Quit trying to kill me, clone dogs

Regular dogs, complete with disgusting slight dissimilarities.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/01/garden/01clones.html?ref=science
In today's climate of uneasiness about the ongoing financial Armaggedon/upcoming total Armaggedon, most frivolities have fallen by the wayside. Corporations are scaling down their operations; debutante balls are scaling down their existence. But everyone agrees that, no matter how impoverished and hungry and fleabitten and homeless the nation may be, we must maintain our commitment to : CLONING STUFF.

Cloning has come a long way since the days of Dolly the sheep. No longer sheep-specific, the technology can now copy virtually any animal that already looks identical to every other member of its species. That's why an enterprising firm in San Francisco (and South Asia for the illegal parts) now offers pet-cloning to a niche market of aging spinsters, spoiled 10 year olds and Bond villains.

Speaking of spoiled, Mr. Lou Hawthorne, scientist extraordinaire behind Double Dogging (sounds sexual, no?), would like to take this opportunity to thank Billionaire Step-daddy for funding his lifelong dream that he came up with last week.

".... Mr. Hawthorne was at a sort of career crossroads, having worked in the interactive video-production business and just returned from five months riding a motorcycle across India."

Not to nitpick about semantics, but fucking around in India for a half year after my other daddy-funded project got boring isn't what I would call a "career crossroads". I'd go with "time to pick a graduate school."

In addition to Mr. Hawthorne's intense dedication to suckering people out of cash, he's also made some bold staffing choices of late, picking Dr. Hwang to oversee the project, otherwise known as Dr. Ok-I-might've-lied-a-little-bit-about-cloning-those-human-embryos. Hawthorne points out, quite rightly, "Nobody says he lied about cloning animals." Totally logical; just because a guy has no qualms about falsifying research and fabricating results to make highly public, international claims about having cloned babies in no way indicates he will be anything less than saintly when dealing with the much more serious subject of puppy cloning.

But Mr. Hawthorne isn't all douche. As a gift, he cloned his mother Joan's dead dog; her reaction may partially to totally account for Mr. Hawthorne's attention-seeking:

"...she has yet to take a liking to Missy’s progeny, and the dog has lived primarily with paid “handlers” in a Mill Valley pied-à-terre.
'They’re not at all alike,” Ms. Hawthorne said of the old Missy and the new one. “In looks, they are a little bit, of course. But, I mean, the puppy is delicate and aggressive...Missy wouldn’t come through my home and knock over every wineglass.'"

In related news, Joan Hawthorne is this year's recipient of the World's Most Stereotypical Rich Person Award.

Anyway, on the off chance Dr. Hwang isn't just jerking his hwang around this time: are we really cool with this whole commercial cloning thing? I challenge you to come up with a science fiction story that begins with "Billionaire Lou Hawthorne has perfected dog-cloning technology and plans to market it to the public in the coming year," and NOT end it with the sentence "There were no survivors." Tough, right? Let's stick with pound puppies, people. At least those won't knock over every wineglass.