Also, why don't you just adopt? Do you know how many dogs need to be adopted, but you're
out here cloning dogs? Hi, and welcome back to me and talking about whatever I want. Today,
I want to talk about people cloning their dogs because apparently that's... How can I
not talk about that? But before I get into that, I'd like to do my comment shout out
from my last video. This comment actually goes out to fuchsia blushes who says, "Wow,
low key forgot that your actual account exists." Now, if you're wondering what this means,
this comment is actually not from this channel but from my main channel. I just uploaded a
brand new video yesterday there and that's why I didn't upload here. I was excited to finally
get something up on the main channel and it's doing really well, which I always appreciate,
but I might actually be more excited for tomorrow's video on this channel. It's
been a long time coming, but I'm doing my next album review on none other than BTS.
Anyway, I really don't know how to feel about today's video. Usually when I sit down to make
these videos, I'm very set on what I want to say and I already know exactly how I feel, but in this
case, what is happening? People are cloning their dogs and I'm not sure if I'm supposed to be okay
with that, or just act like it's not weird, or is it weird? "Late Dog That Saved Pregnant
Owner From Deadly Accident Cloned to Meet The Children He Saved." When I saw this headline,
I almost didn't click into it. I read that and I was like, "No, this is too much," but I should
have gone with my first mind. So apparently this couple, David and Alicia Tschirhart,
had this Labrador named Marley. They were all three of them out on this hike. Well, three and
a half because I think Alicia was pregnant. But then it says, "All of a sudden,
Marley darted out in front of me and started clawing the ground where Alicia was reaching
out her hand. And as it turns out, Alicia was reaching out towards a venomous snake." So yeah,
if that dog hadn't darted in front of her, she most likely would have been bitten. It says,
"We were on a hill with no people around far from home and Alicia was pregnant, it could have
been disastrous." So I think that's amazing. Dog literally saved not only Alicia's life,
but also their unborn child and lived to tell about it. He didn't get bitten. Nobody was
bitten. Everything was cool. I was cool. I was like, "Wow, this article is amazing." Finally,
some good news until I saw this sentence, "Before Marley died, Tschirhart learned about ViaGen Pets
and Equine, a company that will preserve your pet's cells and clone a beloved furry friend."
So yeah, apparently the dog was 12-years-old when this was going on, which is obviously hella
old for a dog. And sadly after they finally had that kid that the dog pretty much saved,
the dog got cancer and then passed away. And I think the timing of it all is just so sad. You
know what I mean? But then all those feelings are just replaced with quiet horror because instead of
being sad and saying, "Oh, this is sad," and then moving on, they just waited a couple of years and
then cloned their dog. They had one kid after the pregnancy. So they had two kids and they
wanted them to be old enough to remember their new Marley. So, they decided to stop having kids
and clone the dog. "They knew that Marley's clone was going to be their next child for some time."
That's the worst wording I've ever heard in my entire life. So, this popped up in my feed and I
had a crisis. I'm a firm believer that you should be able to do anything you want with your money as
long as it's not negatively affecting others, but is cloning your dog negatively affecting him? And
apparently, this company that did clone their dog is the only one in America that can do
that. So I went to their website. So here we are on viagenpets.com, giving them free promo
right now. "The worldwide leader in cloning the animals we love." I keep wavering between, "Oh,
this is nice." "No, please make it stop." And then here at the top, we have a collection of
cloned animals, all with their own Instagram handles because why not. "Learn more about how
pet cloning works. Watch our short video." Sure. Who knows, maybe after I educate myself on how
it works I'll feel better about it. I don't know why I said that. We all know that's not happening.
So let's meet the Anderson family and their pet, Buddy. Buddy is a smart
playful 12-year-old golden retriever. Okay. I'm with this so far. It's a cute
family and their dog is hella old. As Buddy got older, the Anderson's
decided to preserve Buddy's genes. Their vet performed a small tissue biopsy,
a minor procedure for Buddy, and sent the sample to ViaGen for genetic preservation.
