Scientists Clone Pet Dog

Scientists Clone Pet Dog
A South Korean-created dog clone becomes the first of its kind to live in the US.
by Chris Iaquinta

January 29, 2009 - Losing a pet can be devastating, especially when disease claims their lives. The bonds formed between humans and their animal companions (as we've learned from Fable 2) can last a lifetime, if by lifetime you mean about a dozen years or so. One American couple decided that they did not want to say goodbye to their cancer stricken pooch, and instead opted to have an exact clone of their Labrador created in a lab (oh, the irony) immediately after the original puppy passed away.

DNA samples of Sir Lancelot were taken and frozen over six years ago at the request of Edgar and Nina Otto, a wealthy couple with an apparent fetish for the Knights of the Round Table. After succumbing to cancer last January in 2008, the DNA of Lancelot was brought to BioArts International in South Korea, where for ?108,000 the biotech firm generated a perfect clone of the dog, now disturbingly named Lancelot Encore, like some lame PC music program.

Lancelot Encore is now the first single-birth commercially cloned puppy to reside in the United States. The Otto's, who at ages 66 (Nina) and 79 (Edgar) are no strangers themselves to having death lurking around every corner, were extremely satisfied with the process.

"He looked just like my original Lancelot," said Nina. "The most interesting thing about this Lancelot we notice he's bonded immediately within an hour with every other pets in the house. He's the Alpha dog!"

A rep from another South Korean BioTech firm has since come out and said that cloning a pet will soon cost less than half the price paid the Otto's. RNL Bio claims to have developed a new method for cloning dogs using stem cells derived from fat tissue. Two cloned beagle puppies were born recently using this technique, which the company hopes will reduce the cost of pet cloning to ?35,000 within the next three years.

If affordable, would you clone your precious pooch? Would you name them Sir Galahad or King Arthur like a pair of rich old people? Share your comments below.

wow, thats pretty cool actually

Yeah, that is cool. o.o

ya cool but creepy because you know there going to start making human clones next.

i dont think so, people would be furious at the idea of playing god like that.

In a related note, scientists in Spain foiled miserably in cloning a goat, with only seven embryos implanted , six were still births and the 7th die seven minutes after birth due to breathing difficulties. So by suffocating a baby in the name of science, where are we?
And why are we trying to clone? There is a plethora of species that have died out and we don't reasonably care, why not let them?

Sarevok, the cloning in this case is to save an individual animal not a species. By suffocating a baby goat the Spanish scientists have learned that they need to try harder to make a successful clone or clones. We are trying to clone as a way to cheat death in my opinion. Cloning is a way to make something or someone immortal, We are only trying it on animals first because a large number of people WOULD be outraged at the scientists "playing god" like that. However, in time there will be clones of people out in the world; regardless of the moral obstructions society places on such a thing. Some people will do anything to avoid dying and cloning looks very promising to many of those people.

Personally, I hope we do get human clones running around on every street corner. The value of a life will drop significantly when this happens and the world will face a terrifying paradigm shift.

Hm yeah, I think I labeled my post off topic but good points anyways. However, unless we get a method to transfer all memories, conscious and unconscious into the clone, we are just gonna get test tube babies.

There are already methods to transfer memories thanks to your favorite group of people and mine: scientists! And even if there weren't cloning "blank" copies of yourself has some very positive medical benefits for you, however it does create a social/moral dilemma.

Also, test tube babies would be so cool~! No stupid bellybuttons for them! No identifiable parents either...Man! Lucky future experiments!

Nobody knows what to say to that...