NEWS: Furry, Purring, Cute Crimes Against Nature

GEEK: Furry, Purring, Cute Crimes Against Nature

A Northern California biotech company is cloning cats for people, at $50,000 a pop. The company, with the atrocious name of Genetic Savings & Clone (and who'd give a company with a name like that 50 large anyway?) is founded by John Sperling, who founded the "University" of Phoenix. Sperling funded research into cloning dogs at Texas A&M (motto: "More Students Killed In Stupid Frat Rituals Than The Whole Ivy League Combined". The research eventually culminated in the cloning of a cat who in addition to being a horrifying abomination of nature, has been given the awful name "CC".

Animal rights activists are horrified, this time for a really important reason, not because some B-list celebrity wore fur to the People's Golden Globe Awards or whatever.

Yeah, but some cat from the pound doesn't look like precious little Fluffy! Just ask the recipient of the first clone.

Well, when "Little Nicky" dies of old age in 4 years or so – cloned animals have, so far, exhibited a drastically shortened lifespan – I guess she'll have to scrape up another 50 grand. Unless we get lucky and the science fiction stories that have clones becoming insane killing machines come true. We can only hope.

Let the bad "copy cat" puns begin!

See, that's the bitch. Every time an animal cell divides, it contains exactly half as much of an important chemical that allows DNA to reproduce. After so many divisions, the body stops producing new cells, old age kicks in, and eventually, we die.

If you take a tissure sample from a cloned organism at adulthood, the clone will live half as long before it starts to fall apart. Make a clone of a clone of a clone, and you'll start to see liver spots, wrinkles, and celulite in organisms that are still in adolescence.

There are ways to work around this, of course. Get genetic samples from little Nickie the day he's born, and your clone will probabaly live to be almost as old. Take one of the two original stem cells, and you should have two identical cats if all else goes as planned. (In theory, that is. I have no idea if lifespan problems exist for all cloned organisms or just ones cloned from a tissue sample taken late in life. I'm assuming it's the latter, but I haven't read a whole lot about it.)

Take a LOT of samples at once, and freeze them all until you want to make a clone, and you could pop a new clonned cat out of the freezer every seven years or so, assuming genetic material can be kept indefinitely. (Does anyone know about this?)

Of course, if we can eventually debug the cloning process so that dozens of grotesque, malformed, sickly mutants don't have to be birthed and then killed in order to produce one viable cat, the ethical issues will eventually go away. It's getting there that's so horribly nasty. The most logical thing would be to allow another country, say china, whose population doesn't give a good god damn about cruelty to animals, to perform this intermediate cloning research. But of course we americans don't want to do that, either. We want to corner the market, now and forever, and that means doing our own research.

(Ethical issues other than the pet shop thing, of course. But due to the extremne cost of cloning a pet, I don't think it will make an appreciable impact on the number of kitties adopted from animal shelters any time soon. Not until the price goes down much closer to the cost of buying a thuroughbread cat from a pet store, of course.)

I'm not sure I'm comfortable with the unneccessary implications that Phoenix and Texas schools are automatically inferior... I'm not debating it, mind you, I just don't see what it has to do with the topic of the article.

That said, isn't it weird how southern and western states, traditionally thought of as being the most intolerant, bible-thumping regions of the country are the places where all this high-tech, ethically shady research is being carried out? What's up with that? I would have expected to see this kind of drek in California, but not Texas.

(I propose we all use shadowrun slang while talking about cloning, cybernetics, and nanotechnology. I don't expect anyone to follow my proposal, but here it is.)

PETA could play up the "Little Nicky is the spawn of Satan- Literally" angle.

I see a revival of the fur coat phenomenon coming.

Their technique will definately improve, so the inhumanity (heh, it's not a human anyway) of deformed cats thing will become a small percentage of probability.

One step closer to cloning lassie so we don't have to watch black and white reruns... haha!

