Why I Cloned My Dog | Hacker News Reader

Why I Cloned My Dog

nytimes.com

21 pointsdr_50 comments

Dog cloning is brutal. Companies have to go through many many attempts before they get a good result. Who knows how many attempts they had to try before they got the result they wanted. They go through all of this and ultimately it is not the same dog.

I wish she would have gone to the pound to save a life there. I hope cloning doesn't become a trend.

http://www.humanesociety.org/issues/cloning/qa/questions_ans...

https://io9.gizmodo.com/5949612/why-cloning-is-a-terrible-wa...

She did. In addition to cloning her dog.

Yes, but why do cloning when you can go to the pound and get as many dogs as you want.

I understand feelings but death is part of life. We don't like it but there are things we just can't change.

>I understand feelings but death is part of life. We don't like it but there are things we just can't change.

And cloning isn't even a way to escape death. One could argue that even if her dog could be perfectly physically cloned and even if its consciousness could be mirrored to the clone, it's still not the same being, and the original is still dead. And of course, what happened here is far away from perfect physical cloning (let alone consciousness copying).

Is it important to the dead creature? Or the rest of the universe that experiences that creature?

Star Trek: death at every transport and your “clone” carries on. Worked out okay. A bit of a queasiness factor to get passed.

Disclaimer: I had my dog’s genome sequenced (for free through a Harvard study) for cloning later in my life after he’s gone. Because why not. A lot can change in 50-100 years. Plan accordingly.

I guess I just don't see the point. Stick my consciousness into a computer so I or my pets can live past our deaths? Sign me up.

But cloning? Who really cares? It'd be like if I were to rush around the globe looking for the person who resembles me the most and pay them money to bear a child just so I can have a son who looks as similar to me as possible... while still not remotely being "me".

It matters to the people who want a clone. As long as they have the dollars and it’s legal somewhere in the world, it’s going to happen.

She know's it is not the same dog. From the article:

> You can clone the look of a dog, but you can’t clone the soul. Still, every time I look at their faces, I think of my Samantha...and smile.

Why or how is cloning brutal? I assume that the cloning attempts generally fail before any kind of viable multicellular life?

I'm not convinced it's a fair assumption that the attempts failed before viable multicellular life.

Some cloning is duplicating half the donor dna - which results in some nasty recessive gene problems? So its a 'clone' in the sense it had one parent (donor) but not in the 'identical to the parent' sense.

A lot of them do fail early, but those that don't fail early (or even succeed) have problems.

For instance, https://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=98360&page=1

Some dogs are born and have to be euthanized since they don't meet the results they want. It's a hope and see process. They hope it will be good but there's no way to know until you have a real dog in many cases.

Thank you. I felt a weird mix of impressed and severely grossed out. I've thought about continuing my dog's different lines, but because of my (admittedly extremely superficial) understanding of epigenetics, I never considered it an option.

But, I did wish to harvest their genetic database. My pup is a German Shepherd and what we believe to be Pit Bull [0] and is such a smart, sweet, sensitive and overall wonderful little boy that I have wanted to find some way to continue his great DNA soup. But then I realized I have 3 little brothers, some of whom I have no desire in exemplifying, so any sort of genetic continuity has zero guarantee to bringing me any of the happiness I've been blessed to receive. Instead, I've just learned to enjoy this one exceptional and unique little gift.

[0] https://www.dropbox.com/s/xwh96pj7lgjwlad/Photo%20Feb%2021%2...

Cloning a dog seems benign, but I suspect that, before long, people will be cloned, too. There are certainly creepy possibilities, e.g., "The Boys from Brazil," which imagines Hitler clones, but also thought-provoking scenarios, e.g., allowing parents to clone a child who died in an accident. What a brave new world we're entering!

Hitler clones would be interesting. Hitler didn't have a great early life - would he have been different if he grew up in a healthy household with two loving parents?

Yes. A recent twin incident proved that nurture plays a surprisingly large role, larger than was expected by the investigators.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-35220779

I'm not sure, the article doesn't mention any of that.

It actually tries (weakly) to claim the opposite, with statements like "Carlos and Wilber both had very similar white mobile phones" and "We are a little bit more ego-centric, bigger flirts."

Nothing about nurture playing a role though.

It's the first article I could find that referenced the twins in question. But researchers said they were surprised how much impact upbringing had. Unlike a lot of twins separated at birth, these were raised in very different socioeconomic circumstances.

Project about them: http://drnancysegaltwins.org/bogota-twins-project-gallery

The best reference I can currently come up with is this comment by tokenadult who has a longstanding interest in twin studies:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10100109#10100644

generalizing that idea just a bit: what if, for each murderer who was executed, the government cloned that person first, in an effort to allow them to have a normal, crime-free life?

would it count as a form of rehabilitation?

The whole point of that (awful [1]) movie was that they artificially arranged to have the clones grow up much as Hitler did. The first few scenes have hitmen killing the clones' fathers at the same age as the real Adolf.

[1] Well, at least Steve Guttenberg and Lawrence Olivier got to be in the same film. It was either that or Police Academy XII.

$50k to clone according to the company's website - take that money and put it to a far better use.

Her net worth is $340 million. $50k is not a huge amount for her.

> Her net worth is $340 million. $50k is not a huge amount for her.

The degree of wealth does not negate the absurdity of the investment.

I would argue that it isn't an investment. It is an indulgence.

Exactly, her self-care budget is just higher than most people.

That's equivalent to someone with a $1M net worth spending $150 on a dog.

