Tuesday, August 05, 2008

Dog Clones: "I know you"

Is this the state of scientific awareness in our society? A woman had her dog cloned for $50 000 and she makes the following statement to the the newborn pup:
“Yes, I know you! You know me, too!”

Did no one explain this to her? When you make a clone, you are simply making a twin, a nearly identical sibling in genetic terms. The clone (the twin) in no sense has the memories of her former pet. Memory is not copied in to DNA to be spat our later.

I can't believe that this woman spent $50 000 to have her dog cloned and yet she clearly does not have an understanding of what it is she was buying. How can we hope to have an intelligent debate on the merits of cloning in scientific research if people are this ignorant of basic biological principles?

But maybe this explains it better:
“It's a miracle!” Ms. McKinney repeatedly shouted.

Yes. A miracle or, put more simply, magic. She doesn't understand what happened. She understands none of the science behind cloning. She didn't take a moment to comprehend cloning, DNA or any of the straightforward stuff that any layman or laywoman could easily grasp.

Nope, she wanted her dog back. They told her they could get her dog back. She has her dog back. Don't tell her any different, she'll just ignore you as she's ignored everybody else who has tried to tell her different.

I wonder how many people are represented, in terms of scientific illiteracy, by Ms. McKinney.

Updated: Yes, the ignorance is everywhere. This lady was surprised by a rainbow.

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2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I think you are stretching FAR too far when you try to infer all that from a couple out-of-context quotes. She was almost certainly not speaking literally. She was talking to a puppy!

Greg said...

By a stretch of imagination I could take "I know you" to mean "I recognize you" or "you look like my old dog".

But there's no metaphor, analogy or screwy prose that could explain "And you know me too". That beyond "not being literal".

Plenty of people really do believe cloning brings back the dead. This woman appears to be one of those believers.