Word: pets
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...Though South Korea's labs are the only ones in the world commercially cloning pets today, they may discover their fledgling business is not exactly a growth industry. There are ethical concerns over commercial pet cloning, and at a roughly $150,000 per pooch, the service is currently too expensive for most dog lovers to contemplate. Prices could fall to closer to $50,000 as more cost-effective techniques are developed, but for now, cloning "service" dogs - like "sniffer" dogs used to detect cancer and narcotics - seems to be a more viable venture. Nearly a third of the 35 dogs...
...That pack is part of a fledging industry that South Korea is leading: the cloning - and sale - of pet dogs. Since Dolly the sheep was cloned in 1996 by Ian Wilmut at the Roslin Institute in Scotland, scientists around the world have cloned everything from cats, monkeys and fruit flies to horses, rabbits, cows and wolves - mostly for non-commercial uses. Dogs are notoriously complex to clone, and Korea is the only country where researchers have successfully done the deed. (See pictures of presidential First Dogs...
...supplying bereaved pet owners with a copies of their deceased pets and police with new K9 units is not the only goal for many of these Korean scientists. Since canines share more disease patterns with humans than any other animal species apart from mice, animal reproduction experts like Lee and Kim Min Kyu at Chungnam National University see dogs as a great medical resource. "Dogs have similiar physiology and can communicate with humans,' explains Lee. He is currently working on producing a "transgenic" dog - or a dog whose DNA is manipulated to either delete or introduce new genes - to enable...
...this battle in Korea' clone wars plays out remains to be seen. But one thing is sure - the SPCAs of the world can rest easy for now. It will be a long time before cloning the family pet is more popular than buying...
...Some, however, aren't so pleased with the deference the Obama team showed. Apparently responding to public disaffection, a small but growing number of moderate Republican and Democratic Senators are opposing the bill, which they claim has become loaded down with pet projects and spending that have little to do with spurring immediate job creation and economic growth. "Unfortunately, the House-passed bill is much more like an omnibus bill than a stimulus bill," Maine Republican Senator Susan Collins told reporters on Wednesday after meeting with the President. She asked him to force Democrats to remove things from the stimulus...