BARKING MAD

We live in a society where many families are living on less than a dollar a day, where children are dying for lack of clean water or food and yet capitalism can lavish thousands of pounds on a pet. "A dog is not just for Christmas, or even for life. If you’ve got the cash, it could be for eternity. South Korean biotechnologists have engineered a pet resurrection that, until recently, seemed commercially impossible: they have reunited a Californian woman with her dearest friend - or, at least, genetic copies derived from the frozen remains of his ear. More than £25,000 the poorer but weeping with joy, Bernann McKinney, 57, became the first paying customer yesterday in the strange new industry of canine cloning." (Times, 6 August) RD