Major Health Breakthrough - Doggie Cloning

The latest 'cute' bioethics story is the birth of Snuppy the cloned dog. The producers in America's television programs have been struggling to show the scientific significance of the process, which amounts to the two facts: it was hard to clone dogs, and now our new favorite cloning star Dr. Hwang from South Korea has succeeded in doing so.

Penn's Autumn Fiester is on the case. And Rick Weiss' treatment of the issue is perilously close to succeeding in making the matter look important or interesting. But at the end of the day, really, who cares? I've been besieged with emails all day asking why we weren't all over this story at bioethics.net and the blog. Hmm. Perhaps because it doesn't matter. Except to animal lovers ... after all it took more than a thousand embryos to produce God knows how many miscarriages before one doggie was successfully birthed. But hey, if you really loved that last pet - and are totally delusional about what cloning cannot reproduce - this is the technological breakthrough for you.