the sheep, the first cloned animal, aged very quickly. I shudder to think of the experiments going on in laboratories and the number of cloned animals born in the process, only to die or to be killed as imperfect.
Only rich people will be able to afford to have a pet cloned right now, just as only well off people can afford to buy pedigree pets. Will having a cloned pet become the fashion for so called ‘celebrities’ and a status symbol of their wealth?
Thousands of animals are being killed in Shelters for lack of homes, all breeding of new breeds and cloning of animals should be stopped until that situation is resolved. But that will never happen because in this sad world the human race are never content, they want more, more, more and the animal kingdom are the ones suffering.
As much as I loved all the cats we have had and as much as I love Walter and Jozef I know and accept that one day we will lose them. Life and death of humans and animals are the natural order of this world to keep the numbers balanced.
I’d love Walt and Jo to be here with us forever, but they are irreplaceable, a Walter clone wouldn’t ‘be’ Walter, a Jozef clone wouldn’t ‘be’ Jozef. Each and every cat to me is unique and I think we have no right to clone any animal, they can’t consent to it.
I wouldn’t want another me in this world and like humans, cats are to me individuals, each the one and only, born as Nature intended.
I’m opposed to the of cloning pets. Aside from the problems already mentioned regarding health and the inability to replicate the character of the original,I have great concerns for the welfare of the other animals involved in the procedure. Firstly you need an animal to donate an egg, then another to carry the embryo to term. If that pregnancy doesn’t result in a viable kitten or puppy, how many more time is the procedure repeated until they are successful? What happens to those the rejected babies and all the other animals used? It’s no surprise that South Korea offers the cloning of dogs as a side-line to farming them for the meat trade.
Michael, thats what I mean, just as you say. Cloning a cat is is cloning there genetic makeup, who they are and the life they have lived does not get cloned but thats the most important part to me. Having a cat that looked like Mikey but had none of our memories would be just like having a cat that looked like Mikey…thats it. I would never do this. When Mikey goes, he will remain in my heart only.
Exactly – I agree. It’s impossible to clone more than the physical.
Talking my language, Elisa.
Agreed.
I think the problems of cloning alone with the health issues would be enough for not attempting this. An animal is influenced by external stimuli so much that you really wouldn’t have the same animal.
I just wait for my cats to be reincarnated. Much more reliable 🙂
The consequences of cloning have not been fully thought through and some of them will be unforeseen one of which is the point that you make, namely, memory. I do not know if memory is held within DNA but if it is, how does cloning interfere with this process?