See Spot rerun: Pet cloning offered

[Guest guest]

By Rick Weiss

WASHINGTON POST

 

Feb. 16 — The math was simple, Lou Hawthorne said: There are 55 million pet dogs

in America, and about 10 percent of them die every year. If just a tenth of 1

percent of dog owners are willing to fork over $1,000 each for a chance to get

their dear dying pets cloned, then that’s tens of millions of dollars to be

made.

 

THUS WAS born Genetic Savings and Clone, the nation’s first all-inclusive pet

cloning enterprise, which goes into business this morning at 9 a.m. with

Hawthorne as chief executive officer. The company stores DNA from aging or dying

pets for future reincarnation at the world’s only scientific laboratory devoted

solely to cloning dogs and other pets.

 

It remains to be seen whether any of the company’s clients will ever see their

little Totos again. No one, not even the widely respected Texas A & M University

biologists who founded the company, has succeeded in cloning a dog or cat.

 

But the company’s emergence — and the fact that at least three other companies

with similar goals, if less richly backed labs, have recently sprung up —

suggests that the initial public horror that greeted Dolly the sheep has

mellowed considerably.

 

People may not be ready to clone themselves or their relatives, but the era of a

truly nine-lived cat may be at hand.

 

The company is an outgrowth of the Missyplicity Project, a $2.3 million Texas

A & M effort to clone a mixed border collie mutt named Missy. That project, funded

by Missy’s anonymous owner, aims to be the first to clone a dog.

 

It’s a major scientific challenge, but the team is “90 percent there,” said Mark

Westhusin, the Texas A & M veterinary physiologist leading the project. With luck,

Westhusin said, a Missy mimic could be born this year.

 

CLONING GOES COMMERCIAL

But why stop there? With hundreds of other pet owners clamoring to have their

pets cloned next, the scientists decided to go commercial.

 

“We have just received so many calls from people wanting this,” Westhusin said.

“Their pet is dying or got hit by a car or their dog or cat is just getting

old.”

 

For now, the company simply offers a way for pet owners to store frozen tissue

samples from their dog, cat or other domestic mammal. Orders via the company’s

Web site http://www.savingsandclone.com must go through a veterinarian, because

a minor surgical procedure is required to get the needed tissue specimens from

the animal’s abdomen and inner cheek.

 

The company provides special mailing packs to speed delivery to its College

Station, Tex., lab. When the technology for cloning is ready at last, the team

plans to spur those frozen cells to grow into embryos, which will be transferred

to the wombs of surrogate mother pets. The company hopes to branch out later to

clone endangered species.

 

At least three other companies offer similar storage services for pets,

including PerPETuate of Farmington, Conn.; Lazaron BioTechnologies of Baton

Rouge, La.; and Canine Cryobank of San Marcos, Calif. But the Texas team is the

only one dedicated solely to creating the desired end products: duplicate dogs,

copied cats and other pet replicas.

 

While tissue storage fees range from $1,000 to $2,500, the company has not yet

set a price for cloning. Hawthorne predicted it may be a few hundred thousand

dollars at first, but could drop to about $25,000 within three years.

 

A look at competing Web sites suggests a passionate, if limited, market for

cloned pets. “Nothing can replace our [Dalmatian] Beanie, but we feel much

better knowing a small part of her is still with us,” one Lazaron client posted.

“My pets are too important to my family and me to not do everything I rationally

can to protect their future,” another wrote.

 

DISSENTING VIEWS

But not everyone agrees that the country is in need of cloned pets.

 

“I don’t know anybody among us who loves their dogs and cats and other animals

who wouldn’t want them to live forever,” said Nathan Winograd of the San

Francisco Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. “But those of us who

work in animal shelters around the country want to see lives saved as opposed to

more lives created. We’d rather see these folks pay tribute to their departed

companions by saving another, like by adopting a dog or cat from a local

shelter, instead of cloning.”

 

And not everyone believes that Hawthorne’s rosy business projections are

realistic.

 

“I’d hate to go into it as my only revenue base,” said Carol Bardwick, president

and founder of Canine Cryobank, which earns most of its revenue by freezing and

selling semen samples from purebred dogs.

 

Bardwick said she gets just one or two tissue samples a month from pet owners

hoping for a cloning breakthrough, but she concedes she hasn’t tried hard to

sell the service.

 

Ian Wilmut, the scientist who led the cloning of Dolly in Scotland, said he has

had a “small number of requests” from people wishing to have their favorite dog,

cat or horse cloned. “We’re not doing it,” he said.

 

Even if pet cloning proves doable, Wilmut said, “it’s very possible that people

will be disappointed.” That’s because genetics accounts for just a fraction of a

pet’s coloration and demeanor. “Coat color patches will not be the same in the

clone as they were in the original,” Wilmut said, “and as for temperament, it

would be very surprising if they were just like the original.”

 

But Wilmut wished the Texas researchers well. As far as he can tell, he said,

the cloning process they’re using is covered by the patent he was issued after

creating Dolly.

 

Can cloned royalty checks be far behind?

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