Five More Boogers

The commercial cloning of pets is now a reality. An American woman received five puppies cloned from her late, beloved pit bull Booger. She paid $50,000 for the cloned puppies. As you can see, she is incredibly happy and yes, the puppy is really cute. I don't want to begrudge her the joy and love that she is experiencing. But she hasn't got what she thinks she does.

This woman loved her pit bull Booger because she rescued it from a fight with three other dogs, and it showed its gratitude by protecting and caring for her for the rest of its life, helping with her shoes and socks and pulling her wheelchair around (she was badly injured in the melee between the dogs that resulted in her rescue of Booger). A sweet story, and it's easy to understand why she and the dog would have formed such a tight emotional bond, and why she would have been so sad when the dog passed.

RTFA, and you'll see that she is looking to the clone to be the dog who died: "'Yes, I know you! You know me, too!' McKinney said joyfully, hugging the puppies". No, they don't. Booger II - Booger VI are puppies now and they haven't been through -- and won't go through -- what Booger I did. To be sure, they'll love her and form their own bonds with her and they will likely be adorably cute puppies and grow up to be good dogs. And as a lover of animals, I'm pleased that they'll be in a loving home with a dedicated caretaker. Anyone who goes $50,000 and an entire continent out of her way to get a specific set of puppies is going to take very good care of them.

But they won't be Booger. They may be as smart as Booger was, and obviously they look like Booger, but they're going to have different experiences and they probably won't have the same sort of gratitude and intense loyalty that Booger had, because they won't have been through the fight and rescue. Animals are very much a product of the conditioning and training that they are given, even moreso than people.

Certainly things like this will help support further research into cloning technology and that will yield other sorts of knowledge, skills, and possibilities. That's good. And it's a free-market transaction; this is what the woman wanted to spend her money on. So nothing wrong has gone on here and likely some good will come of it. (Take note: this is another portent of the inevitability of a human clone. Note further that the technology is being developed by scientists and companies not in the United States because of our nonsensical legal bans on this technology.)

But here's the thing. Death is a part of life. Coping with the loss of a loved one is part of the experience of living. It is not fun, it is sad and something that we would prefer to avoid if we could. But it is inevitable. You will survive some people, and most pets, that you love, and you will have to come to peace with the loss. I think that this lady has just found a way to buy the illusion of not having to do that.

I certainly understand loving your pet. I love my pets, and when they go as one day they inevitably will, I'll be very sad. Even the cats, who can both be real PITAs sometimes. But it would never even occur to me to clone them. There are tens of thousands of animals out there that are put down in kill shelters because there is nothing else to do with them. The public cannot afford to feed and maintain all manner of stray dogs and cats. When it comes time to fill the void left by a departed critter, I will adopt a new one. Spending fifty thousand dollars to clone a dead dog, when there are thousands of living dogs who need homes right now, seems like a very strange arrangement of priorities.

(Photo credit to AP photographer Ahn Young-joon)