Audubon Zoo Clones Wild Cats:


Researchers in New Orleans say they have proved cloning can be used to save endangered species. Two litters of wild cats born in July and August are the offspring of cloned wild cats. Zoo officials say the eight kittens are doing just fine. According to scientists at the Audubon Center, this is the first time clones of two wild cats, or any kind of cat for that matter, have been able to reproduce. The kittens will be on display later this year at the Audubon Zoo.

Hope for wildcats after litters born from clones - The Herald:


SCIENTISTS in the US have produced wildcat kittens by cross-breeding cloned adults, a move which could help the Scottish species.

This is the first time clones of a wild species have bred, according to the team at the Audubon Centre for research of endangered species in New Orleans.

Eight kittens have been born in two litters over the last month, and are all said to be doing well. The researchers believe it holds enormous potential for preserving a range of endangered species by reviving their genes.

Last year, scientists warned that the Scottish wildcat was on the brink of extinction because it had bred so extensively with the domestic cat. There are believed to be only 5000 left in the wild.




SCIENTISTS in the US have produced wildcat kittens by cross-breeding cloned adults, a move which could help the Scottish species.

This is the first time clones of a wild species have bred, according to the team at the Audubon Centre for research of endangered species in New Orleans.

Eight kittens have been born in two litters over the last month, and are all said to be doing well. The researchers believe it holds enormous potential for preserving a range of endangered species by reviving their genes.

Last year, scientists warned that the Scottish wildcat was on the brink of extinction because it had bred so extensively with the domestic cat. There are believed to be only 5000 left in the wild.

Clones can reproduce!:


In what is seen here as another breakthrough for bio-engineering, three cloned African wildcats living in the United States have produced two healthy litters of kittens, demonstrating for the first time that clones of wild animals can breed.

local6.com - News - Cloned Cats Prove Ability To Reproduce:


For the first time ever, two unrelated clones of cat have bred naturally to produce healthy babies -- a scientific breakthough that could open the way to bringing endangered species back from the brink of extinction.

Clones of Man's Best Friend Now Possible:


n the near future, when a dog passes away his owner will be able order an exact duplicate of the pet. Following on the heels of a breakthrough in South Korea, a Bay Area firm hopes to soon offer dog cloning on a commercial basis.

This week a team at Seoul National University announced it has created the first cloned dog. Although many other animals have been cloned, the complexity of the canine reproductive system made dog cloning a particular challenge.

Now the cloned pup, an Afghan hound named Snuppy for "Seoul National University Puppy," is a fast-growing four-month-old. He's an identical version of another Afghan hound, just three years younger. Snuppy was produced from a cell taken from the older dog's ear. The cells were inserted into an unfertilized egg, which was then stimulated to begin dividing and develop into an embryo. It took more than 1,000 cloned embryos to produce Snuppy.

Digital Chosunilbo (English Edition) : Daily News in English About Korea:


Stem cell research pioneer Hwang Woo-suk is once again sending tremors through the scientific world by cloning the world’s first dog. “A cloned puppy was born to a surrogate mother on April 24,” the Seoul National University professor said Wednesday. “The puppy is genetically identical to an Afghan hound which provided its somatic cell.”

The Peninsula On-line: Qatar's leading English Daily
:


LAST YEAR, a kitten named Little Nicky was cloned to duplicate a Dallas woman’s deceased pet. Now we have Snuppy, an Afghan hound created by researchers in South Korea. It is reported that the scientists transferred 1,095 cloned embryos into 123 dogs before they produced a live birth from a Labrador retriever surrogate “mother.”

TheStar.com - Cloning can't create perfect pet:


Many people shake their heads with wonder and amusement at the way animal lovers behave over their pets. However, there is no denying that with more than 12 million dogs and cats sharing our homes, Canadians care deeply about the well-being of these special family members. We cherish our time together and we mourn their passing.

RedNova News - Science - Someone, Somewhere is Trying to Clone a Human Now:


THE Island, a new film starring Scotland's Ewan McGregor and Hollywood starlet Scarlett Johansson, is the story of two young people who go on the run once they realise the idyll in which they live is actually a prison. It turns out the runaway pair are clones, specially bred as insurance policies for their rich, real-world counterparts. The clones are living under a death sentence - they will be harvested for organs should something go wrong with the people from whom they were created.

Inside Bay Area - Bay Area Living
:


THE PET cloning industry received a boost earlier this month when researchers in South Korea announced they had produced the first cloned dog. The black and white Afghan hound is named Snuppy — short for Seoul National University Puppy.

MercuryNews.com | 08/26/2005 | Working to prevent folly of pet cloning makes good sense:


The issue of pet cloning has been a topic of discussion on these pages recently in the aftermath of the birth of Snuppy, the world's first cloned dog. And while the temptation is great to regress to second-grade antics such as Henry I. Miller's recent pulling of my pigtails (Op-Ed, ``Overreacting to the news of a cloned Afghan hound,'' Aug. 23), I'll refrain from joining him in the playground sandbox, and instead focus on why pet cloning is an important public-policy and moral debate and not just unrestrained scientific curiosity.

Scotland on Sunday - Opinion - Genetic science alters war on animal rights:


THE guinea pig war was won by the grave-robbers. That was the general verdict on the unsavoury intimidation campaign that has forced a Staffordshire family to stop breeding animals for medical research. Newspapers called it "the new fascism"; the local MP referred to "terrorists". The removal of a family member's body from her grave reads like a ghastly inversion of Burke and Hare.

The Lone Star Iconoclast Online:


The
big news in science this summer is that South Korean researchers
cloned a dog. They created a genetic identical twin of an older
donor dog. They claim their purpose is not to allow pet-owners to
reproduce their pets, but to use their research to help cure human
diseases. But if you think that pet-owners are not going to line
up for “Xeroxing” their aging pet, think again. There’s
a company in Northern California (where else?) called Genetic Savings
& Clone that’s already cloning pet cats. If cats and dogs
are being cloned, how big of a leap is it for people to clone their
beloved Aunt Martha?

