Let's move from long-dead Kerry hamsters to today's pets.....
Justin Case was asking me the other day whether I would clone my dog Puff, and now I see that for those who can spare $50,000, pet cloning is not only available to anyone, but they're using a new, more effective method:
The company used a new method called chromatin transfer, which had been perfected by cloning expert James Robl and colleagues at Sioux Falls, South Dakota-based Hematech LLC. Hematech is using the method to clone cattle that produce human antibodies in their milk.
The traditional nuclear transfer method of cloning involves taking the nucleus from a cell of the animal to be cloned, putting it into an egg cell with its own nucleus removed, and then triggering this egg into growing as if it had been fertilised.
It is not efficient -- most eggs die -- and many animals are born deformed.
Chromatin transfer aims to produce a cloned embryo that more closely resembles a normal embryo.
It involves dissolving the outside of the nucleus of the cell to be cloned and removing certain regulatory proteins from the chromosomes, which carry the genes, and the proteins around the chromosomes.
This entire cell with its permeable nucleus is fused to an egg cell to create the clone.
The company -- Genetic Savings & Clone -- describes their method as safer and more effective than previous methods.
And if you're not interested in cloning your pet right now, or, say, you can't afford it and are hoping prices will come down, there's always Gene Banking:
New, low-cost, uncultured gene banking service for live, healthy pets: two external biopsy samples are deposited directly into PetBank without culturing. When you're ready to clone, we'll culture the biopsy samples and clone your exceptional pet for you. $100 annual storage fee after the first year.
Prices start at $365.00.
What you'd end up with, of course (whether you cough up the $50,000 now or wait for the competition to bring the price down), is not your pet, but a twin of your pet. Not that much different from what you'd get by simply breeding the animal to a similar mate.
If I had a twin of Puff, he wouldn't be Puff, but a different dog, who'd grow up in a different place with a much older version of me projecting my old expectations of the old Puff onto a hapless twin without a clue of my inner emotional needs. Not that I'd mind having a twin of Puff, but something about the idea of "cloning" might contaminate my thinking. The clone would not be Puff.
On the other hand, if they could figure out how to transfer Puff's memories into his newly born twin, things would get more interesting. There were some older experiments in which neural tissue from one salamander was transferred into another salamander, and to a certain degree memories were transfered -- including behaviors taught only to the first salamander. (More here. And the possibility of such memory transfer is obviously of great interest to cryonicists.)
So if I could have Puff's brain memory transfered (much like old-to-new hard drive), it might be fun to give Puff a new lease on life.
Old memories transfered to new brain in new body.
Puff's a dog, too. Any moral objections?
What would Leon Kass say?
posted by Eric on 08.06.04 at 08:26 AM
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" The company used a new method called chromatin transfer, which had been perfected by cloning expert James Robl and colleagues at Sioux Falls, ...."
Am I the only one amazed that a cloning technique was perfected by cloning not only James Robl, but also by cloning his colleagues? Who'd have imagined we might have two James Robl's running around?
You probably realize this already, but not only would the dog not have the same memories or personality, but he'd probably look different, too. I know with cats, their coloration is largely determined by chance in the womb so a cloned cat might look radically different. So, you'd be left with a pet that'd perhaps be vaguely similar (maybe some specific habits might be the same) but for most purposes might as well be unrelated.
Morally, if the process is reasonably safe and leads to a healthy animal rather than significantly increasing the risk of defects, then the only moral objection I would have would be the fact that there's tons of homeless animals that you should be adopting rather than bringing new ones into the world.
Regarding brain memory transfers, my friends and I used to argue about how the Star Trek transporter worked (yes, I had no life). Theory A said the transporter transmited information to the destination, using energy to reconstitute the person exactly at the destination, the original copy being destroyed during the transfer. Theory B said that the transporter converted energy to matter, beamed it to the destination, and reconverted it back to matter again.
The evidence in favor of A was the Good-Kirk vs Bad-Kirk cloning episode. The evidence in favor of B was that when a person died they never tried to materialize a 'backup' copy out the transporter. The rebuttal was that it was against Starfleet ethics or something.
The argument seems to turn on the definition of 'self'. Philosopher Bernard Williams explored this topic in his famous paper on The Self and Future (often required reading in undergrad Phil courses). It lays out some interesting throught-experiments with magic memory-transfer devices in order to better understand the meaning of personal identity. (SF writer Philip K Dick pretty much owns this whole topic.) Fun stuff to think about.
The Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler
Don?t bang your head!
" The company used a new method called chromatin transfer, which had been perfected by cloning expert James Robl and colleagues at Sioux Falls, ...."
Am I the only one amazed that a cloning technique was perfected by cloning not only James Robl, but also by cloning his colleagues? Who'd have imagined we might have two James Robl's running around?
Oh ... I get it now.