Tom Brady this week confirmed what many thought was a stunt and what others call a privacy-free indulgence: his new pup Junie is reportedly a genetic clone of the family’s late dog, Lua. The revelation landed with a corporate press release and social media statements instead of the quiet, private mourning most Americans reserve for pets.
According to the company statement, the cloning was performed using a non-invasive blood sample taken before Lua’s death, and the work was carried out by Colossal Biosciences — a firm Brady has publicly invested in. This was announced the same day Colossal touted a deal to acquire Viagen Pets and Equine, the outfits all wrapped into a tidy public-relations moment.
Viagen isn’t some mom-and-pop operation; it’s the firm that’s handled celebrity pet cloning before, and this move makes cloning a mainstream, high-dollar service for the rich and famous. The optics aren’t great: when millionaires turn grief into a corporate announcement, ordinary Americans who love their pets are left to watch their empathy be packaged as a biotech press release.
There’s also the conflict-of-interest angle that can’t be ignored — Brady is an investor in Colossal, which raises reasonable questions about whether this is family healing or personal PR to boost a venture. That connection matters because it turns a private act into a public bet on an industry with profound ethical and regulatory gaps.
Beyond the celebrity soap opera lies a deeper issue: Colossal markets itself not just as a pet-cloning service but as a de-extinction company pursuing dramatic projects like the dire wolf, and some of those claims and methods have already drawn criticism from the scientific community. If we cheerlead the billionaire-friendly commercialization of cloning for dogs, we cede cultural ground for far more consequential manipulations of nature without robust oversight.
Hardworking Americans don’t mind compassion for animals, but we do expect accountability, plain talk, and common-sense limits when science touches family life and the natural world. Lawmakers and regulators should treat this moment like the wake-up call it is: stop letting biotech be the Wild West of the rich, demand transparency, and protect ordinary families from having their values reshaped by whatever new convenience the elite can afford.