U.S. Newswire : Releases : "AAVS OpinionEditorial/Commentary: Cloning is Bad News for Dogs
and Other Animals": "According to a one-page report published in Nature, in order to clone the dog, 123 female dogs underwent repeated abdominal surgeries to remove their eggs and implant multiple cloned embryos, 1,092 of which failed to develop. Additionally, Caesarian sections were performed on the two dogs who actually developed full-term pregnancies. Of the two live puppies born, one succumbed to pneumonia after suffering respiratory distress during his few weeks of life, a common cause of death among cloned animals. The sole surviving Afghan hound dog was named Snuppy, short for Seoul National University puppy."

Shirt Snob.com - Shirt Snob.com is a weblog dedicated to t-shirts, nice shirts, tank tops, couture tops, and more.: "Lately limited edition T-shirts, most likely made in someone's cellar in Brooklyn, have suddenly become the hipster's preferred mode of expression. Whether produced by college pals with studio art degrees or sold by highly organized Web companies like threadless.com - visitors to the site offer ideas and vote on designs, which are then put into microproduction - the limited edition T-shirt has become impossible to avoid."

Wired News: Koreans Forge Ahead on Cloning:


SEOUL, South Korea -- Cloning pioneer Hwang Woo-suk said Wednesday he plans to open a world stem-cell bank in South Korea by the end of the year to help speed up the quest to grow patients' own replacement tissues.

Hello Kitty, Hello Clone - New York Times: "Ordinarily it is hard to predict how a kitten will look when it is grown. But not for David Cheng, who plans to buy a clone of his much-loved short-haired black-and-white cat Shadow. After all, the cloning company guarantees that Shadow's successor will bear a close resemblance.
Skip to next paragraph



Andy Manis for The New York Times
Peaches, right, 9 months old, is a clone of Mango, 2 years old.






When Nine Lives Just Aren't Enough





Andy Manis for The New York Times
Peaches and Mango's owners are Leslie Ungerer, left, feline surrogate manager for Genetic Savings and Clone, and Philip Damiani, the chief scientist.




When Mr. Cheng, who works as a technology auditor for a Wall Street investment bank, discovered that Shadow had a tumor that would soon prove fatal, he had the cat's cells saved, cultured and frozen. Now, he is preparing for the next step: paying for Shadow's cloned replacement. 'I'm saving up some money,' he said. 'It's a lot like buying a car.'The financing for Shadow's successor won't be trivial. Preserving the cells, a necessary beginning for anyone interested in creating a clone, can run $300 to $1,400, not including veterinarian costs and yearly storage fees. But these expenses pale in comparison with the cost of the clone itself: at Genetic Savings and Clone, the company that stored Shadow's DNA, the price is $32,000 - reduced from the original $50,000, but still an impressive sum."

CBS News | Pet Cloning Arrives | March 29, 2002 16:13:45:


(CBS) Will pet cloning one day be common? Jim Axelrod reports.

CC, short for Carbon Copy, is the world’s first cloned cat, born last December.

“She’s perfectly healthy. She’s a playful, normal happy little kitten,” says Lou Hawthorne, CEO of Genetic Savings and Clone, the California company that spent millions of dollars to produce the clone.

It took 87 tries to produce CC – so there’s a lot more research to be done. But Hawthorne is convinced that once the kinks are out, the practice will be widespread.

He may be right: Thousands of people across the country, like Debbie Thieme of McKeesport, Pennsylvania are already lining up for the chance to someday replicate their pets – both cats and dogs. Debbie hopes to clone not just one beloved dog – but an entire pack.

Debbie, an intensive care nurse, has decided to preserve skin samples from all four of her dogs, and store them for the day when science will allow her to produce exact genetic duplicates of them.

Pet-cloning company makes a landmark sale - Science - MSNBC.com:


Pet-cloning company makes a landmark saleWoman pays $50,000 to firm for genetic twin of beloved cat;Little Nicky considered the first cloned-to-order pet sold in U.S.

Wired News: Pet Lovers: Fancy a Cat Clone?:


COLLEGE STATION, Texas -- Rainbow the cat is a typical calico with splotches of brown, tan and gold on white. Cc, her clone, has a striped gray coat over white.

Rainbow is reserved. Cc is curious and playful.











Rainbow is chunky. Cc is sleek.


Wayne Pacelle of the Humane Society might be inclined to say: I told you so. But then, so would cc's creators at Texas A&M University.


Sure, you can clone your favorite cat. But the copy will not necessarily act or even look like the original.


Cc (for carbon copy) is just over a year old. Her birth on Dec. 22, 2001, was big news when it was announced last February because it was the first time a household pet had been cloned. Previous mammal clones were barnyard animals like cows and goats.


Cc's creation was funded by Genetic Savings & Clone, a company that hopes to make money from people's desires to duplicate their favorite pets. Last February, in the journal Nature, the A&M researchers published details of the project and DNA test results that showed cc was a clone.


But people who hope cloning will resurrect a pet will be disappointed, said Duane Kraemer, one of A&M's animal cloning experts.

UKPets Directory News Copy Cat Commercial Pet Cloning Draws Closer:


Copy Cat Commercial Pet Cloning Draws Closer
Monday 29 July 2002
Earlier this year Operation Copycat, run by gene bank Genetic Savings and Clone, Inc, (GSC), announced that it had successfully cloned the first cat, (named CC [CopyCat], by its creators). This month the death of Missy the Siberian Husky crossbreed and mascot of the $3.7 million (£2.4 million) cloning project spawned another press release.

