[JenM66]

Famed Ground Zero tracking dog will be cloned, report says
by The Star-Ledger Continuous News Desk Tuesday July 01, 2008, 5:44 AM
A German shepherd named Trakr, a hero of Ground Zero, will be replicated as a detection dog in a cloning experiment announced Monday, according to a report in the New York Daily News.

Trakr and his master, a retired Canadian police officer named James Symington, were among the first search-and-rescue teams to arrive at Ground Zero and the pair helped locate the last human survivor of 9/11 under some 30 feet of unstable debris. BioArts International said it will transport a sample of Trakr's DNA to the South Korean lab of its partner, Sooam Biotech Research Foundation, which is described as the world's foremost expert in canine cloning.

 

[shikari23]

Oh, yes... let's clone him. Nevermind that it won't BE him and that this isn't like a comic book where he'll still have the same personality and skills that he did before his death. Let's just create a clone that will have an even SHORTER lifespan than normal rather than doing to logical thing and trying to get a pup from the same dam and sire.

GRRRRR! People really, REALLY annoy me with this stuff.

 

[GSDolch]

No, it wont be the same dog excatly, and some things are bound to be different.

But her in lies the debate on if the dog was good because of natural talent or training or both.

I think it'll be interesting to see where it goes.

 

[TheAlamoGang]

I didn't see this posted and posted a link in a separate thrread. Sounds like the dog has DM as well. It will be interesting to see if the clone develops DM.

 

[selzer]

Ok, it costs about 100k to clone a dog. Why? because you have to get the eggs from the doner dam at the precice right time, then you have to work the magic with the dna, then you have to implant them in another doner dam who is just at the right time to have the eggs implant on the wall of her uterine horns.

The timing has to be exact and the majority of the fertilized eggs will not make it anyway.

Dogs are some of the hardest animals to do this with. So the hefty pricetag.

Then too dogs are some of the best loved companions of humans and the it doesn't take much to convince someone that they NEED another "fluffy."

But is it morally right?

I am not saying anything about God or playing God through science and manipulating creation and all that jazz that people will debate and make horror flicks until the world goes crashing into the sun.

I am concerned with the money. Sorry, but is it morally acceptable to spend that much money for a puppy that will be similar to the one you once had? You can pretty much rationalize a 250k house, and a 30k vehicle. You can waste thousands on motorized vehicles. It is your money and you can do with it what you want, and all that.

Are these people hoping for 10 pups they will sell for 10k or more a piece? Is this a ploy to make money?

I am sorry, but this is just heinus in my opinion. I suppose that people felt that way about many of the advances of modern science, at the price tag of the research and development.

Perhaps the idea of cloning was originally justified by some medical purpose. I cannot see it. I mean if you knew your kid would need a kidney or a heart and cloned your kid, wouldn't it be just as criminal to raise up a human for parts? So what is the point of advancing this technology?

 

[Guest]

It was proven with Dolly the cloned sheep that cloned animals live a much shorter lifespan because cells themselves have a life cycle - they can only split so many times. The older the animal from whom the DNA comes from the shorter the lifespan of the resulting clone.

 

[GunnerJones]

the cost will decrease eventually like any other procedure, but I fear it will set us up for problems and disasters when you narrow down the gene pool even smaller, when it becomes even cheaper then livestock as well as service animals will be cloned making them subject to disease as in the case of the failed potato crop in Ireland and other plant diseases

 

[selzer]

A sample of one proved that?

 

[selzer]

when they can come out perfectly trained, I will look again.

 

[Guest]

Originally Posted By: selzerA sample of one proved that?

Proved to be the case so far yes. Dolly was the first cloned mammal. It appears the T-cells will be the same regardless. Here's further explanation.

Quote:Biopysical problems associated with cloning

Recent years revealed that some cloned animals suffer from age-related diseases and die prematurely.

Although, clones from other species still appear healthy, mice cloned using somatic cells have a higher than expected death rate from infections and hepatic failure.

Plagued with a chronic and progressive lung disease, veterinarians were forced to humanly euthanize Dolly in February 2003. Dolly lived approximately 60% of the normal lifespan of sheep (normally 11 to 12 years) and developed other conditions (e.g., chronic arthritis) much earlier than expected in a sheep's normal lifespan. Dolly's seemingly fragile health, along with more generalized fears of premature aging in cloned animals, renewed fears first raised by a study in 1999 that Dolly's telomeres were shorter than normal.

Telomeres are the physical ends eukaryotic chromosomes and play a role in the replication and stabilization of the chromosomes upon which they reside. Telomeres are synthesized by the enzyme telomerase. Telomerase is one of the factors believed to control the length of telomeres that may act as a biological clock for the cell.

According to the telomere theory of aging, during DNA synthesis, DNA polymerase fails to replicate all of the nucleic acids resulting in shortened telomeres—and hence shortened chromosomes—with each successive generation of cell division. Eventually, the cell will no longer divide and after enough critical regions have been deleted, the cell cycle will arrest and the cell will die.

Source: http://science.jrank.org/pages/1519/Clone-Cloning-Biopysical-problems-associated-with-cloning.html