Dog, Inc.: A Book About People

Posted by Pete Shanks January 11, 2011
Biopolitical Times

John Woestendiek has written a book about dog cloning that is clearly informed by a love of the animals but focuses on the people who exploit and manipulate them. It's called Dog, Inc.: The Uncanny Inside Story of Cloning Man's Best Friend, and is published by Avery, a Penguin imprint.

Woestendiek won a Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting in 1987, when working for the Philadelphia Inquirer, for a series that proved the innocence of a convicted murderer. He moved on to the Baltimore Sun, where he eventually wrote a fascinating series about the origins of his own, ah, mixed-breed dog, Ace. And established a dog blog. And ran headlong into the topic of this book.

Dog, Inc. is written deadpan, in reporter rather than opinion style. The author did his research thoroughly, and followed it up with interviews with some of the principals and an informative trip to South Korea, where Hwang Woo Suk was willing to show him around the lab, though not to be interviewed on the record, because of his then legal difficulties. Most of those featured in the book (and a stranger collection of self-absorbed weirdos it would be hard to find) will probably read it with approval. Others may find it reinforces their disgust.

Woestendiek limits his commenting largely to editorial decisions, such as his juxtaposition of chapters (the book jumps around a bit, not always successfully) and choice of how to close them. For example, he ends one by quoting Lou Hawthorne, head of the failed Genetic Savings and Clone, speaking about the notorious Joyce Bernann McKinney:

"The woman," he said, "is impecunious."

He finishes another chapter, near the end, on the clones of Missy, the dog that started it all, by observing the "flabbergasting fact" (finally, a judgment!) that after $20 million, 11 years, and innumerable failed experiments on animals:

Joan Hawthorne didn't want the dog.

Ignore the publicity puns about sniffing trails, inside scoops, or dogged determination, let alone Kinky Friedman's joke in a blurb about cloning the author (haw-haw). Accept that a certain amount of pandering is appropriate on the cover. Enjoy the fact that it's written by, and will likely appeal to, someone who loves dogs. (Full disclosure: CGS is briefly mentioned, and this blog is quoted on p. 266.) But what we really have here is the successor to Lori Andrews' The Clone Age: a book that combines a sense of the ridiculous with a respect for facts and a determination to bring them into the public consciousness. And above all, as Alan Boyle wrote on MSNBC.com:

The inside story behind the costly quest to clone dogs reveals at least as much about human nature as it does about copying man's best friend.

Previously on Biopolitical Times: