Review of “Barbra Streisand Cloned Her Dogs. For $50,000, You Can Clone Yours.”

Ellie Parson

Mr. Ippolito

AP Biology

2/28/18

Citation:

Stevens, Matt. “Barbra Streisand Cloned Her Dogs. For $50,000, You Can Clone Yours.” The New York Times, 28 Feb. 2018, www.nytimes.com/2018/02/28/science/barbra-streisand-clone-dogs.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fscience&action=click&contentCollection=science®ion=rank&module=package&version=highlights&contentPlacement=2&pgtype=sectionfront.

Review of “Barbra Streisand Cloned Her Dogs. For $50,000, You Can Clone Yours”

In the New York Times article “Barbra Streisand Cloned Her Dogs. For $50,000, You Can Clone Yours,” Matt Stevens discusses a recent comment made by singer Barbra Streisand during an interview involving cloning. In an interview by Variety, Streisand mentioned that two of her three dogs were clones of her previous dog, which gained attention from readers. Her dogs, Miss Scarlet and Miss Violet, were clones made with genetic material from her older dogs mouth and stomach. Despite common belief that clones are completely identical copies, the two dogs “have different personalities”( Barbra Streisand, 1) according to Streisand. With this topic on the reader’s mind, Stevens shifts the focus of the article onto the history availability of cloning to the public. As most people already know the major discoveries in the scientific world of cloning, Steven’s briefly mentions Dolly the Sheep, and the many other animals that have been cloned after her. He then fixates on scientists in South Korea who successfully cloned a dog in 2005. The dog cloned, named Snuppy for “Seoul National University puppy” (Stevens, 1), is an Afghan hound who was born from a yellow Labrador retriever. Three years later, the South Korean scientists joined a company in California and offered in an auction to clone five dogs. Another lab in South Korea called Sooam Biotech “cloned more than 600 dogs”(Stevens, 1) by the year of 2015, and each cloning process cost around $100,000. Similarly, a company in the U.S. called ViaGen Pets asks for $50,000 dollars for a clone, and offers a short cloning process of 60 days. From this point in the article, Stevens concentrates on the question of whether the cloned dog (or pet) will be identical to the original pet. The laboratory Sooam claimed as it can clone virtually any dog, those clones will not be totally akin to their originals. ViaGen also shared a similar statement on their website, explaining that the clones are genotypically identical, but can be phenotypically different due to the fact that “the environment does interact with genetics to impact many traits” (ViaGen, 1). Finally, Stevens describes the process of cloning while answering the question regarding its safety. For dog cloning specifically, one must get their dog’s DNA, send it to a lab, and from there scientists place the DNA into an egg. The egg will grow into an embryo that will be placed into a surrogate dog, who might give birth to a clone. Stevens highlights controversy in this process, as the Sooam laboratory has not confirmed who happens to the dogs used as an egg donor and surrogate after the process is completed. In addition, “the cloning process works only 33 to 40 percent of the time” (Stevens, 1) in the Korean company. At the end of his article, Stevens returns back to Barbara Streisand and her luxury life with her dog clones, concluding with the thought that so far, their lives seem to be going just fine.

The topic of cloning an organism, whether a family pet or a human being, is extremely relevant society. Cloning currently rises heated debates among those who believe the process is unnatural or ungodly and those who approve of the process as a part of the development of science. Many religious people in society look down upon cloning as they believe scientists who clone are “playing God,” or in other words assuming the powers of a god and artificially controlling life. Although no clones of human beings exist, it appears to be entirely possible as multiple clones of other mammals are successfully living. Certain methods of genetic handling within humans have existed for years. Celebrities such as Chrissy Teigen have used selective genetic processes like preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) to ensure their child is the gender they want before even having the baby. As PGD is not cloning, it does allow mothers to choose the gender of their child before it is born, qualifying it as another way of “playing God.” The popularity of processes like PGD and cloning often raise questions in society, such as “What type of cloning is morally correct?” and “How will human clones be treated if they are ever made?” The newest generations, the Millenials and the groups to follow, will probably have to answer these questions. In regards to pet cloning, some may argue against it as cloning a dead dog may be unhealthy for the owner’s grieving process. However, clones are not exact copies, so a clone will probably act and look different from the original dog. One problem that remains unanswered is where surrogate dogs end up after they give birth, and the controversy surrounding it is valid for many people. If it is revealed that the dog surrogates are killed, dog cloning may gain many opposers in the near future.

In this article, Matt Stevens wrote in an entertaining way that kept his readers’ attention and amused them. His introduction with Barbra Streisand, although not entirely involved with science, was a clever way to present dog cloning to an audience that may not be attracted to science articles. He also included quantitative data throughout his article, providing enough numerical information to qualify the article as a thorough scientific article. Stevens also organized the article into parts that were small and easy to read. Even though the article was well written, there were some areas that lacked in greatness. For example, Stevens included some information about the process of cloning, but did not elaborate on the part of the process that involves placing the DNA of one organism into the egg of another organism of the same species. A quick solution could be for Stevens to include a small paragraph of a few sentences explaining how scientists are able to take the DNA from a mouth cell and use it in an embryo because all (or most) cells in an organism have the same genome. He could also explain the process in which the DNA of the egg was replaced with the other organisms DNA. Another area that had room for improvement was that as STevens included many links in his article for more information about the history of cloning, he hardly wrote about how Dolly the Sheep came to be. In order to help his readers gain a holistic understanding of cloning, Stevens could add a paragraph describing the story of Dolly and how her existence changed the science world.