April 15, 2004

• Until our problem with world hunger is solved, restaurants should be stopped.
• That's interesting, goetter. You are joking, right?
• Behold the power of analogies, Minda25.
• My mom started throwing birthday parties for her damn dog. It's had more doctor visits than I had growing up under her roof, and it gets more fussing than I ever did. I should just be happy that it only costs $50k so that, god forbid, when mom dies, she'll actually have an estate for me to bicker over with the dog. I personally believe cloned pets will be vessels for evil on the inside, much like pet semetary, cujo, or chuckie. So I guess my objections are ethical in nature.
• Until our problems with world hunger and pet overpopulation are solved...well, I'll let you figure out the obvious conclusion to that one. In any case, to me it would be foolish to spend the money on bringing back a pet, ethical issues aside. Too much of the development of the pet is based on upbringing as well, so you won't have a pet who acts just like poor, dead fluffy. Also, if I'm remembering correctly, spotting and coloration are based on the phenotype, not the genotype, meaning that the pet will look somewhat different just based on changes that happen in the womb. However, if someone desperately wants to spend $50k on a clone of their pet, my capitalistic upbringing says that not only should we let them, but that I should offer the service myself for a mere $40k, then I could take as much of the profit as I didn't want and use it towards sheltering pets and/or feeding the hungry.
• People are weird about their pets, boo_radley. My mother-in-law flat out refuses to train her standard poodle. I think she's afraid he'll change too much, or stop loving her or something. He's 2 now, and very dangerous. I do understand goetter's point (assuming it's a serious one), and I appreciate the perspective it offers. I don't quite think they're the same, though. When a person chooses to eat at a restaurant over going to the store and making their own meal, does it mortally endanger a hungry person? Although if that person did decide to go to the store, and then donated the money they saved by not eating out to a charity or homeless shelter, that would kind of be the same thing. Hmmm.......
• I don't see how it would be possible to stop pet breeding and cloning. I think it's silly to clone, but some of the breeds - particularly the working dog breeds, are essential to people's livelihood. I agree that adopting an animal from a shelter should be the first thing considered by people who want companionship. Every pet I've ever had has been a rescue. I can just imagine the outrage if a law limiting breeding were passed. There's a civil rights issue as well as an economic one. A better option might be giving some kind of itemized tax break to people who opt for adoption. Keep it modest and limited to discourage opportunists, but large enough to give incentive.
• I'm normally against restrictions and controls, but I think I reluctantly agree that there ought to be some controls on the breeding of dogs in particular. As it is, I believe animal welfare organisations have to run what amount to full-time pet slaughterhouses. You're right that any kind of control would be politically difficult at the moment, fractal_badger, but I don't think that will always be so - in fact, I fear that our descendants will eventually come to find pet-owning itself almost as morally dubious as bear-baiting unless we address these issues effectively.
• I don't understand why people pay as much money for their pets health/cloning/whatever as they do. I think it is a waste of money, but I certainly don't see why other people shouldn't do it. In terms of the overpopulation issue, I think it is always better to adopt, be it a puppy or a baby if you can't get one naturally. I understand the desire to have a li'l kid of your own fixin's (or pure breed for the pup), but you'd be better in my book for using that money to put an ex-orphan through college (or dog school) than some of the more extensive fertility procedures.
• Let's start with the poodles.
• The first thing we do, let's kill all the pood... NO BAD WRONG NO NO BAD WRONG NO WHERE DID YOU LEARN THIS
• $50,000 to clone your pet?? Who says the economy is in the tank? There's lots of money around. In my town people are paying $250,000 for a 35 foot long wooden plank floating on the sea otherwise known as boat moorage. So $50K to have Fluffy II by your side on the SS Minnow II is a bargoon!
• My grandmother had poodles. *shudders* I can't imagine cloning as a consumer product/service. It screams "EVIL!" to me. Didn't you people watch Clonus??
• Also, there is Godsend (Quicktime) coming soon. Perhaps fodder for the next generation's MST3K? It appears as though a rugged Dr. DeNiro clones the dead child of a loving couple only to find said child haunted by his dead self when he comes to the age at which he originally died. Or something...
• Well said, Plegmund. There's enough abuse by pet owners to make that a possibility. And even though there are laws against that, it's still horribly difficult to prosecute abusers. I know of one case a few years ago where 2 teenagers broke into a privately run cat shelter and beat to death 20-something cats. As of a month after it happened, still no action was on the horizon, and one kid's dad's attitude was "He's just being a kid..." You and fractal_badger brought up a good point with the political aspects of trying to impose restrictions on breeding. I had a feeling it'd be impossible to enforce, so it was always more of a "if only" kind of thing. I really like fractal_badger's idea of giving adoptees a tax break. That might already be possible - the organization I volunteer for requires a $65 "donation" for a cat (that includes spay/neuter, shots, tests, microchips, etc.). Since it's a donation, it's tax deductible (I think).
• So I was reading this thread and then that one about site rankings. I decided to enter shotsy to see where my site came in the que (first). The next two were MoFi related, then this site. Pretty ugly, pretty lame. But she links to this site: In Memory of Pets which will, perhaps, be of use to those of us on this thread who can't quite swing the $50,000 cost of eternal pet youth.
• Not only did my grandmother have a poodle, it was named "Snowflake" (shudder)
