What Rebecca's Reading
- 'Serpent-Handling' West Virginia Pastor Dies From Snake Bite A “serpent-handling” West Virginia pastor died after his rattlesnake bit him during a church ritual, just as the man had apparently watched a snake kill his father years before.
- A Dispute Over Who Owns a Twitter Account Goes to Court How much is a tweet worth? And how much does a Twitter follower cost?
- A dollar badly spent: New facts on processed food in school lunches In a collaboration between The New York Times and the Investigative Fund, reporter Lucy Komisar delved into the billion-dollar business of the national school lunch program and found some unsettling news.
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March 8, 2009
Yet Another Disturbing Issue With Commercial Puppy Cloning — Surrogate Mother Abuse?
There’s been lots and lots written about the ethics of commercially cloning dogs and other pets — a practice I see as a prime example of extreme human idiocy. Who spends gazillions of dollars cloning a pet dog when it’s widely known that (a) the resulting puppies won’t be copies of the origianl dog, (b) they’ll likely have health problems, and (c) there are SO MANY PUPPIES that need homes? The answer: Very disturbing people, that’s who. (And it doesn’t look like this problem is going away any time soon.) I say all of this to raise yet another issue I have with the commercial cloning of puppies:
The photo above is featured in many articles, and on the website of
RNL Bio, which has produced some of the first (and several subsequent) commercial
puppy clones. From what I can tell, no one seems to be noticing the
horrendous condition that surrogate mother dog appears to be in. Look
at her ribs. Look at her hip bones. That dog looks extremely
malnourished (and overheated for some reason). So people are not only
wasting enormous amounts of money to create cloned pets that may or may
not have medical problems as a result, but it looks (not surprisingly)
like they’re probably doing so at the expense of the dogs who actually
give birth to those puppies.
</rant>
(Photo credit here)
11 Responses to “Yet Another Disturbing Issue With Commercial Puppy Cloning — Surrogate Mother Abuse?”
The Henrietta Lacks Foundation
The Henrietta Lacks Foundation strives to provide financial assistance to needy individuals who have made important contributions to scientific research without their knowledge or consent.
ye well i have three cloned dogs at home and there fine but the fourth one didnt cook well.
I Think it’s fairly dumb to spend millions of dollars cloning a dog, but it’s not my money. If researchers want to do ridiculously expensive research, it’s their business to do so. In terms of animal rights wise, I don’t think obtaining genetic material to create the clone harms the original dog in anyway, so it’s good in my book.
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What a ridiculous waste of money, not to mention abuse of the cloned animals. Millions of animals a year put down (in addition to the millions more we devour) and somehow someone finds it a worthwhile endeavor to waste money trying to figure out how to clone one particular animal that will essentially share only its features in common with its predecessor. Animal cloning should be illegal, at least for commercial purposes.
What a ridiculous waste of money, not to mention abuse of the cloned animals. Millions of animals a year put down (in addition to the millions more we devour) and somehow someone finds it a worthwhile endeavor to waste money trying to figure out how to clone one particular animal that will essentially share only its features in common with its predecessor. Animal cloning should be illegal, at least for commercial purposes.
OMG! Puppy cloning? Seriously, these scientist have a little too much time on their hands. They need to spend more time finding homes for puppies without homes and less time trying to duplicate and produce unhealthy ones. That picture is despicable! Where are the Animal Cops putting a stop to this nonsense?!
“But yeah, she could use lots more groceries and would it kill them to give her something soft to lie on?”
Exactly. I have seen better-fed and better-cushioned nursing mothers *in animal shelters.*
The panting is a pretty common behavior for nursing moms. The forehead folds and the tilt of the ears towards the camera shows that she’s concerned about something, probably all the humans staring at her. But yeah, she could use lots more groceries and would it kill them to give her something soft to lie on?
That is completely disgusting. Stuff like this makes me feel sad for humanity. Not to mention the dogs.
Abuse aside, I’ve always been a bit skeptical of this company. A Korean friend of mine said it quickly evolved out of a woo-based “natural cures” supplements company, which is still largely featured on their website here:
https://rnl.co.kr/eng/product/product_0201.html
https://rnl.co.kr/eng/product/product_0202.html
Then, wham, they’re cloning dogs and have collaborations with major US universities on stem cell research. They list products such as “Cancerstem Cell therapy for curing cancer” that seems far beyond technology I’m aware of. I smell a scandal coming.
Fuck, I had not idea about these issues with pet cloning. This really is horrible, a grotesque paean to human vanity. Ugh.