Dirty Dishes	Dirty Dishes Archive

While farmers wait on Frankenstein science to make cloning super-woolly sheep and udderly amazing cows economically feasible, pet owners can enjoy the benefits of gene shuffling today.

The Economist reported in early April that Genetic Savings and Clone, a California enterprise, plans to offer owners of dog corpses (i.e., "pooches who've snuffed it," to use the Economist's startling phraseology) the chance to clone Fido or Rover, trading in their dead dog flesh for a carpet-wetting, shoe-chewing xeroxed puppy version. The $250,000 price tag will, GSC admits, limit the market for their Lazarus service.

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More suitable for mass marketing is another firm, GeneDupe's, plan to peddle a genetically engineered gold fish that is truly gold instead of the orange that suffices in non-engineered bowl-dwellers. By inserting a gene that makes an enzyme that deposits a gold-based pigment in the fish's skin, GeneDupe hopes to attract not only big-bucked fish collectors, but also to hook them on the special gold-containing fish food necessary to create the effect. Plans are also underway to craft a fish with a blue head, a white body, and a red tail-- sure to be a hit in France. Perhaps it will be ready at fishmongers by next April Fool's Day, which, come to think of it, is date of the Economist's article. Hmmm.