Cloning Spot And Lassie
Tuesday, February 26, 2008 Filed in: Things
Cloning is an idea whose time has come. How many dog
and cat lovers who lost their pets would like it
back?
Korea's Seoul National University is famous for two things. Fake human cloning, and successful dog cloning. A commercial market is just over the horizon, and cloning cats can't be that far behind.
Prognosticators say that dog cloning will be a bigger industry for industry, not for pet lovers. The current price is $150,000 to replicate a dog, though that price is expected to drop significantly in the next few years.
Industry? How much time, effort, money goes into training dogs for the blind, or drug-sniffing dogs, or security dogs, or dogs for the blind? Wouldn't it be great to get the best of the litter pre-bred for the future? There is a huge industry that uses medical diagnostic dogs.
Still, if one woman is willing to clone her pet pit bull terrier for a discount of $50,000, other pet lovers won't be far behind with check book in hand.
How many Lassies did it take to keep the television show Timmie and Lassie going for years? If cloning had been around, Lassie could still be at Timmie's side when he heads to town to deposit his Social Security check.
Sheep, dogs, frogs, and hello, kitty. What's next?
Cloning has some restrictions, Jurassic Park's startup-in-a-garage methodology not withstanding. Could famous movie stars be cloned? Could dinosaurs be cloned? Could extinct species of animals be cloned?
Buffalo burgers never caught on at the local McDonald's, but that won't stop cloners from honing their craft on any creature that can be cloned and sold.
How well the cloning marketplace performs will be dependent on two things. The money trail, and the success rate. If both go up, expect more clones. In the meantime, have you noticed that your neighbor is acting strange these days? And that dog down the street looks oh so familiar.
Korea's Seoul National University is famous for two things. Fake human cloning, and successful dog cloning. A commercial market is just over the horizon, and cloning cats can't be that far behind.
Prognosticators say that dog cloning will be a bigger industry for industry, not for pet lovers. The current price is $150,000 to replicate a dog, though that price is expected to drop significantly in the next few years.
Industry? How much time, effort, money goes into training dogs for the blind, or drug-sniffing dogs, or security dogs, or dogs for the blind? Wouldn't it be great to get the best of the litter pre-bred for the future? There is a huge industry that uses medical diagnostic dogs.
Still, if one woman is willing to clone her pet pit bull terrier for a discount of $50,000, other pet lovers won't be far behind with check book in hand.
How many Lassies did it take to keep the television show Timmie and Lassie going for years? If cloning had been around, Lassie could still be at Timmie's side when he heads to town to deposit his Social Security check.
Sheep, dogs, frogs, and hello, kitty. What's next?
Cloning has some restrictions, Jurassic Park's startup-in-a-garage methodology not withstanding. Could famous movie stars be cloned? Could dinosaurs be cloned? Could extinct species of animals be cloned?
Buffalo burgers never caught on at the local McDonald's, but that won't stop cloners from honing their craft on any creature that can be cloned and sold.
How well the cloning marketplace performs will be dependent on two things. The money trail, and the success rate. If both go up, expect more clones. In the meantime, have you noticed that your neighbor is acting strange these days? And that dog down the street looks oh so familiar.
