In yet another publicity bid, BioArts International has announced its Golden Clone Giveaway contest. On June 16, the California start-up will award "a free clone of YOUR dog" to the person who submits the best 500-word essay on why their dog is "clone-worthy." BioArts is being run by cloning impresario Lou Hawthorne; disgraced cloning scientist Hwang Woo Suk is also involved.

Why does the Golden Clone contest call to mind the five Golden Tickets hidden by candy entrepreneur Willy Wonka among his billions of chocolate bars? You remember the story: Each lucky child who finds a ticket gets a free tour of Wonka's top-secret factory, along with a lifetime supply of special chocolate.

In the 1971 film based on Roald Dahl's children's novel, Gene Wilder plays Wonka as a creepy guy who looks on placidly as one child after another barely escapes a grisly fate, the just desserts, so to speak, of sneaking a taste of the wares. One girl is transformed into a giant blueberry; another child is shrunk to a few inches high; a third is rejected as a "bad egg" and sent down a garbage chute into the Egg Sorting Room. The factory workers - the Oompa-Loompas, who in the 2005 (post-Dolly?) remake of the movie were all played by the same actor, Roy Deep - break into song after each mishap.

Do similar outcomes await those partaking in the Golden Giveaway? Is Lou Hawthorne biotech's Willy Wonka? Stay tuned.




Posted in Animal Technologies, Arts & Culture, Biotech & Pharma, Marcy Darnovsky's Blog Posts, Media Coverage, Reproductive Cloning

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