EDIT:

Hmm.. We may not have sent our lassie research to china, but we have definately sent our theraputic cloning research to china, unfortunately. It was due to those bible thumping texans actually. For those that don't know, theraputic cloning is the cloning of individual organs, such as a heart, liver, kindney, or lung, for use from the patient's own cells to create a new organ without defect, that transplants perfectly without rejection except for inflammation and scarring from invasive surgury. It seems our government doesn't want us to live longer lives because that would mean we would drain social security more. They want productive workers that die relatively young... of course I would assume bush will be the first in line if he ever needs a new organ. The sad part is that China may very well pass the US in biotech research because of this political blunder. Without being top in research, we may as well not be considered the world's sole superpower.

[Edited on Dec 26, 2004 12:55AM]

Awww. How come this makes me laugh rather than being sad? I think it's rather funny that the country's fear of playing God doesn't mean shit in the end because China's going to do it, anyway.

...About cloning cats- It's not the same cat, no matter how similar it may act and look. The cat you so loved is dead. DEAD DEAD DEAD.

i am saving up for my custom perma-puppy that never ages.
that or a pot-bellied elephant


[Edited on Dec 26, 2004 by dspsg]

Why do you care? She wanted a cat, they wanted 50 grand, if i could clone peoples dead animals for that kinda money I would too.

Everyone wins.

It doesnt hurt you and it helps her, whats the big deal?

*braces himself*

well, not to go too far off topic...

but come on, PETA does suck. They operate in a way that shows they are incapable of rational thought. In short, they are a joke. As some guy who "likes animals" ( ), I'm sure you'd so rather have one of the other animal rights groups at the top, and not one that makes people think you also believe chicken farming iz jus like teh holocaust!

[Edited on Dec 26, 2004 by randomcharacters]

I like peta being on top because it means nothing really happens so im still 100% free to eat me some bacon and eggs.... hmm bacon

Isn't this where I bought my CS degree over the internet - I mean, where one might buy one's CS degree over the internet?

I think you might be referencing the behaviour of telomerase. Which for the purpose of cloning, and aging incidentally, is why the discovery of a telomerase inhibitor is so important... I wish more people whould throw 50k towards that research.

Even worse - the name " CC " is an intentional reference to carbon copy by the owners.

"genetic savings and clone" sounds like something from futurama.

as for the issue itself, i'd agree with s5. only when the justification for cloning is personally and emotionally-based does it become a reprehensible act.

Some people have entirely too much money.

I disagree with PETA only to the extent that I find their act silly and harmful to the animal rights movement.

I find this reprehensible because it continues this pathetic movement of treating pets as little furry toys, not animals that must be considered as beings with their own lives that happen to share yours. This woman should be thankful for the times she had with her previous cat, and go to a shelter and rescue some other cat from euthanasia. I find her desire to simply replace it with a carbon copy bizarre, and utterly selfish in the wrong way.

This is the kind of stupid shit that anti-cloning, anti-stem cell research assholes eat up. The real benefit of cloning for us won't be getting Fluffy back when you back over her in the SUV. It'll be far more ordinary, mundane stuff, and I hate the bastardization of it into a toy for yuppies. I should have expected it, I guess.

hey, my mom teaches for the university of phoenix. it's a legit school. they just happen to be for profit.

if they're willing to spend $50k to clone their old cat... maybe they have some more deep-seeded problems/

(and the university of phoenix is similar to ITT tech-- they're not federally or state funded..so they have to get money from people to operate. they're a legitimate business)

[Edited on Dec 26, 2004 11:56AM]

Is anyone reminded, from the extremely short lifespans, of the beginnings of something like Blade Runner?

Just an odd thought and not a terribly happy one at that.

even if cloning were a perfect art, i still would be creeped out by my cloned dog. I'd rather have the injection of "Perpetually Puppy" so we can enjoy puppies all year long and puppy breath, but I'd rather have a longer living healthy pet than a cloned pet.

Listern here YOU FUCKING FUCKS! IF YOU HAVE 50,000 DOLLARS TOF UCKING WASTE, THEN GIVE IT TO FUCKING ORGANIZATIONS AND CHARITIES THAT CAN USE IT FOR SOMETHING WORHTWHILE! FUCK!

...but pig and elephant genes don't splice! Haven't you ever heard that song by Loverboy?

Chill out bitches!
You want to cry about money?

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