Missy christened the Missyplicity cloning project, (from which came Operation Copycat), when her DNA was taken to be used to produce the first cloned puppy. However canine cloning proved more difficult to do than feline. The announcement of the successful cat cloning back in December 2001 was delayed until DNA analysis could be performed to confirm genetic identity and was press released by Texas A&M University, where the research was carried out, in May.

Sales of Cloned Pets Supported by California Lawmakers - May 23, 2005:


Christina Ficara - All Headline News Staff WriterSACRAMENTO, CA (AHN) - California lawmakers denied a proposal to ban the sale of cloned pets, Tuesday.Creators of the proposal argued for the pet-clone ban because the technology was unregulated and animal shelters were already filled to capacity with potential pets. The proposed ban came after the first sale of a cloned pet last year by Sausalito, California-based Genetic Savings & Clone Inc.The company revealed in December it had cloned a cat - named Little Nicky after its progenitor, Nicky - for a client in Texas for $50,000. The privately held company financed by billionaire John Sperling has said it has other cat clones in various stages of production and is developing a dog-cloning service.

The Village News :: Now is the time to ban pet cloning:


When the first cloned kitten, coyly named “CC” (for “carbon copy”) by its manufacturers, appeared a few years ago on the front pages of newspapers around the world, a friend of mine reacted in bewilderment. “When did we say this was okay? Who gave permission to do this?”
If you want to open a pet shop, you need a business license. If you want to open a veterinary clinic, you need a veterinary license. If you want to do medical research using cats and dogs, you need to meet federal animal care and use requirements.
But if you want to create cloned kittens, dousing cats with hormones and surgically implanting cloned embryos — over 90 percent of which die — and market them at $32,000 each to those grieving over the loss of a beloved pet… there’s nothing to stop you.
That’s the story of Genetic Savings & Clone, the Marin County–based startup bankrolled by an eccentric billionaire and run by a smooth-talking public relations agent.
And they’re not the only ones. Allerca, Inc. and ForeverPet in West Los Angeles; Yorktown Technologies in Austin, TX; and Transgenic Pets in Syracuse, NY, are all hoping to manipulate pets — and our feelings for them — for profit.
Eighty percent of Americans find the whole idea of pet cloning repugnant. With thousands of cats, dogs and other animals being destroyed in shelters every day, there’s no good reason why anyone should have to create a genetic duplicate of a living or deceased animal as a pet.
People know intuitively that manufacturing carbon-copy animals in an attempt to “re-create” a pet that has passed away devalues both the deceased pet and the living “duplicate.”
Despite what all the cute photos suggest, cloning does real, immediate harm. Cloning is an unnatural process, and most cloned animals — some scientists believe all of them — suffer from deformities or genetic disease.
The pet cloners are now trying to create an aura of respectability about their work. They’re showing their clones at cat shows, creating Web sites full of unctuous prose about the deep ethical principles they hold, and lobbying veterinarians to offer their cloning services to customers whose pets are dying.
In the four years since “CC” was put on display as a harbinger of what the pet cloners believe is a billion-dollar market, many people have been waiting for someone to say, “Enough.”
Finally, someone has. California Assemblyman Lloyd Levine has introduced AB 1428 to ban the sale of cloned and other genetically modified household pets. Those of us who don’t want to see companion animals turned into manufactured artifacts should strongly urge our legislators to support this measure. It’s long overdue.

Pet Product News - PetProductNews.com - The news and product information leader for retailers in the pet product industry.:


Cloning Controversy Prompts Coalition Response


By Lori LuechtefeldPet Product News
 

Now that cloned pets—specifically cats—have moved from the realm of science fiction to reality, the debate over the process and the ethics of genetically replicating and modifying companion animals is heating up.
 

Animal advocacy groups are calling for regulation of the emerging market. Initiatives on both the state and federal level have been launched to restrict sales and activities of companies involved in genetically engineering and cloning pets.
 
California Cloning
 

In California, Assemblyman Lloyd Levine of Van Nuys plans to introduce legislation
 that would ban the sale of cloned and genetically modified pets in the state, a coalition of animal-rights and other nonprofit groups reported.

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | At play with firm's clone kittens
:


uccessfully cloned two cats: Tabouli and Baba Ganoush. BBC News Online's Maggie Shiels is the first British journalist to see them. Here, she tells of meeting the copy cats.





The cats were born through the technique of chromatin transfer








To most people, the two kittens running around the top floor of a San Francisco mansion might not seem like anything special. But to Lou Hawthorne, the owner of this house, Tabouli and Baba Ganoush represent a major scientific breakthrough.
And as the CEO of a cloning company, these cloned kittens also spell dollars and cents.
Genetic Savings and Clone (GSC), which is based in Sausalito, just north of San Francisco, is the world's first firm to go commercial and offer the public the chance to clone their cats and dogs.

BBC News | SCI/TECH | First pet clone is a cat:


Researchers in Texas have cloned a domestic cat, producing a two-month-old kitten called CopyCat.
The work is described in the scientific journal Nature and is the first time anyone has cloned a pet.

Pet-Clone Sales Spur Call for Ban:


Animal-rights activists stunned pet-cloning companies last week by
seeking both state and federal restrictions on the small but
growing industry.


The American Anti-Vivisection Society (AAVS), a Pennsylvania organization that monitors the treatment of animals in laboratories, worked with California Assemblyman Lloyd Levine to introduce a bill to ban the transport and sale of cloned and genetically modified pets in California.

CBS News | Pet Cloning Arrives | March 29, 2002 16:13:45:


(CBS) Will pet cloning one day be common? Jim Axelrod reports.

CC, short for Carbon Copy, is the world’s first cloned cat, born last December.

“She’s perfectly healthy. She’s a playful, normal happy little kitten,” says Lou Hawthorne, CEO of Genetic Savings and Clone, the California company that spent millions of dollars to produce the clone.

