My information comes from a new book on that subject entitled Frankenstein’s Cat: Biotech’s Brave New Beasts, by Emily Anthes.  There is so much going on in this field that I hardly to know where to start discussing it. 

Some of you may have seen a ten-year-old science fiction movie starring Arnold Schwartzenegger called “The Sixth Day.”  When his character faces the death of the family dog Oliver, he simply heads to a store named RePet, where a salesman promises to make the dog’s genetic duplicate:  “Your RePet Oliver will be exactly the same dog and even know the tricks you taught him and where his bones are buried.  He won’t even know he’s a clone.”

The movie came out in 2000, and a year later the world’s first cloned housecat was born.  Copying a dog was harder, but in 2005 an Afghan hound named Snuppy was born in South Korea.  Some of you are probably thinking, “What about Dolly, the sheep that was cloned in Scotland in 1996?”  Well, she lived only six years and the researchers who pulled off that feat withdrew from the competition.

Texas A&M created a Reproductive Sciences Laboratory and set aside 700 acres for research on the latest techniques for improving the breeding of cows, horses, sheep and goats.  They soon carbon copied a white-tailed deer, an Angus bull, a stallion, and several litters of pigs, proving that valuable livestock could be cloned.

Back to pets, they also got involved in the “Missyplicity” project, funded by a billionaire who wanted to clone his border collie named Missy.  The public reaction to this project showed there was a considerable market for copied pets.  The Aggies decided to try replicating cats as well as dogs, and felines proved easier to copy.  A kitten named CC (for carbon copy—not copy cat) was born at College Station on Dec. 22, 2001.  A Missy clone did not result until 2008 (and expenditures in the millions).

Since then the notable advances have resulted from changing bits of genetic information, not copying whole animals.  Some of you may own Glofish that contain a bit of DNA from sea anemones, making them fluorescent under blue light.  Maybe you’ve read about goats producing milk which has in it medicine for ailments ranging from hemophilia to cancer. It’s an example of “pharming,” modifying the genetics of animals in small ways that have the potential to cure human ills.

However, there are ethical issues as well as technical problems to be overcome before the widespread application of genetic engineering to pharming can really take off.  But there’s no question we are going there.  That horse is out of the barn.

Jerry Lincecum is a retired English professor who now teaches classes for older adults who want to write their life stories.  He welcomes your reminiscences on any subject: jlincecum@me.com