It may seem like a sequel to one of California Governor Schwarzenegger's
movies, but it's not. Genetic
Savings and Clone, the first US
firm to produce and sell cloned pets has already received orders from five
customers at $50,000 a cloned cat. The company which was involved with Texas
A & M University in "creating" the world's first cloned cat,
named Cc for carbon copy, says they will give a full refund to any client
not happy with the results.
CEO Lou Hawthorne says feline cloning is complex. "The issue with cats
is not how to do it, the issue is how to do it perfectly with the best
quality of results," BBC
Online reported. It apparently took
over 80 attempts before Cc was produced successfully, and the company has a
"buyer beware" warning that it will not produce exact replicas.
Certainly a departure from the Sixth Day, which also poses the
question, what's the point then?
But wait, there's more. Some people have also paid to have their pet's
tissue preserved for future cloning, for about $900 a year. That's a lot of
money...triple the cost of my annual life insurance premium. It's also big
business. And we haven't even discussed the ethics involved.
Did you know? In November 2003 the
Associated Press ran an article on "Wanna clone a cow?" about
a Massachusetts company which guarantees a healthy calf for $19,000 and
two for $34,000. And that in the years since the birth of Dolly the
cloned sheep, the most publicized cloned animal, scientists have now
successfully cloned a dozen other mammal species including goats,
pigs, horses, rabbits and a calf from a slaughtered cow.
This raises
a question. What of the safety of cloned animals for food consumption? The
FDA is currently on record as saying that there is no evidence
that meat or milk derived from healthy cloned animals can harm people. However,
that does not mean they have approved cloned animal food products yet.
They are waiting for public reaction before deciding whether
government approval will be needed for cloned animals to be sold as food.
The
scientific community has been genetically altering seed and food products
to improve quality, shelf life, etc., for years. Now we've moved on to
animals with little public debate. Of course, the next on the docket is
cloned humans. What will we allow? Where will we draw the lines?
Well,
Hollywood has entered the debate with several movies on the subject and
plenty of emotional manipulation to persuade. If you haven't seen it, may
I suggest "The
Sixth Day" staring Arnold Schwarzenegger. It's not a
fantasy anymore.
