Since 2015, ViaGen Pets have been seeing an increase in the number of clients requesting pet cloning. Bioethics professor Dr. Robert Klitzman states in a Washington Post article that although science has progressed enough for cloning to become more commercial, there are still ethical dilemmas.
There is a “naive notion that the clone will be the same and that you’ll have the same emotional relationship,” Klitzman says. “I can either pay thousands of dollars to create a new pet that’s actually going to have a different history and personality, or maybe I could adopt an animal that would otherwise be killed in a shelter. Those are things that ethically need to be considered.”
Additionally, cloning does not have a 100% success rate. Due to its unnaturalness, there can be abnormalities that lead to miscarriages or death just after birth. And if the cloning is successful, Klitzman states, it “may not allow one to process the grief and then develop a relationship with another being.”
Although pet cloning remains controversial, the article continues by stating that the animals involved are “loved and taken care of,” including the surrogate mothers.
Read the Washington Post article here.
