Thread: Commercial cloning

Beloved pet about to pass on? Not sure you can cope without it? Well now you can fool yourself into thinking you don't have to!

Just US$50,000 can get you five genetically identical copies of Fluffy or Rover to do with as you will (check that woman's expression in the photo accompanying the article - let's hope nobody ever clones her!).

Apparently, the same service is on offer in the US from the imaginatively titled Genetic Savings and Clone.

Commercially available cloning services appear to be amongst us. Given that we've now successfully cloned sheep, mice, dogs, cats, mules, pigs, cows and monkeys; do any of the more biologically minded amongst us know if there are any theoretical barriers to human cloning; or is it merely legal and moral issues that mean we have no human clones amongst us yet?

"Clonaid", a company backed by the Raelians (a french sect), is already pretending to be able to clone human beings. Its director, Dr Boisselier, said the 1st was created years ago, but she never provided any evidence. The company is now claiming to have created 5 cloned babies.
Clonaid.com: Services

Damn only 200$ a year for their "Insuraclone" (lol) program... a real bargain!!

The moral issues are two:

1) What happens to the cloned egg that isn't implanted? Since this falls in the exact same category as "what happens to the extra fertilized ova at fertility clinics", I'm willing to ignore it for this discussion.

2) Evidence is that cloned animals lead shorter lives, age faster, and that's only the viable ones.

There's any number of birth defects and damage in the failed specimens. If we're talking human clones, it's simply wrong to experiment with human lives in this fashion.

Humans should not be cloned given the current state of technology.

When animal cloning becomes so reliable that the statistical chance of producing a defective clone is equal to or less than the chance of a natural pregnancy causing a birth defect, then I'd say cloning is a reasonable option for those rich old fools who always wanted an identical twin, or those foolish parents who could afford to twenty identical boys. Name 'em all George Foreman Jr, I guess.

But basically the problem is the immaturity of the present technology.