South Korea Scientists Clone Cancer-Sniffing Dog, Cloning Problems Exist

LifeNews.com Editor ^ | June 16, 2008 | by Steven Ertelt

[Lokibob]

 

Seoul, South Korea (LifeNews.com) -- Scientists in South Korea say they cloned a dog that is capable of sniffing out cancers in human patients. However the animal cloning process is still plagued with problems that would make human cloning lead to the destruction of hundreds of unborn children.

 

The firm RNL Bio said in a statement that it used tissue from a retriever from Japan to clone four dogs. They used the fetus of a six-and-a-half-year-old canine to make the clones.

 

The Japanese stem cell company Seems, asked the team from Seoul National University, led by professor Lee Byeong-Chun, to clone the dogs.

 

The cloned dogs will soon head to Japan to learn the same skills as their mother, who was unable to have children. Each cloned dog will be priced at 500 million won ($480,000) and a couple of them will be sold to other clients.

 

In December 2006, Lee said he had cloned the world's first cloned female dog, another Afghan hound he named Bona.

 

Before that, lee worked with disgraced embryonic stem cell research scientist Hwang Woo-suk, who came under fire for faking his stem cell studies and results, to create Snuppy, the first cloned dog.

 

To create Snuppy, Hwang's team killed a total of 1,095 reconstructed dog embryos and transferred them into 123 surrogates, yielding only Snuppy and another dog that died 22 days after birth.

 

With the female, Lee's team killed 167 dog embryos and transferred them into 12 surrogate mothers to produce the three cloned dogs.

 

Pro-life advocates say the destruction of hundreds of dog embryos points to the killing of human beings that would take place if scientists try to clone human beings. Human cloning could easily lead to the destruction of hundreds of human embryos -- unique human beings.

 

 

 

 

[Lokibob]

Please read the last paragraph.

Not to make light of this story, I can not resist:

If they clone Labradors Retrievers to sniff for medical problems, LAB tests will take on a new meaning. I suppose Cats will do cat scans, too.

[stravinskyrules]

However the animal cloning process is still plagued with problems that would make human cloning lead to the destruction of hundreds of unborn children.

Talk about poorly written sentence in order to advance an agenda.

It's a life site so I understand where the writer wants to steer the article, but this is embarrassing.

[Gondring]

It's a life site so I understand where the writer wants to steer the article, but this is embarrassing.

Quite so.

[skr]

From what I’ve read so far about disease-sniffing dogs, this man’s research basically killed 167 disease sniffers in order to produce 3 disease sniffers. If most dogs can be trained to detect anomalies in urine, etc., then cloning is not only unnecessary but also a terrible waste.

[max americana]

It is a waste but NOT in the context of killing 50 rabbits just to find the cure for cancer. Instead of 3 cancer sniffing dogs, why not create a mechanical device that does that?

This cloning stuff is getting out of hand.

[skr]

It is an in-context waste in that he killed scores of pssible cancer-sniffers in order to create far fewer possible cancer-sniffers. My skeptical mind tells me that this scientist is more interested in making it appear as though only cloned dogs will do the job—patented cloned dogs, that is.

If a machine would do the job more efficiently and with more accuracy, that would be fine with me. Until then, most dogs love to sniff and love to work and they’re not as cold as machines. And they probably wouldn’t even have to be imported.

[max americana]

“My skeptical mind tells me that this scientist is more interested in making it appear as though only cloned dogs will do the job—patented cloned dogs, that is.”
****

You’re correct on that assumption. Let’s just keep nature simple: dogs should stick to sniffing bombs to keep us safe and sniffing other dog’s asses.