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?

Good Teeth, Healthy Coat

It's hard to beat looking at beautiful women, but I would never watch a beauty pageant. This isn't just because they're sexist (although they are sexist), but also because they're dehumanizing, reducing women to body parts and shiny hair. And yet every year I spend two nights watching Westminster, which, let's be honest, is a beauty pageant full of body parts and shiny hair. I understand that which is not human can't be dehumanizing, but there's still something disturbing about the dog show, even if it's hard to beat looking at beautiful dogs.

I know that breeders and participants think of showing as a sport, and I'll admit that a certain amount of fitness is required of both dog and handler in order to look good running around the ring, but it's hard for me to see this as a sport. This isn't field trials or agility; the winner of the dog show isn't the fastest, the strongest, the one with the most stamina. The winner is the prettiest.

The dogs are judged based on their breed standards, and the dog that comes closest to achieving "perfection," meaning the dog that most closely meets the standard, becomes "best." The judging criteria go beyond breed standards, though; each breed also has a grooming standard for the show, and markings are taken into account, not only in that roaning may or may not be acceptable for the breed, but also in that the dog simply needs to have nice markings. Go to a dog show and watch the ring preparations, the amount of time spent on clipping and brushing and covering blemishes and creaming and powdering white coats to make them look their whitest.

Ten years ago, I had a friend who owned probably the worst show dog in the world. By that I mean the dog hated the ring, had acne, and clearly wasn't cut out for the life. Her purchase contract for the dog stated that he had to be shown for two years, though, so she showed him for two years. The average cost per year, in 1997 dollars, was $10,000. Why spend all that money? Well, if the dog becomes a champion you get it all back by breeding.

The dog show is then ultimately about the economics of sex. Winners breed with winners, their offspring sold off at a premium. Male champions spend their retirement having their sperm harvested and frozen, producing an income stream for their owners for years to come. The dog show is a study of eugenics in action.

How would we feel if this was the ultimate result of the Miss America pageant?