But why did they decide to do that? Why was their first thought, "Let me genetically preserve
my dog"? You know what I mean? I feel like I'm walking such a fine line because on the one hand,
you don't want to just straight up ignore the fact that these people are obviously grieving and sad
that their dog is about to die, but on the other hand, trying to clone it so you can still have a
similar version of... The more I explain it, just the weirder I feel about it. Also, why don't you
just adopt?Do you know how many dogs need to be adopted, but you're out here cloning dogs?
Soon, the embryo is transferred to a surrogate mother who, after a
typical gestation, will give birth to Buddy Two. No. All right. No, it's creepy. That's it. That's
my opinion. Buddy Two? Typical gestation period? That's honestly such a weird process. You're
making some random dog carry a clone baby that way you can feel better. I don't know about this one
...Buddy's clone. None of Buddy's genes were changed so Buddy Two is really like Buddy's
identical twin brother, just born at a later time. That doesn't make any sense whatsoever and it
definitely doesn't make me feel any better. I feel like Buddy... I know what I'm talking about
him like he's a real dog, he's our example dog, but let's just say I knew this dog. I feel like
Buddy had a good life, right? Just leave Buddy alone. I'm just going to be honest,
if I live for 60 more years and it's that time, you guys had better not even think about finding
some way to keep me here. I will be ready to go. And I feel like if a dog is 12, 13, 14-years-old,
he might just be ready to go. You know what I mean? Honestly, that just sounds really,
really, really, really, really harsh, but I don't know. Bro, this is the trickiest
video I've ever recorded in my entire life. No, probably the BTS album review is, but other
than that... One thing I don't like about this site is that it's so impersonal. They're saying
things like, "Buddy Two" and "Gestation period", "Initiate cloning." We are talking about a living
being, right? If my theoretical dog was a person I would feel horrible saying things like, "Oh yeah,
he had the gestation period in some random dog because we initiated cloning at ViaGen." I mean,
have you ever met a dog? They basically are people. They have personalities. Some would
even say they have souls, if you're into that sort of thing. I mean, they're not just animals,
right? They're pets. I am so stressed out right now. Anyway, on this website,
I see that they're actually linking to another case. "Special report: Meet Fendi, a Las Vegas
woman's cloned dog." So apparently, this case follows a woman named Jordan Goldblatt and,
as you can see, she has a whole lot of accolades because she's a professional Doberman trainer.
"She has raised, bread and kept a few Dobermans for herself. Goldblatt
currently takes care of three, one of them is a clone." It's written so matter of factly. Now,
whereas before I could bring myself to understand the shoes of a family who wants their kid to grow
up around the dog that saved their life so they cloned him, Jordan Goldblatt's reasoning is,
honestly, just really creepy. So the Doberman in question was named Ripley. Ripley died in 2012.
Years before that, Jordan knew someday she'd want to make a copy of her prize winner. "I knew that
she wasn't going to be the same, but that she would be similar," Goldblatt said. Honestly,
that's just weird. So basically, you had the perfect dog and you want another perfect dog.
"The surrogacy is very interesting," Dr. Hag stet said. "Ripley's clone was put into
a large breed dog. We didn't get to meet the dog or know anything else about her." How do
you get to decide that Ripley is so important that you're going to make another one of her,
but the dog that you're forcing to carry Ripley 2.0, you're not even going to find out her name?
this whole thing is just starting to feel really weird. So if that's not enough to horrify you,
this article was very similar to the other article but this one had the price. Apparently,
both of these people paid $50,000 to clone their dog. $50,000. "Veterinarians said
it was double that price just a few years ago so they think it won't be
long before cloning is more affordable." Maybe let's not make it more affordable.
How about you put the prices back up to $100K? First of all, how do you have $50,000 to spend?
Clearly, I'm not rich enough to understand the thought process here. Also, why is ViaGen
charging $50,000? If the price dropped from $100,000 to $50,000, then clearly this wasn't
worth $100,000, right? So do you really expect me to believe that it's actually worth $50,000?