It's also equivalent to someone that makes $50k/year (roughly the median income in the US) spending their entire salary on a dog.

Of course she can afford it, that isn't the point.

The point is that she spent some money to help cope with grief. If she had a median net worth she would have bought a bottle of high end scotch, and no one would have so much as blinked. She spent the same relative amount on cloning her dog, and it was likely much more effective than the bottle of scotch would have been.

That doesn't mean that $50K couldn't be put to far better use.

As a self-professed dog lover, that money could save a lot of dogs from euthanasia in a shelter.

Cloning a dog is purely for personal vanity.

No, not for her.

But $50K could be life-changing for lots of people.

$50K donated to a battered women's shelter would probably do more good than $50K spent cloning a dog.

And I speak as one who has a dog whom I love so much that if I had Streisand's wealth, I'd be seriously tempted by the cloning option, but wouldn't do it.

If tech progress brought the cloning cost down to $1K, I'd rethink the matter.

>If tech progress brought the cloning cost down to $1K, I'd rethink the matter.

Rich people splashing $50k on it when its brand new is exactly how this comes about.

Lots of people with "too much" money buy stupid cars you can hardly sit in and ridiculous mechanical watches that barely keep time for far more. This seems pretty tame to me.

Yeah, that's actually a thing I was thinking about. Rich people doing "stupid" things actually finances companies to improve and advance so that "stupid" things become affordable. $50k is dumb. $1k, I'd think about. $300, I'd do today for my 14 1/2 year old "bullet" (pitbull+basset) mix dog :)

Streisand is already a notable philanthropist, even if she gave away 99% of her wealth $50k still wouldn't be a huge amount for her.

That's why she gets to spend her money on what she wants, and you get to spend yours on what you want. That way you each get to decide what "a far better use" would be.

Or are you open to other people telling you what you are/(not) allowed to spend on?

People are more than welcome to judge me, and they do. Likewise, I get to judge her. I may be mistaken, but I don't believe I have any actual control over her. Am I wrong? Do I have some secret ability to control her decisions? Because that would rock.

That's roughly the same price as a mid-tier luxury sedan.

Ethics of not-adopting and of cloning aside — not to dismiss either — is this really any worse than paying extra for a nice car?

An argument could be made the dog provides a higher marginal utility to its owner in this case.

> Why I Cloned My Dog

"Because I have money"

I'm probably just out of touch, but what's with the obsession with dogs, anyhow?

> I was so devastated by the loss of my dear Samantha, after 14 years together, that I just wanted to keep her with me in some way. It was easier to let Sammie go if I knew I could keep some part of her alive, something that came from her DNA. A friend had cloned his beloved dog, and I was very impressed with that dog. So Sammie’s doctor took some cells from inside her cheek and the skin on her tummy just before she died. And we sent those cells to ViaGen Pets in Texas. We weren’t even sure if the cells would take.

I mean, imagine if someone said this and it was a human. You'd look at 'em like they're insane [1].

[1] By the way, this is literally a Black Mirror episode, S02 E01 (edit: Thanks for the correction!)

While I agree with your second statement, a bond with a dog can be very strong, if that helps you understand your (first) question.

I'm not sure how entitlement is relevant here, except to excessively shame her. Entitlement is the view that people owe you something; it's not like this person had the moral expectation that society owed her anything with regards to her pet.

Perhaps you meant S02E01 of Black Mirror? Episode 2 of that season is "White Bear" which has nothing to do with cloning.

Dogs are really great companions. They become whatever you want them to be and never argue. It's a two-way benefit. I think you have to live with one or be friends with one to understand why they are a big deal.

I agree with you though, cloning one is a step too much.

If It was human - you’d propagate their genes by having children with them. I guess she did the next best thing with her dog.

I read about dog cloning a few years ago.

I _believe_ it was done in China.

One of the company's promises was that they would not charge for failed attempts at cloning.

That lead me to think that they clone dogs and kill them if they don't look like they should and keep doing that until they're happy.

Is this true?

You almost certainly read about the South Korean company. (I'm not sure if there are any Chinese ones yet, it's plausible, but they must get less publicity.) Killing dogs would probably cost too much since the yields won't be too great, and more importantly, they have to deliver both quickly and as puppies. No one pays ~$50k for a clone of their dog or cat and doesn't take delivery as a puppy/kitten. How do you know they will grow up to not look like they should? They're just cute little balls of fluff.

Well, they said there would be multiple attempts, so I assume they're looking for eye color, patterns in the fur and stuff like that?

I think by multiple attempts they mean the viability of the cloning process itself. It's a tricky process and a lot of the cells or embryos will just die on you for various reasons. This is true even of human IVF: if you harvest 5 eggs from a woman, she'll be somewhat lucky to get 1 child born. This is because some of the embryos are clearly abnormal, die while stored, when implanted don't 'take' and result in a pregnancy, or the pregnancy ends in a miscarriage or stillbirth, so on average you need 5+ eggs to start with and many women will have to do 2 (or even more) IVF cycles to get their child. (And you can lose them after birth too! As OP notes, the runt of the litter died.) Similarly with cloning: you just lose lots of embryos along the way from 'cell sample' to 'happy panting healthy puppy delivered to new owner'.

I'm not one to tell Barbra how to spend her money, but I think she should stop portraying herself as a textbook liberal and champion of the 99%. It doesn't ring very true.

  champion of the 99%

In practice, she's most comfortable with the 1%.

http://www.malibutimes.com/news/article_bdc5ada0-dd0e-5c38-b...

Hence the term, "The Streisand Effect"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect

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