• I personally believe cloned pets will be vessels for evil on the inside, much like pet semetary, cujo, or chuckie. So I guess my objections are ethical in nature. Beautiful, boo_radley. I have real problems with pet breeding. They can turn out so horribly badly, short life spans, diseases, etc. It just seems cruel. Not to mention pet shows and the like...I just get the feeling that these are toys to these people, not living, breathing, autonomous animals. We got our kitty from the shelter and she's a wonderful, idiosyncratic addition to the household who's a cat, not a show doll. I mean, I might try putting a hat on her, if I thought I could get away with it...but otherwise, I got a cat to have a cat.
• Seem to be two issues raised in this FPP: 1) cloning pets, and 2) breeding pets. As to the first, the money consideration aside, I very much doubt that many folk are going to want a cloned pet; part of their appeal (at least for me) is that each creature I've had to do with has been very much an individual with its own character and 'personality'/selfhood. Even with identical twins, we don't expect (or get) an identical personality, and why should dogs or cats be assumed to be any different in this regard? As to the second issue, breeding animals is like anything else people do, it can be done in a responsible way or an irresponsible one. To outright ban the reproduction of pets which can be a source of tremendous pleasure and companionship, (and now it appears, engendering positive attitudes in people who live alone), seems unnecessarily harsh. Many animals do work of social benefit (police work, drug/bomb sniffing, companion, rescue, therapy, guide dogs for the blind, etc) and to advocate that breeding be stoopped seems more an emotional reaction to the destruction of homeless animals by crowded/often underfunded shelters than the only possible solution. Prohibition would be expensive to enforce and would probably cause outrage among the majority of responsible pet owners and breeders. Money is needed. Funds for public education, support of neutering programs, and intensive community-supported efforts (newspapers and television) to prevent unwanted animals would be better. [Funding might be accomplished by raising licensing fees much higher for unneutered dogs and cats, and perhaps by taxing pet supplies and so on.]
• Cloning, shmoning. Soon, I hope we will have the technology to create bespoke fauna by direct manipulating the DNA of various creatures, splicing this with that, adding a touch of the thrid - perhaps a pinch of the fourth. I look forward to the day when (for example) tame and playful Bengal Tigers, coloured flourescent pink, are the fashion accessory du jour of rich Manhattanites, and accompany them on their ante-jentacular constitutionals. I myself hope to encourage research into creating human-chimpanzee hybrids - "ape-men", if you will - capable of fulfilling my long-harboured desire for an army of mindless slaves, who I shall marshall to commit feats of unimagined cruelty against those that have mocked me all these long and bitter years.
• shotsy - regarding the movie: i love, love love stupid stories encouraging the junk-science moronic belief that we have some kind of destiny built into our genes. we are destined to die at age X. we are destined to become evil dictators. we are destined to meet a certain person. oh and of course if we paltry humans interfere with this destiny we will of course suffer tragic consequences. life is random, folks. get used to it. i suppose when my cat petey dies, it would be interesting to clone him, so that i could name the clone "re-petey". you see he's a very nice cat, but i imagine that i could go out, get another black kitten, raise him, and call that kitten re-petey. the type of cat i'd get might be every bit as like my original as a clone would. there are way too many kittens out there to justify spending that much money to have an iffy chance at copying your original pet. it's assinine. plus, from my perspective, i grow attached to a pet because of the personality the pet develops by interacting with me over a specific period of time. it's always going to be a disappointment to you if you get another similar-looking pet to replace a dead one. unless we're talking goldfish here, you'll quickly realize that unless you like the new pet on its own, you'll be disappointed in it as a replacement. it might be another english pointer, but it won't be sparky. when my wife's 18 year old female cat died, we got two kittens. boy kittens. we weren't expecting a replacement for her old kitty, we were expecting something different - and have been pleasantly surprised. you can't expect a new pet, cloned or otherwise, to be the same as your old pet, any more than you can expect mommies new husband to be just like your dad.
• Right on, clf. My parents had a cocker spaniel that had to be put to sleep at the age of thirteen. I don't think I want to ever own another cocker spaniel because it would pale in comparison to the fond memories I have for that dog; I can't imagine paying an exhorbitant sum for the promise of recreating a pet you can never truly copy. I must say, that having taken SideDish's advice in response to this thread, I must put in a plea for animal adoption. The dog we adopted is the complete opposite of what I thought I wanted, yet in the week we've had him I'm amazed at how much I've grown to love him. A pet is more than the sum of it's genes. Cloning a pet would just be pointless...unless you're wanting a product instead of a pet.
• I'll second that, Dr. Zira! Every pet I (we) have ever had has been adopted. A very worthwhile way to go.
• Is Dog Cloner Also Mormon Kidnapper?

  A paper trail of court documents and jail booking information uncovered by The Associated Press suggests 57-year-old dog-lover Bernann McKinney is Joyce McKinney, who in 1977 faced charges of unlawful imprisonment in the missionary case. She jumped bail and was never brought to justice.

  Joyce McKinney and the Manacled Mormon. NSFW
• She's admitted it, apparently.
• Roryk, I want that three minutes of my life back. NOW!
• IMagine the possibilities!
• I knew it would come to this.
• I thought there could only be One?
• Mrs. Whiskers???
• Misters Whiskers, or Mister Whiskerseses.
• Messrs Whiskerses, shurley?
• Maybe "Mister" and "Whiskers."