Woman pays $50,000 for cloned cat

MIKE BURN · Posted: Thu Dec 23, 2004 5:29 pm Post subject: Woman pays $50,000 for cloned cat

Quote:
Love your cat? Get a clone for $50,000

Texas woman pays a California biotech company for a carbon copy of her beloved 'Nicky.'

December 23, 2004: 9:32 AM EST

NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - A Dallas woman has received a clone of her dead cat after paying $50,000 to a California biotech company, a Texas newspaper reported.

The Dallas Morning News reported Wednesday that the cloned kitten, dubbed Little Nicky, was born in Austin and presented to a Texas woman named Julie who was saddened by the loss of the cat, also named Nicky, she had owned for 17 years.

The copied cat -- about 8 weeks old -- was delivered to Julie on Dec. 10. It is the first ever cloned-to-order pet sold in the United States, the newspaper said.

Genetic Savings & Clone, the company behind Little Nicky's cloning, said the Texas resident stored her old cat's tissue in its gene bank, according to the report. And when Genetic Savings offered clients the chance to reproduce their precious pets for a price, Julie signed up.

Genetic Savings is the only company to offer cloned pets to paying customers, and five people have signed up this year for what it calls its "Nine Lives Extravaganza" -- the chance to clone a cat for $50,000, company spokesman Ben Carlson told the paper.

The company has not released Julie's last name but reports that the airline industry employee is pleased with her new pet, according to the paper.

I'm lost for words. SICK may describe my feelings the best right now.

droolymutt

I heard about this...

While I can understand the pain of not wanting to lose a loved pet, it saddens me to see people grasping for the impossible......

DreamTone7 · Joined: 20 Sep 2002 Posts: 2571

I agree Mike...and I forsee great danger in the future. Once people become accustomed to this process, and it becomes accepted...the potential for cloned humans to become the sub-species of the future...people with potentially no rights...the minority of all minorities, and all the troubles that can come with it. Frightening. And, most likely, labor-intensive big-industry is already looking on this cat and smiling. Not me.

bbchris

THe biotech company is a private company. I've just read up about them. Hmmm it seems they have a market of people who want their pets back. Take the market away and the business will go out of business.

They take the eggs and scrape out the DNA and add in the stuff saved from the dead animal. 8% success rate. So they must reap a lot of eggs from live cats!

They say they will start doing dogs in 2005. And they use the fact that soon they will be able to clone endangered species.

Seismic Anamoly · Joined: 22 Aug 2002 Posts: 3039

Quote:
.....labor-intensive big-industry is already looking on this cat and smiling.

DT, you're close IMO.

Military Machines of the World, rejoice.....your soldier-manufacturing process is coming soon.

7 foot, 300 pound, non-questioning, totally compliant killing machines that have no family to care about them.

The possibilities stagger the mind.

Rummy will be elated.

droolymutt

Somehow, I think it's just better to let them go..... - as painful as that may be..

Who are we to second-guess God?

axella · Joined: 12 Jul 2004 Posts: 148

Is DNA from a 17-year-old cat good to use? As I recall, the problem with Dolly the cloned sheep was that the genetic material used to create her came from a mature animal, and that caused Dolly to prematurely age, and have a reduced lifespan.

droolymutt

Cloning scares the Hell out of me....

It's like a Frankenstein Experiment.....

Research, knowledge and understanding are good things.

But stuff like "cloning" is going too far.

peacecat · Joined: 15 Oct 2003 Posts: 5

...not to mention the fact that thousands of animals are euthanized in animal shelters every year simply because there aren't enough homes for them all. She could have saved a life by adopting another cat instead.