MIT Technology Review writer recalls her first pet cat, Peppy, who went missing when she was 10 years old. Despite searching fields and woods and making posters, the family never found her, and the loss left a lasting impression. Almost 30 years later, pet owners have a growing set of options to extend time with their animals, including drugs, cloning and cryonics.
Biotech companies are increasingly focused on pet longevity. Loyal, a company working on three potential longevity drugs for dogs, is trialing one designed to improve metabolic health in around 1,300 pet dogs across the US. Other firms are testing drugs aimed at age-related diseases such as obesity and osteoarthritis, as well as aging itself. One company is even developing longevity medicines for cats. The author says that if a drug could have protected Peppy from diabetes or arthritis, she would have tried to obtain it.
Cloning is a different matter. The process takes a pet's DNA, inserts it into an egg cell from another animal of the same species, and grows the embryo in a surrogate. Viagen Pets offers to clone cats and dogs for $50,000 a go, producing a genetic twin rather than an exact replica. Lori Kogan, a professor of clinical sciences at Colorado State University, says cloning can bring comfort to grieving owners, noting that society lacks the rituals for pet loss that it offers for human loss.
The author worries that such options may teach children that death is not final. She argues that losing Peppy helped prepare her for later losses. Cryonics raises the same concern. Alcor, a facility in Arizona, is storing the remains of hundreds of pets as well as people, with the premise that future technology could revive them and cure what killed them.
Source: MIT Technology Review · Summarized by HeadlinesBriefing