It took 87 tries to produce CC – so there’s a lot more research to be done. But Hawthorne is convinced that once the kinks are out, the practice will be widespread.

Cloning pets: In search of Fluffy 2.0 - Beyond Dolly: Human Cloning - MSNBC.com:


When Alan and Kristine Wolf lost Spot to lymphoma a year and a half ago, their lives were shattered. Spot — a sometimes contrary, but always lovable, blue Abyssinian cat — was like a child to them. But after 18 years together in a Manhattan apartment, fond memories and hundreds of cuddly snapshots just weren’t enough. The Wolfs wanted Spot — or at least part of his “life force” — to live on, so they turned to 21st century science for a solution. Now, they pay a monthly fee to bank Spot’s skin cells, and look forward to the day when they may stroke his clone.

BBC - Science & Nature - Genes - Modifying Life - Pet cloning:


Remember that fluffy, loving dog that used almost to knock you over as a child? How sad you were when he made the final trip to the vet and never came home? Well dry your eyes. In future you might never have to say goodbye.
Pet cloning might sound trivial, but a number of serious arguments have been put forward in its favour:

Genetic Savings and Clone - the leading provider of pet gene banking and pet cloning services.:


Genetic Savings & Clone enriches the lives of pet lovers through superior cloning technologies. Cat cloning available today; dog cloning available in 2005.

CNN.com - Those who cling to their pets may someday clone them - March 22, 2000:


SAN FRANCISCO (CNN) -- An anonymous billionaire loves his dog -- Missy -- so much that he wants another one with the same genetic endowment.



So he's funding the Missiplicity Project at Texas A&M University in an effort to have her cloned.




The owners of 13-year-old Missy are expected to end up paying at least $2 million in their pursuit of a canine copy. Sixty-two dogs at Texas A&M are would-be surrogate moms for Missy Two. Researchers believe they will be able to clone the dog within the next year.



  MESSAGE BOARD



Cloning



 

Eventually it might not be just the fabulously wealthy who can afford to clone their pets. The cost may come down to the price of a new car.

CNN.com - Cloning man's best friend - December 11, 2000:


It was recently reported that within the last two years, at least three major for-profit efforts have been launched to offer pet owners the possibility to clone their pets, at the moment limited to dogs and cats. They represent one of the products of genetic and biotechnology research that have so far yielded cloned sheep, cattle and pigs, and promise genetically modified animals that can produce everything from pharmaceuticals in their milk to organs that could be used for human transplant.

CNN.com - Genetically modified cats for sale - Oct 29, 2004:


(CNN) -- A California biotechnology company has started taking orders for a hypoallergenic cat for pet lovers prone to allergies.The genetically engineered feline, which is expected to be available from 2007, is the first in a planned series of lifestyle pets, Los Angeles-based Allerca said in a press release.Allerca hopes to attract customers among the millions of people worldwide who suffer from cat allergies.Up to 10 percent of the U.S. population alone are believed to be prone to symptoms that can affect the eyes, nose, ears, throat, lungs and skin.

Chicago Sun-Times: Genetic copy of cat not a copycat after all:


COLLEGE STATION, Texas--Rainbow the cat is a typical calico with splotches of brown, tan and gold on white. Cc, her clone, has a striped gray coat over white.
Rainbow is reserved. Cc is curious and playful.
Rainbow is chunky. Cc is sleek.
Wayne Pacelle of the Humane Society might be inclined to say: I told you so. But then, so would cc's creators at Texas A&M University.

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, The: Fuzzy copy: Cloned cat not much like original:


Fuzzy copy: Cloned cat not much like original
By KRISTEN HAYS Associated Press
Wednesday, January 22, 2003
College Station, Texas -- Rainbow the cat is a typical calico with splotches of brown, tan and gold on white. Cc, her clone, has a striped gray coat over white.

Daily Breeze: Copycat isn't close to being replica of real thing:


CLONING:
People who hope process will resurrect their favorite feline will be disappointed, researcher says.
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
COLLEGE STATION, Texas _ Rainbow the cat is a typical calico with splotches of brown, tan and gold on white. Cc, her clone, has a striped gray coat over white.

Independent, The (London): Woman pays pounds 26,000 to clone her dead cat:


A TEXAS woman is thought to be the first person to have a pet cloned to order.
Julie, who has released her first name only for fear of harassment, paid $50,000 (pounds 26,000) for a clone of her cat, which had lived with her for 17 years before it died last year. She has called it Little Nicky after her pet, who was simply Nicky. "He is identical. His personality is the same," Julie said.
She is the first person to receive a copycat kitten from a programme called "Nine Lives Extravaganza" offered by Genetics Savings and Clone, based in California, which claims to have five other clients. Customers supply DNA tissue from their pet which geneticists use with the ovaries from spayed cats to create the clone.

Deseret News (Salt Lake City): Cloned kitten bought for $50,000:


Just in time for that last-minute holiday gift, a bioscience firm has announced the first sale of a cloned kitten, a male named "Little Nicky."
Genetics Savings & Clone of Sausalito, Calif., reports selling the kitten to a Texas woman for $50,000. Genetically, the kitten is a twin of the buyer's Maine coon cat "Nicky," who died earlier this year. The owner declined to be identified in print.
The kitten is reported to resemble the original cat in both temperament -- mellow -- and behavior, quickly learning commands and enjoying water play, as well as being identical in appearance.
The sale of the kitten, born Oct. 17 in an Austin lab, is the first of six similar transactions the cloning firm has in the works. More clone kittens are alive and are being weaned before delivery to their owners, says firm spokesman Ben Carlson.

