A few days ago Javier Miley He was a virtually unknown character outside Argentina. However, after winning the primaries and becoming a candidate for the presidency of his country, everyone started talking about him. International media define him as a politician extreme rightwhile he calls himself anarcho-capitalist. But leaving his ideology aside, it’s clear that he’s a rather idiosyncratic character. As much as making sure that you communicated in a session of spiritualism with your dead dogConan, of which he also bought various clones. And the fact is that while it may seem like a scene from a sci-fi movie, dog cloning is an increasingly common reality among the rich and famous.
Less than 30 years since cloning chrysalis sheep. A historic milestone that was greeted with great joy but with caution after the animal died well before its fair share of life expectancy for its species. Since then, many other animals have been tested, including dogs.
In fact, dog cloning has become a very lucrative business for some companies that charge around $50,000 because of work. Apparently, Javier Miley ordered several clones of his mastiff and four were born, so a huge amount of money must have been spent. It may seem better or worse to us, but without focusing on it, how is this possible today? And, just as importantly, what does this mean in terms of bioethics?
mourn the death of a dog
Dog cloning is a business born out of the sadness of many people who lose their furry friends too soon. The life expectancy of dogs varies from one breed to another, but in general it usually does not exceed 15-17 years old. Some specimens have broken this record, but these are just a few exceptions.
For this reason, when they die, they leave us with a huge void, and we feel that it happened too soon. It was this desperation that led scientists from South Korea work on cloning dogs.
Responsible for this work was hwang woo-seok, a geneticist at the University of Seoul who has been denounced by colleagues for intentionally lying in his research. He announced an important discovery in the field mother cells. However, when other scientists wanted to reproduce their results, they found that I faked them.
For this reason, when in 2005 his group released photographs Snoopy, the putative first cloned dog, was treated with great caution. It was an Afghan Hound puppy, born with a brother who soon died of pneumonia.
Snappy appeared to be in good health and could open the door to dog cloning. At least that’s what Hwang’s team announced. For this reason, the animal was placed under a magnifying glass and carefully examined during its 10 years of life.
At this age he died the same cancer that cost Tai his life, the dog Hwang claimed he was cloned from. And the truth is that in this case, the Korean scientist seemed to be telling the truth. A study published in 2017 by an independent group of scientists analyzed the case of Snuppy and dog cloning in general and concluded that it is indeed possible. Thus, although the first laboratories were installed in South Korea, the business soon expanded to other countries. For example, there are those in the USA where Mastiff by Javier Milea.
How is dog cloning done?
Dogs are cloned just like other animals. The first step is to accept unfertilized egg any female. The nucleus is removed from it, thereby destroying its genetic material. Subsequently, they accept somatic cells (anything that is neither eggs nor sperm) of the animal to be cloned and the nucleus is removed to replace what was removed from the egg.
In normal fertilization, we have an egg and a sperm that combine to form a zygote. It will later split to give rise to an embryo. Since in this case a somatic cell is taken, it already has information about the egg and sperm. Those of the dog’s parents who will be cloned. Therefore, this egg will not need to fuse with any sperm and will begin to divide directly, i.e. generate an embryo.
Once the embryo reaches the stage known as the blastocyst, it is transferred to the uterus of another female with whom it has previously been in contact. vasectomy men. Thus, implantation is preferred, but not always possible, and if it does, not all pregnancies reach term. Therefore, it is necessary to have a large number of dogs dedicated to this single purpose. For many, dog cloning is a business that violates bioethics, since the use of these animals as reproductive machines for purposes that, no matter how painful for the buyer, is still a whim.
Javier Miley is not the only one
Many people are already resorting to dog cloning to restore their pets. For example, case Barbara Streisandwho admitted in 2018 that two of her three puppies, Miss Violet and Miss Scarletwere clones of his dog Samantha, who had died the previous month.
An influencer and photographer have also joined the business. Courtney Udvar-Hazy, who spent some of her time online posting pictures of her dog Willow; but after losing it in a traffic accident, he replaced it with five identical clones.
These animals are genetically identical, it’s true. But keep in mind that the dog so loved by his human friends will never return. This is so because it was a mixture of genetics and environmental influences. No matter how much you grow up in the same house and with the same people, the atmosphere will never be the samestarting with the fact that the intrauterine environment, which also forms a living being, is completely different.
Barbara Streisand herself admitted that the character of her two puppies is very different from the character of Samantha. We don’t know if the same will happen to the dogs of Javier Mailey or Courtney Udvar-Hazy. But is it worth spending $50,000 and exploit dozens of dogs to try and bring back to life a pet that, unfortunately, we can no longer cure? Everyone will have their own answer. However, it is clear that we must enjoy our furry friends and give them the best life we can offer them. It won’t make your departure any less painful; but at least we will be sure that we did something much better for them than we tried to revive them later.
Source: Hiper Textual
