To judge from the hype emanating from California, you'd have thought Genetic Savings & Clone patented a formula for everlasting life. The pet-cloning company, based in Sausalito, announced today that it had presented a cloned kitten on December 10 to its first paying customer, an airline industry employee who shelled out $50,000 to have an exact genetic replica of her deceased cat, Nicky. The cloned kitty, born on October 17, is named Little Nicky for the obvious reason, not due to any connection to the demonic character played by Adam Sandler.
GSC pushed all the emotional buttons in its press release hyping the presentation of Little Nicky: "I see absolutely no differences between Little Nicky and Nicky," the owner says. "When Little Nicky yawned I even saw two spots inside his mouth just like Nicky had. Little Nicky loves water, like Nicky did, and he's already jumped into the bathtub like Nicky used to do."
The subtext here is obvious: For those who can afford the pricetag, you will never have to live without your beloved pet, you will never have to grieve for the loss of a departed dog or cat. GSC can make the hurt go away for $50,000.
This is a false hope, of course. While GSC can deliver an animal with the same genetic material as your former pet, it cannot promise the same personality that charmed you for years. It cannot promise a carbon copy of the cat who liked to wake you up with a wet nose. It can't promise the same cat who would sit on your lap for hours while you worked at the computer. Your new cat will not make the memory of the old one go away.
What GSC practically promises is something the company will never admit: that you will never again have to walk into a shelter or rescue group for your next pet. You will only have to look at the kitty purring--or the dog sleeping--at your feet for your next companion animal. For as little as $295, you too can save tissue samples of your beloved animal in GSC's PetBank, where it will stay in cold storage until you are either ready or can afford to clone your cat or dog.
The ramifications of GSC's pet pitch are clear to those in the animal sheltering business: Pet owners, hurt and vulnerable from the loss of their favorite animal, could turn to companies like GSC instead of the local shelter for their next four-legged companion. The pitch is cynical to say the least. Animal lovers are already known to lavish expensive gifts on their pets. Why wouldn't a good number of them sacrifice their life's savings for the chance at neverending joy from a cherished pet? The pool of potential pet-clone patrons could be wider and deeper than anyone imagines, particularly if GSC lowers its asking price, as it promises to do next year.
That leaves shelters holding the bag. If you are a regular reader of HSUS pages, you already know that millions of dogs and cats die at U.S. shelters each year because not enough people visit these facilities and return home with a pet. (Read about poor Toby as just one example of a cat who didn't come home for Christmas.) This senseless loss of animal life costs taxpayers millions of dollars a year. If GSC is successful at creating a new culture of clone-hungry pet owners, this problem can only logically increase. As HSUS President and CEO Wayne Pacelle notes, GSC's cloning technology is "unnecessary, unwarranted, and inhumane."
"The last thing we need is a new production strategy for pets," Pacelle continues. "The challenge is not to find new, absurdly expensive ways to create animals, but to curb the growth of pet populations and to foster an ethic in society that prompts people to find and shelter creatures in need of loving homes."
If society doesn't need another useless technology, designed more to increase a company's bottom line than to raise anyone's consciousness, then we certainly don't need one to make us less human, less compassionate. The HSUS has deveoped a position statement on animal cloning, and it clearly states, "...commercial cloning of collections of genetically identical individuals reinforces the perception of animals as disposable, manufactured commodities. Cloning and patenting of sentient beings erodes the morality of respect for the individual interests of others, a morality that is critical to the future well-being of both humans and animals."
As a private company supported by a billionaire investor, Genetic Savings and Clone has absolutely no government or regulatory oversight. That means, by and large, that the company controls the flow of information about it. A cursory glance at its web site suggests a company sympathetic to animal welfare and human sensitivities. GSC boasts that it has developed a superior cloning technology that produces "consistently healthy clones" as well as an embryo assessment technology that tests "whether a cloned embryo is normal" before the company transfers it to a surrogate mother.
These statements would appear to ease the mind of anyone concerned about the problems associated with the more conventional cloning technology--nuclear transfer. Mammals of all shapes and sizes have been cloned using nuclear transfer, from rabbits to goats to Dolly the sheep, the most famous of all cloned animals. Many of these cloned creatures had problems, like deficient immune systems or brain and digestive dysfunctions; Dolly, if you recall, was euthanized at age six after being diagnosed with a lung disease that usually affects older sheep.
Some of the most reliable statistics concerning the welfare and health of cloned animals come from the agriculture sector, and the stats are not pretty. The Food and Drug Administration's Center for Veterinary Medicine convened a public meeting on November 4, 2003, at which officials presented a draft executive summary on the safety of animal cloning. Among other things, the summary noted that "early reports of cloning cattle and sheep indicated that most clone pregnancies failed to result in live births." What's more, the meeting presented a report on the largest sample of clones yet produced, this one by a commercial cloning company named Cyagra: Of 134 cattle clones that survived to the end of pregnancy, 39 died shortly before or after birth or within their first year. That's a 29% death rate in the first year, a statistic that would shame a third world country, let alone the world's most powerful.
But even if we discount the FDA's old-school nuclear transfer statsand accept GSC's boasts of superior technology at face valueit still leaves us with one indisputable fact: Millions of cats and dogs already need a good home, and any one of them could be the next animal that you can't live without.