Daily Breeze: $50,000 made-to-order kitten ends owner's grief:


SAN FRANCISCO -- The first cloned-to-order pet sold in the United States is named Little Nicky, a nine-week-old kitten delivered to a Texas woman saddened by the loss of a cat she had owned for 17 years.
The kitten cost its owner $50,000 and was cloned from a beloved cat, named Nicky, that died last year. Nicky's owner banked the cat's DNA, which was used to create the clone.
"He is identical. His personality is the same," the woman said in a telephone interview.
The company, Sausalito-based Genetic Savings and Clone, made her available to speak to reporters only on condition that her name or hometown not be used. The woman said she fears being the target of groups opposed to cloning.

Daily Breeze: Cat's out of bag! First feline cloned as part of pet project:


Cat's out of bag! First feline cloned as part of pet project
In an advance that takes cloning out of the barnyard and into the living room, researchers announced Thursday they have cloned a cat.
The female domestic shorthair is called"cc" for "copycat." It was born Dec. 22 and is now healthyand frisky, researcher Duane Kraemer of Texas A&M University in College Station said.
Headed up by Dr. Mark Westhusinof A&M's veterinary medicine school, the project is the first reported success in cloning dogs or cats, which has been long discussed for pet owners. Many people have already stored cells from their pets in anticipation of cloning in the future, said Kraemer.

Independent, The (London): Cloning safeguards inadequate, warn government advisers:


THE CLONING of pets and other genetic engineering of animals for "trivial purposes" should be outlawed, the Government's official advisers on biotechnology will say next week.
A report to be published on Tuesday by the Agriculture and Environment Biotechnology Commission will recommend that the technique could be applied to farm animals if new welfare standards are put in place.
The commission will also warn that legislation has failed to keep up with the revolution in animal genetic science and call for new regulations to protect them from harm, describing some genetic engineering as "intrinsically objectionable". Scientists on the influential committee, which produced the report, entitled Animals and Biotechnology, will also call for new curbs on the genetic modification of fish.
They will warn that salmon, genetically enlarged to many times their size, could escape from fish farms and breed with natural populations. A senior source close to the committee said: "We don't think the implications of them escaping and swimming out to sea and breeding have been properly considered."

Evening Standard (London): Call for urgent ban on cloning of pets:


A GOVERNMENT advisory body is expected to call for urgent action to address concerns about the development of genetic technology to be used on animals.
The Agriculture and Environment Biotechnology Commission is expected to recommend a ban on " trivial" cloning such as making a copy of a pet. There could also be a ban on releasing genetically modified fish into the wild. And the Commission's latest report says a new advisory body should be set up to look at the use of genetic biotechnology on animals.

PR Newswire: Latest Cat Cloning Client Has 'Happiest Day of My Life'; GSC Cuts Price, Announces New Chief Scientist:


SAUSALITO, Calif., Feb. 12 /PRNewswire/ -- Dan, a 40-something investment counselor from Southern California, became the second paying client to receive a pet clone when Genetic Savings & Clone (GSC) officials delivered a kitten to his door on Tuesday, February 8. "Little Gizmo" is a clone of Gizmo, his mixed breed Siamese who died at age 13 in March 2004.
"Valentine's Day is a special day for GSC, because our business is all about the love between people and their exceptional pets," said Lou Hawthorne, GSC CEO, who delivered Little Gizmo with Mike Hodnett, the company's VP of Sales & Marketing. "With our second commercial cat clone delivery, we have again duplicated an exceptional pet, and made a certain client very, very happy."
Dan, who requested that his last name be withheld for privacy, was among the first five people to sign up for GSC's cat cloning service, which became available in February 2005 on a limited basis at the price of $50,000. One company client received her cloned kitten in December; the others will receive theirs within the next few months.

Boston Herald: CANINE COPIES?; Owners look for cloning to give dogs another day:


At 2 years old, Fatty the bulldog should live at least another decade, in spite of his name.
But before Fatty was neutered, his owner paid a Framingham veterinary hospital $250 to collect the dog's sperm and ship it to a California facility, which charges another $50 a month to keep it frozen, should his owner ever want a baby Fatty.
By this time next year, though, Jeff Walker might have another means of giving his chubby chum a taste of immortality. The company that funded the first successful cloning of a domestic cat more than two years ago went commercial this February, charging cat owners $50,000 to replicate their favorite felines. And Genetic Savings and Clone hopes to do the same for dogs within the next year.
Dottie Sitlin of Dedham, who owns a 3-year-old yellow Lab named Oakley, said, "Dogs are great friends and I could see how someone would be interested in cloning." She declined, however, to say whether she'd pay to have Oakley cloned.

Chicago Sun-Times: Cloned cat takes place of prior pet -- for $50,000:


Just in time for that last-minute holiday gift, a bioscience firm has announced the first sale of a cloned kitten, a male named Little Nicky.
Genetics Savings & Clone of Sausalito, Calif., reports selling the kitten to a Texas woman for $50,000. Genetically, the kitten is a twin of the buyer's Maine Coon cat Nicky, who died earlier this year.
"He is identical. His personality is the same," said the owner, Julie. She asked that her last name and hometown not be disclosed because she said she fears being targeted by groups opposed to cloning.
The sale of the kitten, born Oct. 17 in a lab in Austin, Texas, is the first of six similar transactions the cloning firm has in the works. More cloned kittens are being weaned before delivery to their owners, says firm spokesman Ben Carlson.

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, The: A BREED APART: CLONING'S NEXT STEP; For farmers, cloning falls short:


Roslin, Scotland In the world of biotech and biomedicine, it's usually the mouse or primate that takes center stage. But when the first cloned animal from adult cells was announced, the spotlight fell on a fleecy-white Scottish sheep named Dolly.
Dolly was chosen because of the potential she and other large farm animals had for revolutionizing agriculture and medicine.
But nearly a decade after her birth and 18 years since Neal First, a retired University of Wisconsin-Madison researcher, first cloned calves from embryonic cells cloned animals have yet to make it to the shelf of any American supermarket or pharmacy.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has asked livestock producers to refrain from putting animal clones and their progeny into the food chain. And the FDA is in discussions with other federal agencies about how best to verify the safety of these products.

