I just shake my head.
Sometimes, I just shake my head.
Genetic Savings and Clone is willing to charge you a lot of money in order to clone your pet for you.
Genetic Savings & Clone enriches the lives of pet lovers through superior cloning technologies. Cat cloning available today; dog cloning available in 2005.
You would think this was a joke site, other than the fact that it really is a legitimate company offering what they feel is a legitimate service. Frankly (pun intended) the testimonials are a little unsettling. Talking about how “Little Gizmo” has the same mannerisms, same favorite chair, and same habits as it’s dead .. what do you call it? A relative? An ancestor certainly…. It’s self?
My previous post about technology and society is closely tied to this company’s business model. Collecting a PetBank of pet DNA so they can be cloned – a perfect example of “because we can, we do”. How inappropriate is that? At least the company asks a few important questions in its Ethics section. For example, they mention that
… many people have legitimate concerns about cloning. Some clones produced to date — especially those created using pre-CT cloning methods — have had health problems that appear to be cloning-related. Yet some scientists are already attempting to clone humans. What are the implications of cloning for society? How can we ensure that the technology is not abused?
and then open up a public forum for discussion. Hello! You’re already doing what you want to discuss! The genie is out of the freakin bottle! Talk all you want, but is an Internet forum really the appropriate place for the discussion to be held? In particular, a forum that is funded and mediated by a company that relies on people purchasing clones from them.
Sometimes, I just shake my head.
This is classic! Just the name would make you think it’s a joke. Maybe it is? My favorite, though, is the three options for PetBank: the price climbs as your pet is in worse shape. It’s classic price discrimination, where you try to charge more money to people who are willing to pay more. So when Rover has just kicked the bucket and everyone is devastated, $1395 won’t seem that bad.
I guess I just don’t see too much of a problem with this. Yes, I think it’s silly to try to bring your pet back. But I also shake my head at the fact that the average Canadian spends three hours a day in front of the TV (http://tinyurl.com/3qnhz). It’s not my thing, but if people want to do that then it’s not hurting me.
On the news down here, I heard of a grandma who actually spent ~$50,000 to have her dead cat cloned. So, no, it’s not a joke. Do people really become that attached to their pets? Why didn’t the Schindlers spend that kind of money having Terry Schiavo cloned?
Dale, I think you missed the important point of that article you linked up … people are WATCHING LESS SPORTS ON T.V! Quick! Round up the important people! SPORTS PROGRAMMES must be sustained!!!!!
Glibness aside, 23 hours on average a week means 1 whole day is devoted to television. Yikes.
But I think this issue is a big deal, and Darcy brings the point home. Cloning dogs and cats is just the start. Cloning wives and daughters is next, for the sake of love.
We keep doing things because we can, without really asking ourselves what the impact on the entire ecosystem (our neighborhood, our country, our society, our world) we live in will be. It may be small, it may be enormous – we just don’t know because we haven’t looked into it yet.
Thanks guys, now I’m shaking my head even harder.
Sorry to induce head-shaking. I don’t think we do things because we can — we do them because we want to, and because we get some sort of benefit from them. There are always hidden costs in these decisions, sometimes big, sometimes small. I agree that we should try to sort out what these costs are before we make decisions, but sometimes this is simply impossible — some of the effects are very long-term. But if we, as a society, didn’t allow these risks we would never do anything new.
I disagree, though, that “dogs and cats are just the start”. Yes, there will be people who will want to clone people, but the very fact that cloning cats and dogs has been allowed does NOT mean that cloning people will automatically be allowed. The morals, philosophy, and (maybe most important from a practical point of view) laws that govern actions with respect to people are VERY different from those with respect to animals. They’re not even in the same ballpark. So the slippery slope argument doesn’t wash.
Interesting idea – that sacrifice is required in order to progress as a society. I suppose you need to then ask the question as to what defines progress, and who benefits. Perhaps we need to ask questions such as “what benefits could possibly be derived from these risks, and for whom?”. Sounds like a good idea to me – in fact you might even say that this could be some form of critical analysis. And I don’t think this currently happens to any great extent. The research field is driven by forces other than altruism and societal benefit. Critical thought is lauded but rarely attempted unless it falls under some categorical analysis expected before a paper or findings can be published.
And I’m willing to say here that the slippery slope argument is a red herring. The fact that we are looking at cloning of people versus dogs, and whether one will lead to the next simply underscores my point. Rather than looking critically at the effects of cloning technology on us as a society and how we can best use those techniques, we are arguing about how far this should go before we start to clamp down on it. But it’s a process that is already started – the thinking patterns exist already, and we haven’t begun to consider how these changes to our thinking patterns will affect anything else around us.
It’s a meta-discussion that needs to occur – a discussion about the discussions we’re already having.
Ack! I just wrote for ten minutes about this, a brilliant, clever post that would have left you writhing on the floor in admission of defeat… but then Firefox crashed. Yes, Firefox, not IE.
Rather than write again, let’s just talk over beer.