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Society, Religion and Technology Project Church of Scotland Looking at the ethics of technology for a New Millennium

"The creation of a cloned cat at a university in Texas is an experiment which should not have been attempted - on animal welfare grounds and because it trivialises scientific research," says Dr Donald Bruce, Director of Society Religion and Technology Project of the Church of Scotland, which has been examining ethical issues of cloning since 1996.

The undoubted cuddliness of the kitten should not distract from the fact that it was the only live birth in 87 embryos implanted into eight cats used as surrogate mothers. The only other pregnancy failed. In terms of implanted embryos, the success rate is three times worse than Dolly the sheep. It must be asked why the other 86 embryos failed. This low efficiency suggests that cats may well be subject to the same type of problems which have plagued animal cloning in most species to date. In 1998 a UK Government committee called for a moratorium on the commercial use of animal cloning until the associated animal welfare problems are resolved.

Nuclear transfer cloning is a serious intervention in the animals concerned with substantial risk to the health of the offspring. It is only justified ethically in cases of very substantial human or animal benefit. Even where animal cloning has been used en route to producing life saving pharmaceuticals in sheep, and at higher efficiencies, the risks to the health of animals have raised serious doubts about how far the procedure can be justified.

Just because a millionaire is prepared to fund such research, and potential pet owners are prepared to pay, does not justify doing it. It must also be justified ethically. Against this overall background, cloning pets seems ethically unacceptable. It is too trivial an intervention in one of our fellow creatures. This represents a waste of scientific skills and resources, which could be put to far better uses, like addressing human or animal disease.

Cloning is also a misplaced reaction to the loss of a beloved pet, because it would not re-create the same animal. One would have to begin a new relationship from scratch. It would not even look the same as the pet that had died. Just as with other cloned coat patterned animals like cattle, this cloned cat does not have the same markings as her genetic mother. It would be far better to have another cat by conventional breeding. The financier's claims that cloning could be used for rescue dogs are clutching at straws to try to legitimate an experiment which should never have been attempted.

For further discussion about pet cloning, see Animal Welfare and Pet Cloning Ethics

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