ViaGen is just charging these people insane amounts of money because they can. In fact,
I was starting to pick up some really weird vibes. I went back to that initial article that I read,
"Late Dog Saves Pregnant Owner From Deadly Accident", so it's in people magazine,
right? And it came out on February 18th. So I went back and read through it objectively without the
horror of seeing clone dogs and that's when they realized it kind of feels like an advertisement.
First of all, this article didn't mention the price at all, which is typically best practice
when you're trying to sell something that is priced ridiculously high. On top of that,
they linked to ViaGen. In fact, we already read the sentence, "ViaGen Pets and Equine,
a company that will preserve your pet's cells and clone a beloved furry friend." Even if this
isn't deliberate advertising, this is still just straight up free advertising. On top of that,
the photos that they have are just way too staged. Look at this photo right here with the ViaGen
employee literally looming in the background as the family is gathering around the dog like he's
the second coming of Christ. This literally looks like a Renaissance painting. You honestly expect
me to believe that this just happened? Look how calmly her hand is resting on top of the dog.
She looks like God in that one painting. This photo, it's straight up a ViaGen ad. Listen
to this quote, "ViaGen was just amazing. They made sure everything happened on track and we
got a good sample. We were able to say goodbye to Marley knowing he was preserved." This is
literally a testimonial in this supposed article. I'm feeling really weird about all of this. Here's
the thing though. They got this dog on December 7th of last year, but this article came out
February 18th of this year. The one about Fendi, Ripley's clone, Ripley was literally cloned into
existence in September 2018, but for some reason this article came out on February 20th. So these
incidents happened years apart and months ago, but somehow they both popped up in the news
within two days of each other and one of the articles just straight up sounds like an ad.
We have no idea how much money ViaGen is actually pocketing. What if it literally cost $2,000 to do
the gene thing and then ViaGen is just taking $48,000? You know what I think is starting to
bother me? It's not the parents, the pet parents. They're not kids, they're dogs,
but you know what I mean. The families aren't bothering me, it's ViaGen. ViaGen is what's
creeping me out here. See look. Right here on their website, right under "The worldwide
leader in cloning the animals we love" it says, "Take the first time critical step and order your
genetic preservation biopsy kit." Time critical. In other words, hurry up your dog is dying. See,
the genetic preservation is only $1,600 and I think that's where they get you. Not everyone can
pull together $50,000 for any expense, but a lot of the people, if they worked hard enough over a
long enough period of time, could muster up $1,600 for something as important as cloning your dog.
So you make the $1,600 purchase while your dog is still alive and you're in your right mind. But
then when your dog dies and you're grief-stricken, you've now made it within the realm of possibility
to bring your dog back or a similar dog, your dog two, and all you have to do is pay $50,000. ViaGen
is straight up capitalizing on people's grief over the loss of their pets. That's what's weird.
That's the weird part. I think that's why I hate this. I mean, no matter how you look at it, it's
just not healthy. I'm not a firm believer in the natural order, but things at least live and then
die, right? We can agree that, that's natural. I mean, it's in the human subcon... I'm just using
words that I don't understand because I don't know anything about psychology, but I am a human being
and I know that things happen in seasons and sometimes seasons end, even if we weren't ready
for them, and we have to move forward. You can't just bring your dog back. You know what I mean?
I mean, would you clone a person? I love my parents a whole lot and when they go,
I honestly don't know what I would do, but I wouldn't want them to show up as babies. "Oh,
she looks just like her mom." Well, not her mom, but like her prototype. And also, I wouldn't want
some random human being carrying people I know as embryos. I mean, would you clone a person? Well,
no. Okay, don't answer that. Would you clone the dog? How about you let me know that in the
comments because for once I don't know where I stand. But yeah, that's ViaGen and pet cloning.
Ultimately, it's a fascinating issue and I'm sure it's just going to get more and more complicated
as time goes on, but let's be honest, none of us have $50,000 so honestly who cares?