It was the most jarring news of the past week: In an article in entertainment trade magazine Variety, it was revealed that Barbra Streisand cloned her aging dog and now has two clone-version puppies.
Think about that.
BARBRA STREISAND CLONED HER DOG!
According to the article, two of Streisand's Coton de Tulear dogs are clones. The magazine reported that Miss Violet and Miss Scarlett (the puppies) were cloned from cells taken from the mouth and stomach of Samantha, Streisand’s dog that died last year at age 14.
A star is born, but a dog, apparently, is cloned.
According to Streisand, Miss Violet and Miss Scarlett “have different personalities. I’m waiting for them to get older so I can see if they have her brown eyes and her seriousness.”
Whaaaaaaaat?
A reminder: BARBRA STREISAND CLONED HER DOG.
I'd like to think she and Neil Diamond sing, "You don't dig me flowers," to the dogs, lamenting the loss of Samantha. But probably not.
Does anyone think this is a good idea? Does anyone not think this will go horribly wrong?
Cloned dogs are coming in and out of her life, like her 1982 song, right?
Clones aren't new.
The first famous clone that I remember is Dolly the sheep (1996-2003). Is it a coincidence that Barbra Streisand was the star of "Hello, Dolly!"? That seems unlikely.
Anyway, an article about BARBRA STREISAND CLONING HER DOG in The New York Times reports that about two dozen types of mammals have been cloned since Dolly, including cattle, rats, cats (hey! Nine lives!) and dogs.
A lab in South Korea claims to have cloned 600 dogs and the cost for the cloning Streisand did is reportedly about $50,000.
BARBRA STREISAND CLONED HER DOG!
Here's the big problem: Anyone who has ever read a book or seen a movie about cloning knows that it always goes wrong. The same genes duplicated over and over invariably result in some sort of perversion that results in horror for everyone.
We all love our dogs. We all wish they could live longer. But we all believe that if we did what Streisand did – committed a crime against nature by hiring a rogue scientist to duplicate a dying mammal (I presume) – the result would invariably be either:
- A dog that kills us, or
- A dog with six legs and two heads.
The fact that Miss Violet and Miss Scarlett don't have extra appendages or external organs means that it's more likely that there will be some sort of turn. Streisand will be forced to learn that people who need people are the luckiest people in the world . . . but people who CLONE DOGS are the craziest people.
At some point in the future, Streisand will undoubtedly regret that she chose to clone her beloved pet (rather than, for instance, adopt one of an estimated 3.3 million dogs that enter shelters each year in America). As Streisand suffers the horror of seeing a biological horror she unleashed, at least she'll have memories of Samantha. Misty, water-colored memories.
And she'll ask herself: If we had the chance to do it all again, tell me would we? Could we?
Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@hotmail.com.
No comments:
Post a Comment