Genetic Savings & Clone, a biotechnology company that sold cloned pets, sent letters to its customers last month informing them it will close at the end of the year because of little demand for cloned cats. The company had recently reduced the price from $50,000 to $32,000.
The article discusses some reasons why the company didn’t make it. One that isn’t mentioned, but I think is plausible, is slightly increased scientific literacy.
Back in 2000 when this company started up, whenever people talked about clones you got the impression they were imagining creepy “Attack of the Clones” scenarios. Obviously plenty of people still haven’t put any further thought into it, but in the past several years you’ve started to see people recognizing that clones are actually identical twins, as I noted in a Brainwash article awhile ago.
Perhaps once people realized that their $50,000 would get them not a carbon copy of dear departed Fluffy, but a completely different cat sharing Fluffy’s genes, they decided it wasn’t worth the money. Imagine that.
Now that I think of it, I wouldn’t be surprised if another issue was trouble getting qualified people to work for them - what scientist would want to work for a company whose entire business plan consists of taking advantage of people’s misconceptions about science?