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, The: Cloning outpacing ethics:


Eight years after Dolly the cloned Scottish sheep, the world now has Little Nicky, the first cloned pet cat the progeny of a rather flippantly named Texas company, Genetic Savings & Clone Inc., which is moving to a Madison-area industrial park. But the nagging moral, ethical, legal and long-term scientific questions raised by cloning remain largely unanswered.
The field, in which a University of Wisconsin researcher played a pioneering role more than 18 years ago, races along, as illustrated in a three-part series by Journal Sentinel reporter Susanne Quick that ends today.
Like many other fields of scientific endeavor, cloning may hold untold potential for humankind improving the food supply, fighting disease and saving endangered species. And it's folly to suggest that cloning efforts be halted until these important questions are addressed. It would be almost impossible to squeeze that genie back into the bottle, given the global scale of the research.

Science News: Clones face uncertain future - Biology - reaports that cloned animals are quick to develop obesity and disease - Brief Article:


For every step forward cloning makes, two steps backward seem to follow.
In the Feb. 21 Nature, researchers at Texas A&M University in College Station announced that they had cloned a cat, producing a seemingly healthy kitten they named Cc for Carbon copy. This first cloning of a common domestic pet was funded primarily by a man who wants the researchers to clone his dead pet dog, Missy.
Two new studies raise questions about Cc's future, however. In the March Nature Medicine, investigators from the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine report that their cloned mice regularly develop obesity. Even more disturbing, scientists at the National Institute for Infectious Diseases in Tokyo report in the March Nature Genetics that cloned animals may have a shorter-than-normal lifespan. In one of the experiments, 10 of 12 cloned mice died within 800 days of birth, whereas only 1 of 7 mice produced through natural mating died within that span.

Townsend Letter for Doctors and Patients: Cloned pets - Shorts:


Pet cloning is the newest multi-million-dollar genetic engineering business. Buoyed by surveys that suggest that one out often pet owners would like a cloned replica of a beloved pet, companies such as Lazaron, PerPETuate, and Genetic Savings & Clone, collect and store DNA from pets. As technology improves, the DNA will be used to make cloned replicas. Nell Boyce reports in an US News & World Report article (March 11. 2002) that processing a pet's DNA costs about $1,000 and storage costs $100/year. Although cloned cows cost about $20,000, the first cats that Genetic Savings & Clone will begin cloning this year are expected to cost considerably more ("perhaps six figures").
Although scientists have cloned cows, pigs, mice, sheep, and goats since 1996, a cat was only recently cloned by Mark Westhusin and colleagues at Texas A&M University. To make "Cc" the researchers fused cells from another cat named Rainbow with unfertilized cat eggs, emptied of genetic material. The embryos were then implanted into surrogate mothers. It took several tries before a viable cloned kitty entered the world. Interestingly, Cc does not look exactly like Rainbow even though genetically they are identical. The researchers attribute the difference in markings to random factors such as womb environment.

Current Events: Double trouble? - Scottish scientist Ian Wilmut's landmark achievement of cloning an ewe; positive and negative aspects of cloning:


Scottish scientist Dr. Ian Wilmut isn't seeing double lately. Or is he? He's seeing two identical ewes, or female sheep, where once there was only one. Dolly is a 7-month-old clone -- or genetic duplicate -- of her mother, a 6-year-old ewe. Wilmut and a group of scientists have cloned a mammal for the first time in history.
Dr. Wilmut took DNA, genetic information in the nucleus of every living cell, from Dolly's mother and put it into another sheep's egg. The egg's nucleus had already been removed, so it had no DNA of its own. The new DNA took root and developed into an embryo. Dr. Wilmut then put the embryo into the womb of a third sheep, who gave birth to Dolly!

Daily Breeze: Door opened to new era of pet cloning:


Door opened to new era of pet cloning
Scientists in Texasconfirmed last week that they have successfully cloned a domestic cat. The carbon-copy calico, aptly named "Cc:," was born Dec. 22 in a university laboratory.
While researchers elsewhere have created cloned sheep, mice, goats and pigs, Cc:'s arrival could very well usher in a brave new era of pet cloning.
"You can't beat around the bush," said Mark Westhusin, who lead the scientific team that produced the world's first cat clone. "There are lots of people interested in their pets, so why avoid it?"

Science World: Medical milestone: South Korean scientists have cloned human cells to help treat disease. Find out how, and why it could change the future:


Since Dolly the sheep was born in 1996, scientists have produced a virtual zoo of cloned animals: pigs, cows, horses, goats, mice, cats, and even the cattlelike banteng--one of the first endangered species to be cloned. Now, researchers are closer than ever to a human. clone, or an exact genetic copy of a cell or an organism.
Scientists create clones for two very different reasons. Reproductive cloning produces a baby animal that's the genetic twin of an adult. So far, no scientist has pulled off human reproductive cloning--no cloned children have been born. Scientists did create cloned human embryos (unborn animals in the first eight weeks of growth) for the first time in 2001. But the embryos didn't live very long.
Then, this March, biologist Woo Suk Hwang and a research team from Seoul National University in South Korea announced that they had used a microscopic needle to create more than 200 cloned human embryos from adult cells. Hwang's research took the first steps in therapeutic cloning, a process in which stem cells (cells that can become any one of the 200 different cell types present in the human body) are taken from a cloned embryo. The cells are then used to grow replacement tissues that could help treat human ailments such as diabetes, Parkinson's disease (brain disease that impairs movement), and spinal cord injuries.

