August 07, 2008

What worth a beloved pet?



Ms. McKinney loved her dog. The dog died. She sold her home to pay the $50,000 fee to get five cloned puppies from her dead dog. This was discounted from the $150,000 the company planned to charge for the service, believing her case will be a boon for business.
I have a hard time understanding why anyone would do this. Mostly because selling your house to buy five dogs seems over the top to me. Add to that none of these clones is her beloved Booger. (yes, she named her original K9 Booger) I guess they are in some part Booger, not unlike if Booger had puppies.
Then you have that elephant in the room (not cloned, metaphorical) about a loved one. Be it Mom or Dad, Sister or Brother, Son or Daughter, best friend, Significant other or fourth cousin on your fathers brothers side three times removed. We know that Clones will not be the same person. In my imagination looking at the clone a child I lost, would be a constant reminder of the loss. This made all the more painful, due to the mockery of who that person once was, standing before me.
Maybe that is too dramatic. Countless authors have gone over the ethical and moral arguments about cloning. And now, here it is, real flesh and blood.
the mind boggles.

2 comments:

flyingvan said...

Scariest----take a sample from the Shroud of Turin or Veronica's vail and CLONE JESUS!!!! I've got a few life rules. Always see. Never discourage someone's dreams. And DON'T CLONE JESUS!

Tina said...

Here's a funny story:
When Diana was younger, she was playing in our yard with a neighbor girl. Somehow or other the talk came around to dinosaurs. The girl insisted that dinosaurs were still around - not things descended from dinosaurs, but T-rexes and raptors & things. When Diana questioned her, she got very defensive about her stance. Diana said dinosaurs were extinct a long time ago. The neighbor girl said that men had brought them back with frog DNA. At this point Diana says, "You mean Jurassic Park? That was a MOVIE. It's not real!" The neighbor girl left in a huff. A couple of days later she came back an apologized to Diana. Her mom had explained that Jurassic Park was pretend.

...or nowadays, is it?!?