I waited about a month and I haven't seen much reaction anywhere in response to 5 cloned dogs in California. Quite notably, the dogs were all cloned from saved tissue after the death of one single dog. A "9/11 rescue dog" - the pet was selected as part of a contest to clone the most "worthy" pet. What non-dog owners may not realize is that dog-owners commonly view their pets as members of the family. In my observation this is suggestive of a societal acceptance of a sea change currently underway in biotechnology that may eventually result in a dramatically different human existence.
First, consider that we can see at this beginning of cloning household beings, society has embraced the notion of worthiness for cloning. "Worthiness" is at the very core of the concept of eugenics which many may have hoped largely ended with World War II. It's not that this one instance alone is shocking - it's just remarkable that traces of such a huge bioethical issue arise at the beginning of cloning entering our households. What's more, at a cost of about $144,000 truly only the wealthiest members of society have easy access to this. In a different way, however, cloned worthy animals may enter all of our households. Cloned meat has been accepted by the FDA since January 2008. Consider the pace at which these changes are taking place.
Secondly, consider another related tremendous shift in attitude is toward embryonic stem cell research now that Obama has opened the federal coffers. The relevance here is that one thing scientists are interested in is whether it is possible to create a clone of a human in order to obtain identical stem cells (back in 2004 someone falsely claimed to have accomplished this). Of course, even if creating a human clone were possible it would require a tremendous shift in societal acceptance. My point is only that society continues to head in that direction now that we are actively funding research on human embryos that were previously frozen and viable.
I personally suspect that all of these changes in society will have a sort of natural feel to them as they are accepted by society as improvement of medical technology. With regards to the current trend towards increased use of fertility treatment I even wonder whether (if human cloning becomes a reality) it would eventually be accepted as a means for procreation in rare circumstances where there may be no other option for procreation, or where a parent seeks to avoid expression of a recessive gene. Perhaps by that time, for example, we will have seen in our pets and other animals that no two clones ever look or act exactly the same. Only one of the 5 cloned dogs, in fact, is an exact replica. The others apparently have some different markings (notice the tan markings above) and personality traits (I'm assuming that because the owner mentioned that one dog stood out as acting the same as the original dog that the others act a little different - I think that's a very fair assumption).
One concern over wide-spread cloning would be setting the stage for a potential Irish potato famine scenario. That is, with reduced genetic diversity in agriculture comes an increase in risk if one or two of only a few genetic variations succumb to disease.
Another, more philosophical question if human cloning becomes a reality, is whether on any level, people would be driven more to clone themselves as much as possible or whether the general preference would remain to recombine with another set of genes. Arguably at least, under Darwinianism the instinct is to pass on as much of an individuals' DNA as possible and therefore society may face this pressure in the form of cloning - be it legal or illegal.
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