Thread: Clone your dead cat ...

Wanna buy a purrrrfect copy of Muffy?

The first cloned-to-order pet sold in the United States is named Little Nicky, a 9-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 told The Associated Press in a telephone interview. She spoke on condition of anonymity because she said she fears being targeted by groups opposed to cloning. Yet while Little Nicky, who was delivered two weeks ago, frolics in his new home, the kitten’s creation and sale has reignited fierce ethical and scientific debate over cloning technology, which is rapidly advancing.

The company that created Little Nicky, Sausalito-based Genetic Savings and Clone, said it hopes by May to have produced the world’s first cloned dog — a much more lucrative market than cats. While it is based in the San Francisco Bay area, the company’s cloning work will be done at its new lab in Madison, Wis.

Commercial interests already are cloning prized cattle for about $20,000 each, and scientists have cloned mice, rabbits, goats, pigs, horses — and even the endangered banteng, a wild bull that is found mostly in Indonesia. Meanwhile, several research teams around the world are racing to create the first cloned monkey.

Aside from human cloning, which has been achieved only at the microscopic embryo stage, no cloning project has fueled more debate than the marketing plans of Genetic Savings and Clone. Animal rights activists complain that new feline production systems aren’t needed because thousands of stray cats are euthanized each year for want of homes.

Lou Hawthorne, Genetic Savings and Clone’s chief executive, said his company purchases thousands of ovaries from spay clinics across the country. It extracts the eggs, which are combined with the genetic material from the animals to be cloned.

Critics also complain that the technology is available only to the wealthy, that using it to create house pets is frivolous and that customers grieving over lost pets have unrealistic expectations of what they’re buying.

“The thing that many people do not realize is that the cloned cat is not the same as the original,” said Bonnie Beaver, a Texas A&M animal behaviorist who heads the American Veterinary Medical Association, which has no position on the issue. “It has a different personality. It has different life experiences. They want Fluffy, but it’s not Fluffy.” Scientists also warn that cloned animals suffer from more health problems than their traditionally bred peers and that cloning is still a very inexact science. It takes many gruesome failures to produce just a single clone.

Between 15 percent and 45 percent of cloned cats born alive die within the first 30 days, Hawthorne said. But he said that range is consistent with natural births, depending on the breed of cat.

Source: MSNBC

A Dallas woman has received a clone of her dead cat after paying $50,000 to a California biotech company, a Texas newspaper reported.

The Dallas Morning News reported Wednesday that the cloned kitten, dubbed Little Nicky, was born in Austin and presented to a Texas woman named Julie who was saddened by the loss of the cat, also named Nicky, she had owned for 17 years.

Genetic Savings & Clone, the company behind Little Nicky's cloning, said the Texas resident stored her old cat's tissue in its gene bank, according to the report. And when Genetic Savings offered clients the chance to reproduce their precious pets for a price, Julie signed up.

Genetic Savings is the only company to offer cloned pets to paying customers, and five people have signed up this year for what it calls its "Nine Lives Extravaganza" -- the chance to clone a cat for $50,000, company spokesman Ben Carlson told the paper.

Source: CNN

i see cloned boobies in bonecrusher's sig