Genetics and Health

First Dog Cloned, Primate Cloning Next

by Hsien Hsien Lei, PhD on August 4th, 2005

Welcome, Netscape News readers! You may also be interested in my other post on cloning: Another View on Cloning.

Mice, rabbits, pigs, cows, cats, a horse, and now a dog have all been cloned. Will you or someone you know be next? Unlikely.

South Korean scientists announced this week that they’ve succeeded in cloning the first dog, an Afghan hound. It’s being hailed as a breakthrough because the canine reproductive system makes harvesting viable eggs a challenge. Dog embryos were created by taking unfertilized eggs from female dogs and replacing the egg DNA with with DNA from a donor dog’s skin cell. This was the only puppy to be born out of 1,000 cloned embryos transferred to a surrogate canine mother.

Researchers hope to clone laboratory dogs for use in studying animal and human diseases and maybe to recreate dogs that have proven their usefulness in helping people.

Though Woo Suk Hwang, one of the lead researchers, considers pet cloning frivolous, he said the technology could one day be used to make genetic copies of top-notch guide dogs, search dogs, rescue dogs and other service animals.

The trouble with this proposal, as it would be for cloning another Albert Einstein, is that a dog’s environment must surely influence his receptivity to training and his learned skills. Is it possible to duplicate the treatment a highly skilled dog gets from his caretakers and trainers; the food he eats; or his interactions with his surroundings, other dogs and people? Probably not.

So even when researchers achieve the next big goal of cloning primates, I don’t expect to ever meet a clone of Marie Curie, Barbara McClintock, or Linda Buck (Nobel Prize laureates in science). And even if I do, I wouldn’t bet on their clones’ chances of winning a Nobel Prize too.

Los Angeles Times, August 4, 2005

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POSTED IN: Genetic Engineering