Biotech firms say price is often no object for grieving clients
SCOTTSDALE, Ariz.—”Jack” wasn’t just any house cat but Tammy’s best friend for almost two decades.
He was her rock and emotional lifeline when her parents and brother died six years apart—beside her in times of trouble when life was too much to carry alone.
“When you get ‘the one’—some people never do—they just don’t understand it,” said Tammy, a retired health care worker in Scottsdale, Arizona.
“Jack was one in a jillion. He was just a perfect gentleman. Neat as a pin.”
Jack lived to be 18—a long life, by cat standards—succumbing to cancer in February and dying in Tammy’s arms at home.
But before Jack’s cancer diagnosis, Tammy had already decided to “clone” her beloved cat, despite the high cost and uncertainty of the procedure.
“A lot of people do cloning for themselves,” Tammy said. “I know this sounds silly—I did it for Jack,” who she had neutered when he was young.
“He deserved sons.”
The cloning procedure took place two years ago for $25,000 and produced two nearly-identical male kittens, each the spitting likeness of Jack.
Both kittens were born to their surrogate mother on Feb. 14, 2021—Valentine’s Day; both have extra toes on each paw and the same distinctive coloration that Jack had.
And both love to swim, travel, and carry socks in their mouth, just like Jack.
Tammy named her two cloned kittens, OJ and Thud, who owe their existence to advancements in cloning technology over the past three decades.
Costly and Controversial
Tammy said she knew the procedure was not only expensive but controversial.
She’s received many messages on Facebook condemning her decision to clone Jack as “Satanic,” “unnatural,” and unwise for her to play God.
And these people were “ungodly rude” about it, Tammy said. For this reason, she asked not to use her last name in this story.
However, she said that most people on social media tell her they’re curious about cloning and think it’s “amazing.”
Pet cloning is making a genetic copy of a living or deceased pet, usually a dog or cat. It involves extracting DNA from the host animal to produce live embryos for placement inside a surrogate mother to develop until they are born.
According to market analyst DataIntelo, pet cloning is a global market projected to grow by 9.1 percent annually between 2022 and 2030.
By Allan Stein
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