# Pet biotech offers to extend your pet's life

> Drugs, cloning and cryonics promise to keep your pet around longer. But should we want them to?
- Title: Pet biotech offers to extend your pet's life | Shortify
- Summary: Drugs, cloning and cryonics promise to keep your pet around longer. But should we want them to? Biotech companies are developing longevity drugs for pets…
- Keywords: pet longevity, biotech, pet cloning, pet cryonics, loyal, viagen pets, alcor, pet grief, technology, science, Pet, offers
- Source: MIT Technology Review — https://technologyreview.com/2026/10/16/1146766/pet-biotech-longevity-cloning-cryonics
- Read time: 1 min
- Topics: pet longevity, biotech, pet cloning, pet cryonics, loyal, viagen pets, alcor, pet grief, technology, science
## A market for keeping pets alive
Biotech companies are developing drugs to extend pet lifespans. Loyal is trialing a longevity drug designed to improve metabolic health in around one thousand three hundred pet dogs across the US.
## What the longevity drugs target
The drugs aim to combat age-related diseases including obesity and osteoarthritis, and aging itself. There is even a company focused on longevity medicines for domesticated cats.
## Cloning offers a genetic twin
Pet cloning involves taking a pet's DNA, putting it into an egg cell from another animal, and growing the embryo in a surrogate.
## Cloning does not create replicas
Cloning produces a genetic twin, not an exact replica of the animal. Viagen explicitly offers customers on its website a way to hold on to their pet.

> a way to hold on
## The case for cloning pets
Lori Kogan, a professor of clinical sciences at Colorado State University who has studied human-animal relationships for decades, says pet owners experience disenfranchised grief. If cloning brings peace, she asks, who are we to judge?

> who are we to judge?
## Cryonics promises future revival
Pet cryonics companies cool dead pets to extremely low temperatures and store them indefinitely, betting that future technology will revive them and cure their illness.
## Cryonics chances are near zero
Even those working in cryonics acknowledge that stored animals are unlikely to be reanimated. There is currently no way to truly bring any animal back to life.
## Death as a formative experience
Pet loss in childhood is often a child's first confrontation with death.Losing a pet can be distressing but formative, helping prepare children for losses in adulthood.Cloning and cryonics risk teaching that death is not final.
## Key takeaway

Biotech companies are developing longevity drugs for pets, while cloning and cryonics services offer ways to preserve or replace deceased animals, raising questions about whether extending pet lifespans is desirable.