Monday, August 11, 2008

The Slippery Slope from Mormonism to Cloning

So, there's a company in South Korea that will clone your dog. The normal fee is over $100K, but the company came to an agreement with a woman who said she was a screenwriter from LA: they cloned her pit bull for $53,000, and she agreed to help with publicity for the cloning services. She went to Seoul last week to bring home one of the five pups cloned from the DNA of her deceased, beloved dog, and the story was released to the wires. This is when things got interesting.

You can Google "Mormon kidnapper" to get the complete story, if you haven't yet heard it, but here's a synopsis. Back in the 1970s the dog cloner was a beauty queen, Miss Wyoming, in fact. She converted to Mormonism, left the pageant world, moved to Salt Lake City to study at Brigham Young. There she fell in love with a young Mormon man seven years her junior. He broke it off after a brief affair, sought counsel, and became a missionary in London. She never got over him, flew to England with an accomplice, rented a "honeymoon cottage," and kidnapped the missionary and held him in the cottage, where he was shackled to the bed with mink-lined handcuffs. She and the accomplice forced him to have sex with her until he agreed finally to marry her, at which point she unlocked the handcuffs, he escaped, and he went to the police.

She and the accomplice were arrested. While out on bail they escaped from England by posing as Irish mimes. They flew to Canada, then took a bus to Cleveland, then she disappeared. She reappeared in 1984 again stalking the Mormon missionary, was apprehended, and again escaped and disappeared. It turns out she's been living in North Carolina since then, in and out of court, suing and being sued by her neighbors. Once press reports of the dog cloning appeared, it was discovered that the address in LA she had given didn't exist, and that the dog cloner and Mormon kidnapper were one and the same. British authorities are not seeking extradition, as the case against her has been closed. She left South Korea over the weekend to return to the US with her cloned pit bull.

I've read various accounts of this story, and I'm left with only two questions:

1. Given the fact that only physical qualities can be cloned, isn't it risky to clone a dog in the first place? I love Brody, and would love to have another, identical Brody after he dies. But what if I ended up with a dog that looked just like Brody, but was evil? How could I live with a dog that was identical to Brody, but who didn't act like Brody? I see this as the true danger of cloning.

2. Where did this crazy woman get $53K?

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

I am disappointed that thae masses didn't get to hear about Brody and The Beav.....they won't read THAT story in the New York Post!!!

Anonymous said...

This story is too crazy to be fiction.

Elucidator said...

Brody and the Beav can be told anytime. The Mormon Kidnapper needed to be told IMMEDIATELY.

Anonymous said...

en vivo,the genetics deals the cards,but the enviornment plays the hand of life.u can b born with a predisposition 2 a certain trait or illness but if the enviornmental factors r not in place u will never come 2 that realization.I cannot believe a clone of brody would b mean.he still would have the same loving MUMMY.I know other pets who r always trying 2 run away from thier mum,but if u give him a different mum he won't try 2 run away anymore.I luv u el tunsie.tunsie.tunsie

Anonymous said...

Maybe she should have tried having the Mormon cloned.