One Thousand Identical Georges.

General, Reckons

So, if you follow the news much at all, you’ll know by now that a group of scientists in Korea have finally managed to successfully clone a dog, and Afghan hound, from cells from its ear introduced into and egg and implanted into a Labrador. The clone is called Snuppy, and he seems to be a normal healthy 16 week old pup.

Does this squick you out? Not me. I like it. I don’t like the failure rate, not one little bit. That’s a lot of dead dogs they’ve created in order to finally succeed.

But I’m really happy about the whole thing, ‘cos one day, hopefully in ten years or more — George isn’t little enough to have a super long doggie life span, I’ve met dogs of 18 or 20 years, but they’re always tiny little things — my lovely little animal companion is going to die. It’s going to fuck me up. He’s my lovely little friend, you see.

But it’d help for me to be able to go along to my local vet and put in an order for 2x George, Jr, for delivery in 6 months. Please add a small modification to make him less prone to the cancer or heart disease or whatever it was that killed him.

Ten years can be a long time in science. Who says I won’t be able to do this?

Of course, ten years can also be a short time, just look at how many of us have mandroids that do our dishes and fold our laundry, and who reading this flew their little Jetsons Bubble car to work today? No? No.

I’m under no illusions that a clone of George would be the same as George, for one thing, he has seperation anxiety – he was weaned really early, and his nuts snipped off at age about 4 weeks. But it sure would be nice to have the little guy around again, and again, and again. And I think it’d be super awesome to have him twice at once, that way he could play and play and play.

"Ethicists" are already trying to stick their stinking unwanted beaks in, of course, saying they don’t know if it’s moral for dog owners to clone their beloved pooches, but you know what Mrs Ethicist? The choice I’m giving you is not "clone the dog or not clone the dog?" The choice is instead "clone the dog or I’ll hurt you, very very badly."

I don’t know how much I’d pay for this, maybe five thousand dollars. That probably won’t be enough in 10 years, but it probably will be enough in 20 years.

Oh, and plus we’ll all be walking lots in 20 years, so it’ll be a nice world for dogs.

(We’ll be walking due to there being no oil to run our Canyoneros and Ford Explorers, and stuff.)