Yet defenders of the industry say that it's wrong to apply analogies taken from other species' clones: Despite the difficulties, they insist, cloned dogs tend to be healthy, not least because scientists have spent the last decade figuring out how to do it.

"Clone enough dogs, and occasionally you have offspring that aren't perfect," said Lou Hawthorne, CEO of both BioArts and the late Genetic Savings and Clone. "But it's comparable to what you have through conventional breeding."

Definitely, the technology is far from perfect, yet as long as there is a need, it will be perfected. Even if cloning will cause the birth of defective pups less than the natural alternative, there still is an ethical question because an intentional act is involved. But than again, this same ethical question stands for breeding dogs in general which is by now a very old practice. Our world seems to become much more complex than it used to be.

I want to clone you. Although if your clone comes defective I'll just dump its body in a ditch and try again....

and again..

and again...

Well, I do not feel particularly threatened by your suggestion... Many parents who bring to the the world babies suffering from serious genetic impairments, keep on bringing more babies while being perfectly aware to the odds of giving birth to another invalid child to the world. These are human beings born to a life of suffering and disability. The law protect the rights of parents to do just that! So... what is the difference? Does 'mother nature' give license to that?