BioArts Corp.: Heroic Hucksters for Reproductive Cloning

There founders and scientists of BioArts have a deserved reputation for hucksterism, but it's for (in my opinion) a very good cause: advancing our reproductive cloning technology.

http://bestfriendsagain.com/

They're currently planning to clone 5 family pet dogs, the slots are being auctioned off. Reproductive cloning is still a crude-state technology, probably equivalent to brain surgery a few generations ago when lobotomies were the big thing, but it's a real technology. Pets now, hopefully humans soon, then mass cloning of our smartest humans (smartest at the things we need, like minimizing existential risk). We would benefit from more (many, many, many) more of these human "supercomputers", to find solutions, or better solutions to the many challenges we face, such as aging and existential risk.

 

Comments

[TGGP]

I haven't heard of the company before, so what's the deal with the hucksterism? I would normally think that would imply they aren't doing much valuable science, but I suppose it's possible that the science just isn't valuable to their customers/donors or is exaggerated to the media.

[Hopefully Anonymous]

The horrific process by which dog clones are made (having to impregnate hundreds of surrogates for one successful clone) is deliberately underplayed.

[spindizzy]

HA, of the failed impregnations do you know what percentage fails at each stage?

There is an article in New Scientist this week suggesting that human impregnations have a higher success rate for frozen embryos vs unfrozen, presumably owing to the selection effect.