Pet Clones

God created man in His image. Are we on the verge of man making man in his own image?

The latest issue of Vanity Fair has an article on what may be the ultimate form of conspicuous consumption: cloning your dead pets, specifically dogs.

Most Americans were unaware such a thing was possible, never mind commonplace, until Barbra Streisand mentioned it in passing during an interview with Variety magazine that her two current dogs were clones of her dog Samantha, who died last year. As Streisand later explained in the New York Times, “every time I look at [the faces of Samantha’s clones], I think of my Samantha . . . and smile.”

Streisand isn’t the only person who has cloned her dead pet. When the Vanity Fair article calls dog cloning “very big” and “very controversial,” it’s correct on both counts.

Take, for instance, the Sooam Biotech Research Foundation in Seoul, South Korea. In the last ten years, Sooam has produced more than 1,000 clones of deceased dogs.

As you may have guessed,