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"As long as you refrigerate the grandma and get us those samples pretty quickly, that should work out fine. We recommend you do that when the grandma is alive and well, for a number of reasons. It's cheaper, it's more reliable, and for some reason if we find out those samples are bad, we'll cultivate new ones for free," he says. "You won't have that luxury if you're waiting postmortem."
I make a request. "Can you alter genetic material to change certain annoying aspects of my grandma?"
"Someday perhaps, but right now you're just getting a genetic duplicate," he replies, raining on my DNA-altering parade. "As far as offering that cloning service goes, commercially it probably is a ways away. We're doing grandmas now; grandpas are probably the No. 1 priority in the short term."
"Is Genetic Savings and Clone the only place in the country that offers grandma cloning?" I ask.
"For grandmas; we're the only company that offers commercial grandma cloning. Nobody offers commercial grandpa cloning services right now. Hopefully we'll be the first to do that," he explains. "There are some other companies that just are getting into cloning horses. There are quite a few companies that are in the business of cloning livestock, like cows and pigs and things like that."
"So if I do the gene banking, how long would the process take to get a cloned grandma?"
"Once we verify that those samples are good, you pretty much can clone at any point," he assures. "The best-case scenario would be approximately six months. It's just not a perfect science yet."
"Here's a question," I throw out. "Can you get more than one grandma clone from a single grandma?"
"That's entirely possible. It hasn't happened yet, but as we do more and more of these, I'm sure that scenario will pop up," JT says. "People are always crossing their fingers. It will happen because it's a pretty expensive animal you know. The actual cloning of grandmas right now costs $32,000."
"Does it cost less if you get more than one?"
"If you're saying you want to order more than one, there's not a significant discount to do that. This is not a terribly profitable business for us right now. Right now, we're more concerned about optimizing the science and making sure we have happy clients, but there will probably be a small discount for ordering multiples."
I ask JT, "Is the embryo planted into another grandma, or is it grown in a laboratory where you can come watch it grow?"
"We're basically creating the embryos and planting them in a surrogate mother, and from there it's basically nature taking its course."
"How similar is the new grandma to the old grandma?" I ask. "And do you call it old grandma or the same grandma? What's the term?"
"The 'donor' is the term we generally use," the GS&C rep clarifies. "On the personality side, that's something we don't guarantee. What we do guarantee is -- most cases again -- we do have a full health and appearance guarantee. In most cases, we can guarantee it's going to look exactly the same; you're going to get a healthy animal. We don't guarantee personality, but indications are personalities are very, very similar."
The GS&C guarantee is impressive indeed. If a cloning recipient is not 100 percent satisfied with the clone, the company offers DOUBLE THE CLIENT'S MONEY BACK!!!!!! Yes, $64,000 if the clone is returned before the end of the month. (Is it then off to the animal shelter with the bad clone?!)
"We know that intelligence is genetic, temperament is genetic. Just based on that, right out of the gate you get a very similar animal," the rep shares. As stated in the company's literature, behavioral resemblance might be amplified by duplicating as closely as possible the environment in which the donor was raised. (Just like in the movie The Boys From Brazil!)
"The more we hear from clients who have actually done this, they are using words like 'exact.' You know, they're swearing up and down that personalities are very similar. I don't know if that will hold true for grandpas or not, but in grandmas, it's true that genetics dictate personality."
I press with the harder questions.
"What if the grandma has really bad habits like peeing on the couch, or scratching it up. Can we get rid of that?"
"I think that falls under the umbrella of temperament. That would be a very similar behavior. We do hear back from clients, like, 'He is really attracted to water. She sits in the exact same place where the old one used to sit. It's attracted to the same types of toys or foods.' Or whatever. So I probably think it would be very similar and be tearing up your furniture."
GS&C has happy customers. In fact, the company claims, the gene bank is doing three times the business this year that it did last year. (Figures withheld.) Earlier this year, the firm moved into a brand-new lab in Madison, Wis., which is the world's largest high-tech cloning facility. (Sausalito remains the corporate office.)
"She's back! Oh my God! She's back! I can't fucking believe it! It's her; it's really her! My Fluffy's back!!!!" This is what I imagine those who get their cats cloned scream on receiving their new feline replicas.
Sure, a wise man might say, "Instead of spending $32,000 on getting a cloned copy of your former cat, why not just go to the Humane Society and get one that looks pretty fucking similar?" It doesn't seem like a stroll through the pound would be a real time-consuming task. Cats pretty much all do catlike things. So why not save the $32K and buy a nice new car or something? To put it another way: Dealing with death is a part of life, so why not deal with it?
