Itās going to cost me 00,000? great, i like free. Give me a dozen.
Iāve had dogs I dearly loved and would dearly love to have in my life again, but I think it was a collection of circumstances, including who I was at the time, that made them special to me. Besides I find it incredibly unlikely that a Dalmatian clone would come out with the same spots.
I guess certain variations such as liver instead of black spots would carry over though.
In the āhave you considered adopting another $50 mutt and doing something useful with the change?ā sense, this undeniably qualifies as grotesque excess as the poor starve in squalor and such; but aside from that(true of pretty much everything that costs money and isnāt necessary); this seems like a pretty harmless situation.
Cloning dead people āback to lifeā would go all kinds of badly because of the interpersonal problems associated with everyone pressuring kiddo to be exactly what the ārealā one was; but I canāt imagine that thereās a good way to tell a dog that you are disappointed by its failure to be identical to the original, so that problem seems less likely; and a clone does have a pretty good shot at substantial phenotypic and behavioral similarity.
Also, cute dog. Iāll take a couple, if they have any left from the last batch.
(Edit: How did they resist the temptation to refer to two clones of a dog named Melvin as āThe Melvinsā? Just not into that sort of music or something?)
It doesnāt take a phd in epigenetics to see why trying to recreate a living thing is a foolās errand: twins. Identical twins have the same DNA, and yet they arenāt the same biologically. If one develops a (non-infectious, polygenic) disease, itās not guaranteed the other will too. So the one thing cloning has going for itāthe DNA is the sameādoesnāt guarantee identical biological results. Letās not even get into personality or the importance of the environment.
A really good summary of the Dutch Hunger Winter and how a āshortā famine permanently altered the epigenome of the gestating kids, altering their growth and incidence of metabolism-related diseases.
This isnāt even a new story. The American Life has a great story from 2005 about a cloned bull and how it did/nāt live up to its creatorsā expectations.
OK, Iām ready!
So the $1x10^5 is for the magma to power the cloning machine got it.
That seems like a reasonable hypothesis, especially when inbred mouse lines do seem to cluster behaviorally, but I donāt know if itās been formally shown. These mice are supposed to be identical (theyāre actually not, with some low level of heterozygocity), but youāll see weirdos in almost every litter. It might be the product of spontaneous, de novo mutation (which would also be a factor in cloning a dog), but Iām not sure the inter-line variation of behavior is much larger than the intra-line variation.
From a practical standpoint, for $100,000 a person could foster a small army of pound puppies and find one that was a good replicate of their Precious.
Just reloaded the page and Wow! The price has really gone up.
I think iād read of the term hyperclone or something along those lines. Which would be a perfect copy of a subject down to every last molecule, which is a highly improbable thing to consider because thatās the mental image most people have of a clone.
I wonder if a new word needs to used to make a distinction between these two concepts. Reusing existing genetic material to make a somewhat similar but new individual, and making a perfect genetic copy in every conceivable way.
This American Life - Second Chance the Bullā¦
āThereās only one lab in the world that can do itā
I know that labs are clever, but this is freaking amazing - they donāt have opposable thumbs. Take THAT cats!
āHypercloneā sounds f***ing badass, but letās skip to ultraclone unless thatās reserved for quantum-entangled clones. In which case, why not just build your own pocket universe?
Far less creepy than puppy mills and the ubiquitous overbreeding of certain breeds. Also, the characteristics being selected for in many breeds are grotesque, like the shortened snouts of bulldog and pug breeds. Having another copy of your mutt is a bit maudlin, but if someone has the money and wants to pay it, no one is being harmed.
Aaaand now Iām seeing 00,000 again. I could swear it said āone hundred thousandā at one point.
(exits, confused)
Scads of unwanted pets are being euthanized waiting for good homes, yet these folks are so attached to their old dog they want to get a clone. Gad, go to the animal shelter and rescue some poor puppy. Perhaps s/he will surprise you with endearing characteristics your old dog never had.
Thatās my exact same argument for avoiding breeders, whom I prefer to call āamateur genetic engineers.ā Ever heard of the Munchkin cat? Cat with really short legs. You have to breed a normal cat with a Munchkin, because if you breed two Munchkins together, the kittens arenāt viable. Gee, maybe that means thereās something genetically wrong here . . .
Not really - āeuthanizedā implies that the animals are suffering as a result of not being pets. It isnāt hard to think of arguments to the contrary. I prefer to simply call it āmurderā.
I remember that story. Shades of Pet Sematary there.
Havenāt there previously been stories of laboratories that could supposedly clone a beloved pet, wherein the stories did not stand up to later scrutiny?
It wouldnāt be too difficult to track down dogs that look sufficiently similar to the departed and supply some fake documentation regarding their genome, I would think.
Thatās exactly what I thought when I heard it.
