How many lives now?

The cloning of a cat has put a new, fluffy face on the controversial procedure.

By WES ALLISON, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times
published February 24, 2002

It started with an old dog named Missy, a mutt of such charm that her wealthy owners hated the thought of living without her.

The dream led to a cat named Cc, whose birth might help define the role cloning plays in American business and culture.

When researchers in Texas announced 10 days ago that they had cloned a house cat, and that they planned to offer cloning to pet owners for a hefty fee, they chased the national debate about cloning from the fuzzy abstract to the fuzzy lump at the foot of the bed.

Sheep have been cloned for the past six years. Cows, goats and pigs soon followed. But the creation of the copied cat marked the first time scientists have demonstrated the mass-market potential of cloning technology.

Fluffy meets a speeding car? Meet Fluffy's genetic copy.

It's not that simple -- yet. Genetic Savings & Clone, the playfully named company that financed the cloning of Cc, acknowledges that the science remains unpredictable. But that hasn't stopped potential customers from lining up with cash and a genetic sample of their pets.

Kara Clarke, 29, of New York hopes to clone her standard poodle, Jacques Cousteau, which died last August.

Jacques was smart and loving, stately and obedient, and losing him to cancer at age 121/2 was like losing a relative, she said.

"It was a very hard experience. But there was that comfort knowing that an animal with a similar genetic makeup would be possible in the future," Clarke said. "And I'm kind of counting on it."

An advancement or a steppingstone?

Cc is the clone, or genetic identical, of a living cat named Rainbow. Her birth was engineered by scientists at Texas A&M University with funding provided by Genetic Savings & Clone, a private firm established to clone pets and livestock.

Leading bioethicists don't quite know what to think about Cc. Although human cloning is widely reviled by the American public and is expected to be banned soon by Congress, some believe Cc's birth might lead us that way: The cute, fluffy kitten makes cloning seem far less threatening, they say, and it's bound to raise our comfort level with the technology.

Dr. Nigel Cameron, a bioethicist at a Christian think tank in Washington and a Bush administration appointee to a new United Nations panel on cloning, sees good and bad in Cc's birth. He's not sure on which side it falls.

"On the one hand, plainly this has focused the issue afresh for us in a very helpful way," Cameron said. "They've cloned all sorts of animals in between Dolly the sheep in 1996 and this cat, but they've been laboratory animals, farm animals. A cat is a different thing.

"On the other, it's a steppingstone: You begin with a sheep, then you have a cat. What is the next step? Well, the next step is a child."

Too far out? Don't forget, Cameron noted, many controversial procedures started in animals and "jumped the firebreak" to humans. Think in vitro fertilization, artificial insemination and euthanasia.

Genetic Savings & Clone plans to begin cloning pets on a limited basis by the end of the year, at a likely price of more than $100,000. As the process is refined, the company hopes to offer the service to the general public at prices "in the low five figures," spokesman Ben Carlson said.

There are no guarantees. But the company will store a DNA sample of your dog or cat for future cloning for about $1,000.

Dr. David Magnus, director of graduate studies at the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania, often participates in public discussions about human cloning, and he has been approached by grieving parents who believe cloning could bring back their dead children.

Selling the public on the notion that they can replace a beloved pet with its clone could encourage the same flawed notion about replacing humans, he said.

"If people are allowed to be fooled into thinking they could bring back their dead children, you can imagine the same (pitch): "Make sure you have your kid's DNA stored with us, only $19.95 a month, we'll bring them back,' " Magnus said.

"I think that would be unscrupulous. But is it foreseeable? I could see it."

The birth of Missyplicity

Genetic Savings & Clone -- the name is meant as an ice breaker for a daunting technology -- is the offspring of John Sperling, 81, a wealthy Arizona businessman and founder of the University of Phoenix, a chain of for-profit colleges. Three years ago, he and his family decided they wanted to clone Missy, then 12, a much-loved German shepherd mix they had adopted from a shelter.

Sperling hired a business manager to solicit bids from leading research institutions. The veterinary school at Texas A&M, with a vibrant animal husbandry program and success in cloning cows and goats, won the contract.

They called the project Missyplicity.

"When word of the project came out, people began calling and saying, "I want to clone my dog, I want to clone my cat,' and some livestock owners were interested," Carlson said. "Dr. Sperling sensed a business opportunity."

Roughly $3.7-million later, Missy has yet to be cloned; dogs, it appears, are more difficult to clone than cats and other mammals because their reproductive systems are more complex.

Cloning makes sex unnecessary because it bypasses the mingling of DNA that usually occurs when sperm meets egg. But cloning requires an egg, and a womb ready to receive it. Dr. Duane Kraemer, professor of veterinary medicine at Texas A&M and one of the founders of Savings & Clone, said the ovulation cycle of dogs is proving hard to predict.

The cycles of cats are more predictable, and those of bovines more predictable still. Like Dolly the sheep, Cc was cloned using a process called somatic cell nuclear transfer: Basically, scientists took a cell from Rainbow and removed the nucleus, which contains the DNA. They put the nucleus into a hollowed-out egg taken from another female cat.