American Zoologist: Molecular cloning, expression, and tissue distribution of crustacean molt-inhibiting hormone:


Molecular Cloning, Expression, and Tissue Distribution of Crustacean Molt-Inhibiting Hormone1
SYNOPSIS. In crustaceans, secretion of ecdysteroid molting hormones by Y-organs is regulated by molt-inhibiting hormone (MIH), a neuropeptide produced by the X-organ/sinus gland complex of the eyestalks. The current review considers recent research on MIH, with a primary focus on MIH of brachyurans (crabs). New data on the production of recombinant MIH (rMIH) are also included. Available data indicate the MIH gene of brachyurans encodes a 113 amino acid prohormone composed of a 35 residue signal peptide and a 78 residue mature MIH. The primary structure of MIH is highly conserved among brachyurans. The MIH transcript is detectable in eyestalk neural ganglia throughout the molt cycle of the blue crab, Callinectes sapidus. Stage-specific changes in the abundance of MIH mRNA in C. sapidus eyestalks are generally consistent with the hypothesis that MIH negatively regulates ecdysteroid production during the molt cycle. MIH transcripts have also been detected in the brain of two species. Recombinant MIH was produced using prokaryotic (pET vector/Escherichia coli) and eukaryotic (baculovirus/ insect cells) expression systems. Recombinant MIH produced in E. coli was of the predicted size and was MIH immunoreactive; it did not have MIH bioactivity. Polyclonal antisera raised against the prokaryotically expressed rMIH bound specifically to neurosecretory cells in the X-organ, their associated axons, and axon terminals in the sinus gland. Recombinant MIH expressed using the baculovirus system was of the predicted size, was MIH immunoreactive, and inhibited ecdysteroid production by Y-organs in vitro.

Daily Breeze: Pet owners bank on this company to store samples of Fido for cloning:


Pet owners bank on this company to store samples of Fido for cloning
It used to be I could write about distant eventsknowing that nobody at a distance would ever know about it. Then the Internet ruined everything, making it so I can'teven make fun of a $3.7 million, Texas A&M dog-cloning project sponsored by a wealthy Arizona man of possibly strange vision.
A multimillionaire named John Sperling who wanted to clone his late mutt, Missy, but got -- after a couple years of intense scientific effort -- a small gray cat clone name Cc (for carbon copy).
Too bad he didn't contact me first. I could have gotten the guy several little gray cats, the entire Carson Animal Shelter and five or six full-time employees with trucks for half that. Then there was my seriously not funny and completely incorrect assumption that Missy, Sperling's border collie-husky mix, had gone to heaven on that big river boat. "To paraphrase your favorite quipster Mark Twain, rumors of Missy's demise are greatly exaggerated. She turned 15 inApril and is still alive and well!" e-mailed Ben Carlson from the corporate office in Sausalito.

New Internationalist: CopyCats:


It was perhaps only a matter of time, but recently a Californian biotech startup called Genetic Savings & Clone (GSC) announced that it was the first company successfully to deliver a cloned-to-order pet. A woman in Texas paid the company $50,000 to clone her cat Nicky. 'He is identical. His personality is the same,' said the proud owner, identified only as 'Julie'.
Nicky was cloned under the company's 'Nine Lives Extravaganza' programme which expects to clone nine cats as part of its initial feline cloning service. Dog lovers need not despair, however, since GSC is promising to launch its canine cloning service in 2005.
'We had Smokey neutered at a young age. We wanted some of his offspring,' said GSC client Mary Ann Daniel. 'So when we heard about cloning we thought it was just the perfect thing for us to do.'
If you're unsure about cloning then you can also take advantage of GSC's extensive gene-banking facility--PetBank. 'After your pet's DNA is saved in PetBank, you'll have the peace of mind of knowing you can clone your pet when the time is right for you.'

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, The: A BREED APART: CLONING'S NEXT STEP; Pet owners have their reasons;:


Who clones their pets?
Paul Rasky, a Bay View resident, hopes someone will clone his cat.
He has sent little Nikita's tissue to Perpetuate Inc. and is paying around $100 a year to store her cells while the company works out a method to clone cats.
He's thinking about sending tissue to Genetic Savings & Clone a company moving to the Madison-area that successfully cloned a cat in December.

Oakland Tribune: Pet cloning removes death's sting -- and that's not good:


DID YOU HEAR about the huge rumble over pet cloning?
The anti-pet-cloning group has this new Web site, www.nopetcloning.org. It says it's harmful to the welfare of animals, that the clones have horrible defects and will die, that the welfare of the surrogates that give birth to the clones is not being considered, and that cloning exacerbates pet overpopulation because we're making designer animals rather than adopting the thousands of stray pets in shelters.
These animal welfare activists are so fired up, they're seeking new state and federal restrictions on the cloning industry, which includes California legislation that would outlaw the sale and transport of cloned pets.
Genetic Savings & Clone, the Sausalito-based company that produced those cloned kittens a few months ago, IS obviously pro- clone as any company would be if they got $50,000 in the kitty for a kitty. To support their argument, they launched

Oakland Tribune: Pet cloning removes death's sting -- and that's not good:


DID YOU HEAR about the huge rumble over pet cloning?
The anti-pet-cloning group has this new Web site, www.nopetcloning.org. It says it's harmful to the welfare of animals, that the clones have horrible defects and will die, that the welfare of the surrogates that give birth to the clones is not being considered, and that cloning exacerbates pet overpopulation because we're making designer animals rather than adopting the thousands of stray pets in shelters.
These animal welfare activists are so fired up, they're seeking new state and federal restrictions on the cloning industry, which includes California legislation that would outlaw the sale and transport of cloned pets.
Genetic Savings & Clone, the Sausalito-based company that produced those cloned kittens a few months ago, IS obviously pro- clone as any company would be if they got $50,000 in the kitty for a kitty. To support their argument, they launched

Animals: Double Trouble - cloning research - Brief Article:


Emerging technologies bring hopes for a better life and chances to solve old problems in exciting new ways. Certainly, many view cloning in this light. The science may be harnessed to increase world food supplies, help find cures and treat disease, and perhaps, as Brian Lavendel recounts in "Jurassic Arc" (page 16), even one day bring back extinct species. But what does all this mean for animals?
Like any scientific advancement, the generic revolution also has the potential to spawn new problems that take hold well before society's is prepared to deal with them. Cloning and gene manipulation techniques have far-reaching implications that cry out to be examined and fully debated. Failing to raise animal-welfare questions now may only fosters high-tech forms of cruelty that, once institutionalized, will be much harder to combat.

