Some scientists, including Rudolf Jaenisch of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, have warned that virtually all clones have something wrong with them, and like Dolly, the first cloned sheep, are likely to develop multiple health problems and die prematurely. The Humane Society of the United States and the American Anti-Vivisection Society blasted BioArts in a press release, calling pet cloning "a bizarre scientific endeavor fraught with failures and animal suffering." But Hawthorne is unfazed. "Some clones are perfect, some are not," he says. He claims his Missy clones, now 3 and 6 months old, are "perfectly healthy" and that CC, the first cat clone produced at Texas A&M in 2001, is a mother now and still going strong. Hawthorne also says the Koreans have dramatically improved the success rate post-Snuppy, in large part with technology enabling them to pinpoint exactly when tricky canine ova are ready for fertilization. As a result, he says, the team is now able to get viable embryos with almost all the eggs it injects with nuclear material from a dog's skin cells. And, he says, they have gotten births from 25% of the embryos inserted in females.
ScienceNow
June 10, 2008
Original web page at ScienceNow
