Found this when researching cat breeds. I was wondering what everyone thinks of cloning your pet? http://www.betterhumans.com/News/news.aspx?articleID=2004-03-30-3

Here is one on dog cloning. http://savingsandclone.com/cloning/dog_cloning.html

i think this is awful!!! i mean, it's really weird, cuz there should only be one of your pets....he/she is unique and should stay that way. besides, what about all the health problems? i mean that sheep they cloned had healthy lambs, but she started to age a lot quicker. i guess i'm mixed about this one....but if pet cloning is aloud, what's next? humans??

Cloning an animal in general is not very successful. There are so many things that happen to clones that causes them to be different from the original. "In fact, cloning in most animals has been troublesome. It took more than 270 attempts to produce Dolly, and for every successful clone birth there are many deformed animals. The company says that its first cloned cat, however, is now two years old and healthy. It is guaranteeing that cloned cats will be healthy and strongly resemble their genetic donor or owners will get a refund. Owners expecting an exact replica of their pet, however, will likely be disappointed, as environment has a large role in shaping physical traits and personality." Even by their own words the clone may not be a perfect match. This is ridiculous. Their is no reason on waste animals this way. If they try 100 times to clone your cat and 5 of those time produced cats but only one was an acceptable clone then their will be 4 cats who did not fit the bill. Are they mutated or just not visually exact? Either way it is a waste of nature in the name of science. If their is no guarantee that the personality will be the same their is really no point to this. If my 9 yr old great dane dies, and I have him cloned...if he isn't the exact same dog why do this. A perfectly cloned dog will not know the housebreaking or other training you did with the first dog. Nor will he know the amount of love and bonding that you experienced with the first pet. It is less expensive just to start the process over again. It is probably a longer waiting list for clones, too. You will have just as much luck with a responsible breeder. If your pet died from genetic problems....then, the new pet will have the same problems. This is a terrible solution to replacing your beloved pet.

Honestly, I have no problems with cloning pets. I do however think that the science needs greatly refined, as there are a lot of health issues with cloned animals. What seems to be happening is that the organs of cloned animals seem to age faster than is normal. But I'm sure that over the years, this will gradually decrease as scientists learn more. Not only that, even if it doesn't preserve the behavior patterns of the animal, I look at it like this. I have a mixed breed dog I adopted from teh humane society. I know there's no way of knowing his genetic makeup. He is literally a one of a kind because he isn't a purebred, no other dog looks like him. But even if I cant preserve his behavior, I could clone him and get a dog that looks just like him. How many of us have had beloved mixed breed pets and have wished we could have another that looked just like this one? I know I have. I guess the bigger question is, if science got advanced enough so there wasn't all the problems associated with cloning, would people be more accepting of it? What if cloning were just a matter of keeping a single hair, and was successful 99% of the time with no health risks or deformities?