[Mb-civic] Lives, A Cur

[Jim Burns]

But the quesion is, am I pronouncng that, "Livs a cur," or "Lives
occur...."

:-)

This is actually an interesting followup, to the  news from last year,
that there are one or a few places, now culturing the DNA from your
favorite cat, so that, at some time in the future, you can have his, or
her, genetic double...

I ran into this, over the weekend, when catching up on the summer's
science reading...

Jim Burns
___

      
 
First Cloned Dog Raises Issues of Science, Ethics and Policy

By Robert Roy Britt
www.LiveScience.com


The first successful cloning of a dog, announced today, raises ethical
issues and interesting questions about the crossroads of science and
policy.

The breakthrough may lead to new research in canine stem cells that
could ultimately prolong dogs' lives.

Yet given that President Bush is trying to block human stem cell
research, the success raises the possibility that dogs will live longer
while their owners die of diseases that stem cell research aims to cure,
said the Executive Director of the Genetics Policy Institute, Bernard
Siegel, who was not involved in the research. 

"We could have this incredible and strange paradox where our pets might
benefit from this research but human beings could not," Siegel told
LiveScience in a telephone interview.

The cloning effort was led by Woo Suk Hwang of Seoul National University
in South Korea and is reported in the Aug. 4 issue of the journal
Nature. Hwang gained notoriety last year when he announced he had
derived stem cells from a cloned human embryo.

The dog is called Snuppy, a name that draws from the university's
initials. It's now 13 weeks old. 

Snuppy was carried by a yellow Labrador surrogate mother and delivered
by caesarian section. He joins a brotherhood of cloned animals that
includes mice, cows, goats, pigs, rabbits and a mule, all of which owe
their existence to the first Xeroxed animal, Dolly, the sheep. 

Last year, the first cloned-to-order cat  in the United States was sold
in December. Your best friend, however, is not likely to be cloned
anytime soon. 

"This is not for cloning your pets," Siegel said. 
"This is an important piece of animal research." Siegel added just as
stem cell research, the heart of the cloning effort, can be used to
explore human disease, so can it be applied to veterinarian medicine. 

Embryonic stem cells are unique cells that create all the cells of a
living thing, from nerves to bone and muscle. Stem cell researchers hope
to gain control over what the cells become, in attempts to cure from
intractable diseases like diabetes and Parkinson's.

While the White House would prevent new lines of stem cells being used
for research, scientists around the world are aggressively pursuing the
work. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, who had sided with Bush on the
issue, last week jumped ship and backed House-passed legislation to
expand federal financing for human embryonic stem cell research.

What will people think? 

Canines are difficult to clone because their eggs are released from the
ovary earlier than in other mammals. The work is "much more of a
challenge," said Randall Prather, a professor of reproductive
biotechnology at the University of Missouri-Columbia. Prather, who did
not participate in the effort, said the eggs could not be matured in the
lab as with other cloned animals, and so had to be removed at exactly
the right stage of maturity. 

The scientists removed eggs, then took out the genetic material and
replaced it with a cell nucleus taken from the skin on an Afghan hound's
ear. 

It took 123 tries to create two puppies. The other one died of pneumonia
in 22 days.
Siegel is curious to see how the public will react.

"It's one thing to clone livestock and lab mice, but when you clone a
dog it's going to resonate," he said. "Dogs are man's best friend and
have a special place in most cultures."

Laurie Zoloth, a professor of medical humanities, bioethics and religion
at Northwestern University, said some people will be against the cloning
of dogs because they are against any form of animal research. But, she
said in an email interview, animal experimentation has lead to many real
cures that save human lives.

Zoloth and others see canine cloning as assisting the effort to
understand human stem cells. 

"This sort of work is a necessary first step to creating human stem cell
lines and using them," she said. 

Asked if dog duplication and other cloning advances might eventually
lead people to be less averse to the idea of human cloning, Zoloth said
no. "It is hard to imagine a way to set up the first safe, ethical
experiment [on humans], she said. "The rates of risk to the mother, and
to the baby would be unacceptable."

August 3. 2005

© 2005 Imaginova Corp.