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TechnoratiDavid Magnus, co-director of the Center for Biomedical Ethics at Stanford University in California, told the press, "The whole premise of this operation is morally highly problematic. There is no good reason to do this when millions of pets have to be euthanized each year because they do not have homes and when this process carries unknown health risks to the animal." Furthermore, Magnus insisted that clients like Julie are "not getting what they think they're getting" when they pay to have their pets cloned. "These people are really having trouble accepting that death is a natural part of life and want an animal just like the one that died, but animals, just like humans, are more than just their genes."
Commenting on the prospect of cloned pets, Lawrence M. Hinman, director of the Values Institute and a professor of philosophy at the University of San Diego admitted that, since pet cloning is not dealing with human beings, "it has fewer of the moral issues associated with human cloning." Nevertheless, "pet cloning requires us to address the question of whether there is something morally objectionable about such cloning apart from the standard arguments about respect for life."
In the end, Hinman argued that the cloning of pets is ethically indefensible. "We can produce a genetically identical copy of our pet, but we delude ourselves if we think we have somehow accomplished something by this substitution. If I buy a clone of my dog, I get only a replica of the unique animal I loved. Isn't it more honest to move on, to build a new relationship with a new, unique animal rather than try to duplicate something from the past?"
As Hinman went on to explain, "The loves of our lives are not interchangeable or replaceable, and the attempt to treat them as such will harm both them and us. We, and our pets, are more than the sum of our genes. To fail to understand this is to fail to understand ourselves and our relationships to those we love."
American ethicists were not the only authorities to raise ethical concerns. In Great Britain, the practice of cloning animals as pets is banned. Britain's Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals [RSPCA] has declared the practice "grossly immoral," pointing out that cloned animals stand a good chance of early death.
In Scotland, an official study released by the Church of Scotland responded to the cloning of "C.C." by denouncing the project. "The creation of a cloned cat at a university in Texas is an experiment which should not have been attempted--on animal welfare grounds and because it trivializes scientific research."
Making its point clearly, the church's statement went to the heart of the matter. "Just because a millionaire is prepared to fund such research, and potential pet owners are prepared to pay, does not justify doing it. It must also be justified ethically. Against this overall background, cloning pets seems ethically unacceptable. It is too trivial an intervention in one of our fellow creatures. This represents a waste of scientific skills and resources, which could be put to far better uses, like addressing human or animal disease." Furthermore, "Cloning is also a misplaced reaction to the loss of a beloved pet, because it would not re-create the same animal." Continue »
