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Of Copy Cats and Ditto Dogs

Denise Flaim | Animal House

October 16, 2001

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IF IMITATION is the sincerest form of flattery, then some of veterinarian A.J. Kallet's clients want to pay their companions the ultimate compliment.

"There's definitely interest in cloning," says Kallet, who practices in San Francisco's Bay area. "I've had a number of clients approach me about it."

In this post-Dolly era, cloning is not as space-agey as it sounds. In addition to that famous ewe cloned in 1996, other species have been successfully duplicated through nuclear transfer, including calves. And in anticipation of the day where "copy cat" might take on a quite literal meaning, companies such as Lazaron BioTechnologies in Baton Rouge, La. (www.Lazaron.com; 888-882-8918); Canine Cryobank in San Marcos, Calif. (www.caninecryo bank.com; 760-591-9909); PerPETuate in Farmington, Conn. (www.perpet

uate.net; 877-4PERPET), and Genetic Savings & Clone in College Station, Texas (www.sav ingsandclone.com; 888-833-6063), store pet DNA.

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"You just take a simple skin biopsy," says Kallet, who has used Genetic Savings & Clone for a client's dog. The extracted DNA is shipped to the company's labs, where cells are grown in culture for up to a month and then "cryopreserved" in liquid nitrogen.

Right now, Genetic Savings & Clone's services are available only through participating vets, though the company eventually hopes to deal with pet owners directly. Either way, the cost is steep: $895 for healthy live animals, and $1,395 for terminally ill or deceased animals, plus an annual storage fee of $100 and $150, respectively.

For his part, Kellat doesn't think cloning is too far off in the future. "Why not?" he asks. "Other species have been cloned successfully."

The scientists on the Missyplicity Project agree wholeheartedly. Headquartered at Texas A&M University in College Station, they have been working for three years trying to replicate a 14 1/2-year-old border collie/husky mix named Missy. Her wealthy owners, who remain anonymous, have awarded the college $3.7 million in grants, and are gearing up for more.

"With this species it's just a numbers game-it took 300 tries to do Dolly, 150 or 200 to do a calf," says Mark Westhusin, the veterinary physiologist leading the scientific team. "If we tried to pick the toughest species, it would be a dog-even tougher than humans."

One problem, Westhusin points out, is that scientists must wait for a female dog to go into heat-at intervals of about six months- before collecting ova to use in the cloning process. To get around this, the Missyplicity team is also working with eggs obtained from the ovaries of spayed dogs, though getting the undeveloped eggs to mature in vitro is tricky. (A year ago, Missyplicity unveiled a parallel cat-cloning effort: "Project CopyCat.")

Despite all the scientific hurdles, Missyplicity project coordinator Lou Hawthorne - who is also CEO of Genetic Savings & Clone - says he thinks it's only a matter of "four or five months" before the team clones its first Missy. The estimated cost once pet cloning goes public? Hawthorne figures $100,000, though the figure could go down to $20,000 within three years.

As for the ethical questions raised by cloning,Westhusin is relatively dismissive. "The only complaint we've ever had is people who complain that all these people who would be cloning their dogs could get a dog from an animal shelter."

On their site, www.missyplicity.com, Missy's owners describe her as "beautiful, athletic, good-natured, super smart..." If she's cloned, the big question will be whether the mini-Missy will have all of those "wonderful qualities." "Missy's owners are prepared to love a Missy clone even if it shares none of Missy's behavioral traits (though it is certain to resemble her physically)," the site explains. "This project is in part an exploration of one of the deepest questions of all-nature versus nurture."

"No one knows what genes are involved with personality and behavior," admits Westhusin. But he points to cases of human identical twins separated at birth and then reunited after decades: "And it turns out they use the same brand of aftershave, they smoke the same brand of cigarettes, like the same kind of whiskey."

As for Kallet, though he's a believer in the technological triumph that will make cloning possible, he warns that a clone may not be a carbon copy.

"There are so many environmental influences that affect what a dog will be like," he says. "You may not get your dog again."