Online auctions to clone dogs

Cloning has always been a controversial subject, and the concept of human cloing has always raised the hackles of a large number of people, including politicians. As a result, most countries have shied away from approving of human cloning; further, the news that a South Korean scientist had faked his results in the area of cloning led to a further backlash against the subject. On the other hand, cloning of animals has not provoked the same kind of reaction. Cloning of pets specially, the animals who are almost part of a family has started becoming an acceptable field (or at least does not provoke politicians and conservative campaigners to take up arms against this).
A company now plans to take this up on a commercial basis, offering to do cloning of dogs, and offering this facility at an auction. It is also doing a partnership with the discredited South Korean researcher, Hwang Woo Suk:

A California company is planning a string of online auctions next month to clone five dogs, with the bidding to start at $100,000. Scientists consider dogs among the most difficult animals to clone because they have an unusual reproductive biology, more so than humans.
"I know the association with Dr Hwang is going to be controversial," Lou Hawthorne, the chief executive of BioArts, said. "One of the contradictions of Dr Hwang is that he made mistakes on his human stem-cell research, and he's the first to admit that."
But he said Hwang's dog-cloning work had been independently verified. "Our main concern is simply he's the best when it comes to dog cloning," Hawthorne said, "and for that reason it behooves us to work with him."

People get so attached to pets that those having money are willing to spend heavily to try and obtain a clone of their dogs; however, this whole business of cloning involves ethical issues and needs to be relooked.

Killing dog by putting in washing machine

Imagine being so drunk that you know not what you are doing, and being so drunk that you lose your basic humanity, the concept of right and wrong. A pet is a good friend, especially dogs, who tend to be very faithful; after all, there are many cases of pets having saved the lives of their owners. You can see this happening regularly, when you can see guide dogs leading blind or visually challenged people to safety. So, what do you say to a person who put their pet dog into a washing machine, and then made sure that the dog died inside the washing machine:

Drunken dog owner Andrew Glazzard killed his pet by putting it into a washing machine “to teach it a lesson” after it made a mess, a court heard. The dog Maisie had survived an earlier ordeal in the machine but Glazzard put her back in when he noticed her tail was still wagging. The dog died when Glazzard fell asleep before switching off the machine. He then put the animal’s body in a bag and threw it into the River Stour, the court heard.

There are many laws that apply to people behaving in such a way; and even if we treat pets at not the same level as humans, such behavior is unacceptable.