Can’t Buy Me Love
Instead of purchasing a bred dog or adopting a shelter dog, cloning has recently emerged as an expensive alternative for companion animal replacement, at least for people with a hundred thousand dollars or so to spare. Distinct from the implications of therapeutic cloning, reproductive cloning provides a new choice, one that raises peculiar moral questions.
The question of when to take in a new animal after a loss is a highly personal decision, one well considered within the field of pet loss. While many chapters and articles address components of grief, including the timing of opening the heart and home to a new animal, the decision to do so with a clone may raise distinctive questions and concerns. Opting to clone, unlike deciding on the same or similar breed, seems to belie an assumption that only this one animal who has been loved and lost merits special attention.
Such a choice uniquely posits a rather narrow path for the heart, no matter the implications for the suffering to others – like of the animals living in confinement at clone producing labs, for instance. Considering the welfare of the animals involved, the principle of non-maleficence or non harm, may be useful, in guiding choices away from those which involve substantive harm to sentient beings used in labs. And of the millions of adoptable animals killed every year simply because no one wants them, the principle of justice may suggest their welfare is a relevant moral consideration, as well.
Another salient principle in this decision is beneficence, the promotion of good. Consider the impact a legacy gift at even a fraction of the cost of a single cloning procedure could make a phenomenal impact for local shelters, laboratory dog rehabilitation, breed rescue organizations, or other specialized funds could make in your lost friend’s honor.
Exploiting grief for profit raises concerns, of course, as does a critical evaluation of reproductive cloning, in general. A wide, public debate about the morals of cloning seems more a footnote, since it’s already being done, which is disconcerting in its own regard.
Moreover, cloning promotes the idea that anyone who can afford it should be able to access it. But why stop there? Children, spouses, friends – if one can afford to reproduce them, why not? Does a willingness and ability to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to biologically replicate someone reflect profound love or deep seated selfishness? To assume one should be able to do anything we can afford to pay for seems a rather curious proposition. Does not the irreplaceability of love, precisely, make our dear ones special? If it’s merely reproducible, what does that say about the price tag of love?
There persist so many unanswered questions about cloning that it’s difficult to know where to start. Perhaps, most pertinent of all, it may be reasonable to begin – or conclude – by asking, “is cloning a healthy response to grief?”