The egg was treated with chemicals to make the cells start dividing. The egg was then implanted into the uterus of the surrogate mother, a cat named Allie.

Cc was born 66 days later, after a normal pregnancy.

Although DNA fingerprinting confirmed Cc is the genetic double of Rainbow, Cc does not have Rainbow's orange and black calico markings. That's because fur pattern is not wholly determined by DNA, and might be affected by the position of the fetus in the womb.

The clone of any animal with multicolored fur will never have exactly the same pattern, although most will be closer than calicos, Kraemer said.

This finding has several implications. For one, the company's business model depends on persuading pet owners to pay thousands of dollars to replicate a pet. That Rainbow and Cc look nothing alike poses a bit of a marketing challenge, Carlson acknowledged.

Secondly, Cc and Rainbow's differences illustrate, in a very visual way, that a clone is not a reincarnation of the original. It might not even be a great copy.

Although every living thing is a product of its genetic makeup, it's also a product of its environment: how it's raised, by whom and what experiences it has along the way.

Carlson said Genetics Savings & Clone tries to convey this clearly to its customers. "The clone is not really going to be the reincarnation of Fluffy. It's not going to remember you, it's not going to know all the tricks," he said. "We tell our clients we can only give them a genetic identical."

Ethicists, however, say they fear many clients won't hear that. Dr. Gregory E. Kaebnick, editor of the Hastings Center Report, a journal of bioethics, said this type of selective hearing is common in cancer patients who enroll in clinical trials.

While they're told the experimental treatment won't cure them, if "you ask them why they're involved in cancer research, they tell you, "Well, it's my last hope,' " he said. "My guess is, anyone who is willing to pay the big bucks to have their pet cloned really wants their pet back."

Looking for opinions -- and a market

Dr. David Qualls, a veterinarian in Jacksonville and longtime breeder of Siberian huskies, says he doesn't want Invy back. What he and his wife want is a dog much like her.

The Qualls banked Invy's DNA with Savings & Clone almost three years ago, soon after Missyplicity was announced. She was 14 and feeble, and it was time to put her down.

"We're not trying to exactly duplicate one of our two or three favorite dogs, but have something that is so close that we have an emotional as well as physical connection to her," Qualls said.

Savings & Clone says several hundred people have sent in samples and paid the gene banking fee, and several hundred more have called since the announcement of Cc's birth. The company says its research indicates a robust market for the service, but it won't share those numbers.

Animal lovers are far from reaching a consensus. The Humane Society of America is against it. The nation's top dog and cat associations haven't taken a stand. A public forum on Savings & Clone's Web site, www.savingsandclone.com, is peppered with spicy comments for and against.

Susan Geren of South Pasadena, a former cat breeder and a member of the Suncoast Cat Fanciers, sees a market. Several friends have told her they would like to clone a favorite cat, but she bets the costs remain too high for cloning to become a viable industry.

"We've all had pets that were special, and that we didn't want to lose," she said. "But nature has its way of just going on.

"My first thought would be, why not take that same money and fund some spay-neuter clinics?"

For Magnus, the Penn bioethicist, the problems with pet cloning pile up like dogs at the county pound. Five-million unwanted animals are put to death each year; why make more? The cloning process rarely goes right -- Cc was born after 87 failed attempts -- and cloned animals often suffer strange health problems.

Dr. David P. Schenck, a bioethicist at the University of South Florida in Tampa, said he's not convinced Cc's birth will prove a steppingstone to human cloning, but he worries about what it says about American culture and death.

"It's one more example of the unwillingness of our society to live with impermanence, to live with death, to live with doing without something that has been very dear to us," Schenck said.

"It's only symbolic, but it's very much like the idea that we should never die, and we will pursue every (avenue) possible to avoid death."

The price to be paid

To store a gene sample with Savings & Clone, the pet owner takes a kit to a veterinarian, who withdraws a small tissue sample and sends it to the company lab in College Station, Texas.

The cost, just for banking, is $895, plus a $100 annual storage fee.

So-called emergency banking, when a pet unexpectedly dies or is dying, costs $1,395.

Several other firms offer DNA banking for pets, though none has successfully cloned one. They have names like PerPETuate, Lazaron and Advanced Cell Technology, which owns the patent for somatic cell nuclear transfer.

When Kara Clarke had DNA samples taken from her poodle, Jacques Cousteau, she paid two gene banks to store them, hoping to hedge her bets. If he is cloned -- and Clarke believes it's likely -- she probably would not name him Jacques, but having him there would be a comfort.

"I know the dog will have different behavior, possibly different appearance," she said, "but I feel I'm retaining the core qualities, and I think that counts for a lot."

© 2006 • All Rights Reserved • Tampa Bay Times
490 First Avenue South • St. Petersburg, FL 33701 • 727-893-8111

Contact the Times | Privacy Policy
Standard of Accuracy | Terms, Conditions & Copyright