Let's move from long-dead Kerry hamsters to today's pets.....

Justin Case was asking me the other day whether I would clone my dog Puff, and now I see that for those who can spare $50,000, pet cloning is not only available to anyone, but they're using a new, more effective method:

The company used a new method called chromatin transfer, which had been perfected by cloning expert James Robl and colleagues at Sioux Falls, South Dakota-based Hematech LLC. Hematech is using the method to clone cattle that produce human antibodies in their milk.

The traditional nuclear transfer method of cloning involves taking the nucleus from a cell of the animal to be cloned, putting it into an egg cell with its own nucleus removed, and then triggering this egg into growing as if it had been fertilised.

It is not efficient -- most eggs die -- and many animals are born deformed.

Chromatin transfer aims to produce a cloned embryo that more closely resembles a normal embryo.

It involves dissolving the outside of the nucleus of the cell to be cloned and removing certain regulatory proteins from the chromosomes, which carry the genes, and the proteins around the chromosomes.

This entire cell with its permeable nucleus is fused to an egg cell to create the clone.

And if you're not interested in cloning your pet right now, or, say, you can't afford it and are hoping prices will come down, there's always Gene Banking:

New, low-cost, uncultured gene banking service for live, healthy pets: two external biopsy samples are deposited directly into PetBank without culturing. When you're ready to clone, we'll culture the biopsy samples and clone your exceptional pet for you. $100 annual storage fee after the first year.

What you'd end up with, of course (whether you cough up the $50,000 now or wait for the competition to bring the price down), is not your pet, but a twin of your pet. Not that much different from what you'd get by simply breeding the animal to a similar mate.

If I had a twin of Puff, he wouldn't be Puff, but a different dog, who'd grow up in a different place with a much older version of me projecting my old expectations of the old Puff onto a hapless twin without a clue of my inner emotional needs. Not that I'd mind having a twin of Puff, but something about the idea of "cloning" might contaminate my thinking. The clone would not be Puff.

On the other hand, if they could figure out how to transfer Puff's memories into his newly born twin, things would get more interesting. There were some older experiments in which neural tissue from one salamander was transferred into another salamander, and to a certain degree memories were transfered -- including behaviors taught only to the first salamander. (More here. And the possibility of such memory transfer is obviously of great interest to cryonicists.)

So if I could have Puff's brain memory transfered (much like old-to-new hard drive), it might be fun to give Puff a new lease on life.

Old memories transfered to new brain in new body.

Puff's a dog, too. Any moral objections?

What would Leon Kass say?