Annotated Bibliography: Animal/Pet Cloning

For my first solo post of the semester, I’ll be educating my readers on the controversy surrounding animal and pet cloning. The bibliography below outlines five different websites that have different opinions on animal cloning. Some of the articles are scientific, while others are the opinions of other bloggers like myself. All the articles have a viewpoint on animal cloning and they give detailed reasons to support their argument. Check them out and comment below.


Nature. "A Dog's Life." Nature. N.p., 4 Aug. 2005. Web. 26 Jan. 2015. <http://www.nature.com.prox.lib.ncsu.edu/nature/journal/v436/n7051/full/436604a.html>.

In “A Dog’s Life”, the author argues that we’ve made history with first cloned dog, but we shouldn’t do it anymore based on the grueling process it takes to clone just one dog. The author goes on to explain the failures associated with the project such as only having one successful survivor after a thousand tries. They assume that most pet owners won’t want to put a dog through almost a hundred failed pregnancies in order to clone their pet, which may not even have the same personality as their old pet. The author urges us to re-think commercial dog cloning through eye-opening examples. This is relevant to my topic because it is a great argument towards my topic which is the controversy within animal cloning.

Nature. "Cell Biology: a Cat Cloned by Nuclear Transplantation." Nature. N.p., 21 Feb. 2002. Web. 1 Feb. 2015. <http://www.nature.com.prox.lib.ncsu.edu/nature/journal/v415/n6874/full/nature723.html>.

In this article, the author claims that scientists have successfully cloned a cat. They add it to the list of animals they have cloned successfully. They go on to describe the process they took in cloning the cat. It originally involved 82 cloned embryos, but produced one failed pregnancy and only one live clone. The clone was healthy and didn’t have any major health issues, but they ran into the problem of the kitten not having the exact coat pattern of its original, due to the issues with multi-colored cats. This article is relevant to my topic because it illustrates another case where they aren’t sure if cloning was good or bad for animals.

Fuller, Gillian. "You Can Get Your Dog Cloned in South Korea for Just $100,000." Elite Daily. N.p., 10 Dec. 2014. Web. 1 Feb. 2015. <http://elitedaily.com/news/world/get-dog-cloned-south-korean-lab/877518/>.

In this article, the author is advertising the cloning of pet dogs in South Korea. The author has a neutral tone about the topic, explaining the how they clone animals, the risks, and the rewards. Towards the end of the article though, the author argues that it could be inhumane and somewhat frightening based on how determined the scientists are and what the clone could actually be like. This is relevant to my topic because it is advertising animal cloning to the world, especially through a more generalized audience, which stirs up a huge controversy on whether cloning pets is ethical or not.

Moustaki, Nikki. "The Cost of Cloning." DogChannel. N.p., 3 June 2014. Web. 1 Feb. 2015. <http://www.dogchannel.com/dog-rescue/cost-of-dog-cloning.aspx>.

In her article, this author argues the problems that arise from dog cloning. She firstly states the actual ethical issues with dog cloning, including the deaths of many of the surrogate mothers and the embryos that don’t make it. Rather than go through all the ethical issues, the author urges her readers to choose adoption instead. She explains that we need to accept reality and that rather than spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on a risky procedure, that we should learn to accept the deaths of our dogs and rescue other dogs instead. This article is relevant to my topic because it touches on the ethical issues of animal cloning while it also gives alternatives to cloning.

Barnard, Neal. "Dog Cloning Raises Ethical Issues." Physicians Committee For Responsible Medicine. N.p., n.d. Web. 1 Feb. 2015. <http://pcrm.org/media/commentary/dog-cloning-raises-ethical-issues>.

In this article, the author declares that cloning is unethical for any use including scientific research and entertainment. He argues that we are spending too much money on something that has a 90% failure rate, something that isn’t doing anything for mankind other than entertaining us. He counters that we should be more worried about human issues that we should be spending money researching, such as cancer, heart disease, and diabetes. This article is relevant to my topic because it dives into the ethical issues with cloning for entertainment.