California Firms Begin Cloning Pets

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California Firms Begin Cloning Pets
Purr-fectly engineered
And now, a pair for the "creepy but coming" file...
A little over six months ago (Daily Dose, 5/18/04), I wrote
about how cloning has gone mainstream — starting with
pets, specifically cats. To recap that earlier piece, there's a
firm in California (figures, doesn't it?) called Genetic
Savings and Clone that'll provide wealthy pet owners with
genetic duplicates of their deceased felines for around
$50,000.
But for a fraction of that figure, you may soon be able to get
a guaranteed-healthy, genetically engineered cat that's
almost completely hypoallergenic, to boot!
A Los Angeles company called Allerca (what is it with
California and the bio-tech cats?) has announced the
development of a new breed of cat based on a British short-
haired variety that'll be almost entirely free of the allergy-
causing proteins that trigger sneezing and wheezing in
millions of people across the country. Hoping to offer the
first of these in the marketplace by 2007, the firm estimates
domestic sales of 200,000 of these purr-fectly bred felines
per year.
And at $3500 apiece, they'll rake in a tidy gross of $7 million
a year from domestic sales alone if they hit this mark. Not a
bad chunk of change, huh? If this sounds like an overly
optimistic figure, consider this: Roughly 10% of the
country's populace (or around 27 million Americans) are to
one degree or another allergic to cats. In some extreme cases,
cat allergies can trigger asthmatic attacks, respiratory failure
— even death. The treatment of cat allergies is currently a
multi-billion dollar industry.
But my question is this: Why stop with allergy control? Why
not breed cats that don't shed — or that can't breed — or that
always stay kittens? Better yet, why stop with genetically
engineered cats? Why not design dogs that can't bark over 75
decibels or that won't chase cars or that instinctually use the
toilet instead of the lawn? Think these things aren't coming?
Think again...
We've already got genetically designed glow-in-the-dark pet
fish and the aforementioned cloned cats. And scientists have
long been tinkering with wild creatures to try to make them
more hardy or less able to harm us — like mosquitoes that
can't carry diseases (Daily Dose, 1/23/04).
Beyond this, it may not be much longer before our pets are
more than genetically engineered — they're just plain
engineered. Keep reading...
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Robo-cat to the rescue
Robotic pets have long been a staple of science-fiction
movies and novels — but it seems the fabricated feline is no
longer a figment of fiction.
According to a recent ABC News report, several robotic cats
have been in use since 2001 to help health professionals to
treat Alzheimer's patients and others with sensory diseases or
degenerative mental conditions. Apparently, interaction with
this Robo-cat have proven quite beneficial to certain types of
patients — especially those who can't care for a real pet.
Manufactured in Japan, the high-tech tabby can stretch, purr,
meow, twitch its tail, detect movement, respond to stroking
or petting, and even recognize its name. The article didn't
specify whether the fake feline could perform typical cat
antics like killing mice, coughing up synthetic hairballs, or
sleeping 16 hours a day.
Use of the copy-cat as a therapeutic tool has been pioneered
by a husband-and-wife team of Georgetown University
scientists as part of a broader field they've pioneered called
robotic psychology (nope, I'm not even making this up).
Kind of creepy-sounding, if you ask me...
But hey, I'm still stuck in the dark ages when pets were bred
naturally.
This cool cat never copies the crowd,
William Campbell Douglass II, MD
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