Sarah Ferguson and the dog-cloning craze

Sarah Ferguson was involved in talks to clone the late Queen Elizabeth’s beloved corgis for a reality TV show, The Mail on Sunday has claimed.

The “cash-strapped” former Duchess of York “met executives from Halcyon Studios in Los Angeles for a series of lunches and dinners” in May 2023, eight months after the Queen’s death.

A show synopsis sets out how, after Ferguson “is bequeathed two of the Queen’s beloved corgis, she decides to embark on a bold and controversial business venture – cloning the royal pups”. However, “as she navigates the complex world of genetics and royal protocol, Sarah must also grapple with her own personal demons and strained relationship with the royal family”.

Pet cloning is “highly contentious”, said the paper, “with experts warning it can produce horrible abnormalities”. But it is also highly “lucrative”, with pet lovers in the US, including celebrities such as Paris Hilton, Barbara Streisand and NFL star Tom Brady, paying “up to £75,000” to replicate their favourite animal.

‘Not an exact match’

Science has “come a long way” since Dolly the sheep was cloned three decades ago, said National Geographic. Pet cloning is “becoming more commonplace” with “thousands of grieving pet owners“ turning to the procedure in an attempt to “bring back their lost loves”.

But while a clone “will likely resemble the original pet more than a random member of the same species, both in appearance and behaviour”, their personalities “probably won’t be an exact match”.

Cloning “involves extracting viable eggs from the fallopian tubes” of the female animal, fertilising the egg with sperm from the male animal, then injecting a surrogate with hormones and implanting the embryo, said James Serpell, from the University of Pennsylvania. But it is not cheap – the average procedure costs around $50,000 (£37,000) – or easy. A 2022 study showed a maximum success rate of just 16% as many of the embryos failed to implant successfully, leading to miscarriages and animals born malformed.

Some companies are “trying to market what they do as recreating the original pet, and they’re not succeeding there”, said Serpell. So much happens after conception that, like twins, the two animals will not be “truly identical”.

‘Essence of the hereditary principle’

A spokesperson for Ferguson said she “never progressed any discussions with Halcyon Studios, which were engineered by others, and withdrew from them of her own accord”. But to even “consider cloning the late Queen’s beloved dogs for financial gain is unbelievably grotesque and utterly bizarre”, royal author Richard Fitzwilliams told The Mail on Sunday.

The opportunity to “own an exact replica of a corgi once owned by the Queen of England” would certainly “give immense joy to a certain type of person”, said Sam Leith in The Spectator.

On “a slightly more philosophical plane”, isn’t genetics “the very essence of the hereditary principle?” If she had gone ahead with the proposal, perhaps Ferguson – “in her whimsical but clumsy way” – would “have been putting her manicured finger on the heart of something both important and a little absurd about our monarchy?”

It is generally accepted “as a matter of course that the descent of the crown through the generations is accompanied by a slight but perceptible deterioration of the genetic stock”.