Current Events: Here kitty, kitty! All the chat about cloning a cat - News Debate - Brief Article:


SOME CATS may be a step closer to actually having nine lives, thanks to the work of scientists at Texas A&M University. The scientists announced last month that they had successfully cloned a calico cat, which they named cc, for "carbon copy."
The kitty clone is a biological copy of a cat named Rainbow, although they don't look exactly alike. Scientists have already cloned sheep, pigs, goats, cows, and mice, but cc is the first copy cat.
To produce cc, scientists took several cells from Rainbow and removed the DNA-containing nucleus from each cell. DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) holds the genetic information that determines inherited traits. The scientists then transferred each DNA-containing nucleus into an egg that had been stripped of its DNA. The resulting embryos, or developing fertilized eggs, were then implanted in surrogate, or stand-in, mother cats. One of those embryos grew into cc, born last December 22.

Animals: Cloning: for love or money? - Viewpoint - implications of company's offer to clone beloved pets - Brief Article - Editorial:


The phone calls started after Texas A&M researchers announced in February that they had successfully produced a kitten through cloning techniques. What, reporters, wanted to know, did I think of this accomplishment? From where I sat, I told them, it wasn't news to be celebrated.
The kitten, named CC, was born on December 22 and so far appears to be healthy. The team that produced her is part of a $3.7 million effort known as the Missyplicity Project. It began in 1998 with an initial $2.3 million contribution to Texas A&M by a wealthy couple who wanted to replicate Missy, their aging Border collie mix.

Applied Genetics News: CLONING: Dumb Human Pet Tricks - Brief Article:


The March issue of Wired carries a story about a Texas A&M team that plans to clone pets. First in line is Missiplicity, the beloved canine companion of an anonymous billionaire who is putting up the research funds. An offshoot of the Texas A&M project is Genetic Savings and Clone (College Station, TX), whose website, www.savingsandclone.com, has just gone online. The company is dedicated to cloning pets, livestock, and rare and endangered species. Currently Savings and Clone will collect and store DNA indefinitely from your dog, your favorite championship racehorse, or whatever (not your mother-in-law). Cloning is not yet available.
Don't imagine that Savings and Clone is alone on the cutting edge. Other companies who will store your pet DNA are Lazoron Biotechnologies (Baton Rouge, LA), Canine Cryobank (San Marcos, CA), and perPetuate (Newington, CT).
These gene banks typically send a DNA collection kit, which a veterinarian uses to take a small skin sample. The tissue is grown in culture temporarily, then frozen in liquid nitrogen.

Natural Health: Is pet cloning OK? - Backtalk - Letter to the Editor:


In July's Backtalk in News and Notes, we asked if you thought people should be allowed to clone their pets. Here's what you said.
Embracing Grief
Our family lost a favorite pet, T.J., last October. It was so healthy for us to grieve together. If we had cloned T.J., we might have missed out on the shared experience of consoling each other.
Teresa Kroger
Omaha, Neb., via email

Do the Humane Thing
I adopted a smart, wonderful, loving dog from the humane society If people want another dog or cat, they should go there instead.

New Internationalist: A sweet hooded rat named Alwyn - pet cloning - Brief Article:


A Texan millionaire has set up a pet cloning company - Missyplicity - in the hope of producing a new version of his late dog, Missy. Potential customers left comments on company's website:
Gordie Rosenberg shares the spirit of enterprise. 'I'd like to get directly involved with your cloaning (sic) project. I realize everybody has the smartest dog in the world, but this Border Collie of mine is the smartest dog you'll ever meet. ... What I'm thinking, if you-all want my help, is to make Sparky the "PR doggie" and generate a list of future Buyers of Sparkys, at about $25,000 a copy.'
Others express more modest desires: 'I have a sweet little hooded rat named Alwyn. She is one of the best pets I have ever had, but rats only live for about three years. This is probably one of the best uses of cloning that I ever heard of.'

USATODAY.com - Hot Sites Gullah Tales Gullah – the lovely Creole English of the Sea Islands of South Carolina:


Extinct Animal Cloning
Turns out it’s pretty simple: Get a DNA
sample from a thylacine, an extinct species of Tasmanian tiger; insert
the genetic material in an egg donated by a member of a similar (but extant)
species; implant the egg into a suitable donor mammal, and presto! –
slicker than sea monkeys, you’ve resurrected a lost creature. Obviously
we cooked this little biogenetics experiment up right here in the office,
but you’re free to try your hand at the process on this easy-to-understand
Web site.

Pet Clones Spur Call For Limits (washingtonpost.com):

Clone a cat, go to jail -- or at least pay a fine. That is the goal of animal welfare activists who announced yesterday that they are seeking state and federal restrictions on the small but growing pet-cloning industry.The first cloned feline, CC (short for Copy Cat), was created in 2001 by researchers in Texas.(Richard Olsenius -- Texas A&m University Via Reuters) Spearheaded by the American Anti-Vivisection Society in suburban Philadelphia, the effort takes aim at companies such as Genetic Savings and Clone Inc., the California enterprise that last year began to fill orders for cloned cats. The clones -- which have sold for $50,000 each -- are genetic duplicates of customers' deceased pets and represent the leading edge of an emerging commercial sector that advocates predict could eventually reap billions of dollars for corporate cloners.