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Animal Cloning Comes to Hollywood
Kate Thompson writes "A week after San Francisco's Genetic Savings and Clone revealed the sale of their first cat to a customer, the Boston Phoenix reports that GS & C acknowledges it has been hired by anonymous buyers in Hollywood to bank genes of show business animals."
They're already cloning all their scripts.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Just because the cloned animal has exactly the same genes, doesn't mean that it will exhibit the same behaviour.
The dog that played Benji might have had an ideal temperament for filming, but it's clone, brought up slightly differently might be a right little ankle biter.
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So that they can keep the cute dog in the TV show sitcom alive for all 30 seasons.
What I can't wait for is when Fluffy Clone #2726A flips out and eats the cute wisecracking kid.
Bet they can't clone him....
I am government man, come from the government. The government has sent me. -- G.I.R.
In other news today: Warner Bros announces "Free Willy Again."
Apparently, no fewer than 47 piglets.
Now that's a lot of pork!
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The other problem is that, as we found with "Dolly the Sheep", cloned animals are inherently pretty unhealthy, because their cells age a lot faster (lies to children explanation). At two years old, Dolly had a lot of problems that would really only crop up in a much older animal, presumably because the cell's genetic "clock" was not "reset" (LTC again).
Still, nice work if you can get it. Who's going to tell the difference, even if the animals are *not* cloned?
By the time this cloning technology gets off the ground, it will be easier/cheaper to replicate the animal with CGI.
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Or keep 10 clones on hand for the "Throw the cat in the blender" scene. Then when animal rights people come over to check you can show them the real cat and they will never know the difference.
While selling back a physical looking animal will bring in a fair chunk of change, and really how big can that market be. How much work would they have to do to make a benji next year, the main thing would be the breed and same hair color and pattern ; thoses can be changed by dye and makeup.
Where the big money will be is selling clones to the public. When a popular show/movie has a animal the sales of that animal almost aways increases. For example when the comedy Fraiser was on the air the Jack Russell terrier rose in popularity in the each year(in 2000 along by 21%). Now instead of purchasing any Jack Russell terrier you can purchase a clone of the actual one on the show. How much do you think people would pay for that?
Granted costs will have to come down ALOT, but if you are thinking for the future this is the way to go.
Now, if Peter Jackson had been able to clone 100,000 copies of my wife he'd have had his Orc army without needing special effects.
Genetic Savings & Clone are currently cloning cats for $50 000 - that's pretty cheap already compared to getting an effects house to create a photorealistic character. Sure, I havn't factored in the cost up bringing up the animal, but CGI is still comparatively expensive, and the results aren't always that believable - the best CGI effects work is typically on fictional characters (Gollum), where movements are a combination of motion capture and keyframing. You'd still need an animal to base movements on - I can't recall a recent film which had a believable CGI animal (that's a "realistic" animal, rather than a talking / exagerrated character). On a more practical front, I'm sure actors would actually prefer working with an animal (trouble that they may be), so they can realistically react to them - you just don't really get that with a CGI character (unless you get an actor to perform with the cast, and composite over. This may work for human like characters, but completely defeat the point for animals, because you'd still need one in the scene).
Well, someone had to say it. But seriously...
I'm all for folks getting in on the cloning business. At the worst, it can't be more unethical than what many pet farms already are.
This provides a financial incentive to refine the technology and make the whole thing more acceptable and familiar to people. Animal breeding has fewer ethical restrictions than medical cloning, so there are fewer ethical roadblocks.
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"For years, the Royal Family kept a large herd of pigs at Windsor castle in England." pork.co.nz
"...so be wary of any man who keeps a pig farm." -Snatch
Look out for the Royal Family...1) Make clones of Jenna Jameson.
2) Remove the "dirty slut" gene, replacing it with a modified version of the "obedient wife" gene (which morphs back into the "dirty slut" gene when she's in the sack with her husband). It might not hurt to genetically enhance her breasts while your at it so she won't have to pay for them later.
3) Sell clones as mail order brides.
4) Profit!
Since people started playing with DNA, it's obvious that people could start cloning things that belong to somebody else.
Can you claim copyright on your pet?
We've heard plenty about Intellectual Property (IP), but what about Physical Property (PP)?
What if somebody cloned you? What legal issues could arise from this?
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