Six Reasons We’re No Longer Cloning Dogs
by Lou Hawthorne, CEO
BioArts International
September 10th, 2009
It is with frustration and disappointment that we announce that we will no longer be offering dog cloning services, effective immediately.
I personally began investigating dog cloning in 1997, initially with the goal of cloning our family dog, Missy, who died in 2002 at the age of 15. Missy was the subject of the widely-publicized Missyplicity Project, originally based at Texas A&M University, later taken over by our predecessor, Genetic Savings & Clone (GSC), and finally by BioArts International. We ultimately succeeded in cloning Missy – with the help of our cloning vendor, the Sooam Biotech Research Foundation of Seoul, South Korea – with the birth of Mira in December, 2007, and her three sisters MissyToo, Mani and Kahless in the Spring of 2008.
Our initial experiences with dog cloning were quite positive (partly luck in retrospect). The technology seemed to work well enough at first that we decided to offer the service commercially through BioArts, with a trial auction of five dog cloning slots in the Summer of 2008 – the world’s first commercial dog cloning service.
On September 5th of this year, we delivered the fifth and final set of clones to our commercial auction winners. While some of our clients have chosen to remain anonymous, all of them – like the recipients of the Missy clones – are very happy with the clones they have received. Mira, my clone of Missy, is my constant companion and a major source of pleasure in my life.
A lot has changed over the last year however, and we’ve now decided that it no longer makes sense for us to be in this market, for the following six reasons:
1) Tiny Market –
Cloning is controversial, which makes it an attractive media subject, and its resulting high profile leads some to conclude there is an equally significant commercial opportunity. However, after studying this market for more than a decade – and offering both cat and dog cloning services – we now believe the market is actually extremely small.
In order to collect more data on demand for dog cloning – and to promote our initial auction of cloning services – on May 30th, 2008 we announced the “Golden Clone Giveaway” – a contest with a grand prize of a free clone of the winner’s dog. The media and blogosphere covered this announcement very thoroughly; we expected tens if not hundreds of thousands of contest submissions. We were astonished when just 237 people signed up for the giveaway.
For what it’s worth, even if we had received a million submissions, I strongly suspect that the ultimate winner would still have been James Symington and his dog Trakr, who located the last human survivor at Ground Zero following the 9/11 attacks; they clearly deserve all of the attention and acclaim they have received. Regardless, the paucity of submissions to our giveaway confirmed our belief that the market for dog cloning is a highly specialized niche.
Of course, even a niche market can be worth pursuing if the product or service is correctly priced, and the premium price we set could have enabled a profitable cloning business in the absence of extreme lowball pricing from black market cloning competition from South Korea, as described in the next section.
Conclusion: Given how few people want to clone a dog when priced at zero, the market for dog cloning is at best a specialized niche. In a niche market, if one cannot capture a reasonably high price for each order, that market is not worth pursuing.
2) Unethical, Black Market Competition –
Our plans to provide dog cloning services to a small but high-end niche market were interrupted in February, 2008 when a South Korean biotech company named RNL Bio announced plans to clone a dog named “Booger” for $150,000 (actual price paid seems to have been far less, if anything), implying their intent to engage in the black market cloning of dogs. We view RNL as a black market cloning company because we possess a license to clone dogs from the owners of the “Dolly” patents, whereas RNL does not.
Competition – even black market competition – is not necessarily a bad thing for consumers, though RNL’s marketing was especially confusing. Every time RNL offered dog cloning services for $150,000, they also announced that the price would fall to $30,000 or so in the near future. Who in their right mind markets a luxury service by announcing that the price will soon fall by 80%? Imagine if Ferrari used the same strategy: “Our new sports car lists for $200,000, but will soon be available for $40,000.” Obviously customers would all wait for the cheaper product and the company would soon run out of cash.
RNL may actually believe that commodifying dog cloning at very low price points is the right way to maximize revenue, given the successful application of this strategy in other industries like consumer electronics. However, if the dog cloning market is as small as the data suggest then it makes much more sense to keep the price high. With flat screen TVs, it’s logical to drive the price as low as possible because just about everyone will purchase one at the right price, but what would the right price be for a flat-screen TV if only a few hundred people worldwide wanted one, as may be the case with cloned dogs? To put it another way, why sell 10-20 clones at $30,000 when you can make far more profit by selling a single clone at $150,000, especially considering that bioethical problems mount in proportion to the quantity of clones you produce, as discussed later?
In response to RNL’s impossibly low price projections, our prospective customers all began to inquire as to when we planned to drop our prices, and most of these prospects chose to defer cloning their dogs, in hopes of an all-out price war. Of course, there is no technical way that RNL can deliver clones for $30,000 unless they completely abandon all bioethical safeguards for surrogate mothers who carry the clones to term – and even then it’s unclear how they could make a profit.
It’s possible that RNL’s grand strategy is to take over the dog cloning market by first eliminating all profit, rather like the Air Force Major in Vietnam who deemed it necessary to destroy a certain village “in order to save it”. This is not as crazy as it sounds; from deep in the Korean psyche comes the phrase, Nuh Jook Go Nah Jook Jah, loosely translated as, "If I die, I am taking you with me." All Koreans know this phrase, which arguably lies at the heart of the 56-year stand-off between North and South Korea.
Conclusion: Jeong-Chan Ra, President of RNL Bio, either drove us out of the dog cloning market by ignoring international patents and promising price points he knows he can’t fulfill – in which case he’s as devious as he is unethical – or he has singlehandedly destroyed a high-end niche market by grossly overestimating its size and grossly underestimating the optimal price, in which case he has died and taken us with him. Only time will tell!
3) Weak IP –
One of the most frustrating aspects of our experience cloning dogs is that we might have been able to prosper within this market despite its small size and black market competition IF we had had a strong licensing partner, instead of a timid and unsupportive one.
By way of background, the dozens of patents and other intellectual property (IP) derived from the cloning of Dolly the Sheep back in 1996 were eventually acquired by an Austin, Texas company called Start Licensing. When BioArts decided in 2007 to offer dog cloning commercially, we sought to obtain an exclusive license to clone dogs from Start. Given that we have no independent cloning capacity ourselves – GSC closed its U.S. cloning lab in 2006 –controlling the IP for cloning dogs is essential to our business model.
We expected no trouble acquiring a license to clone dogs, given that Start’s entire raison d’etre was to acquire and maintain all cloning IP for the benefit of a small group of companies – including ours. However, after a lengthy and expensive negotiation, it became apparent that Start was unwilling either to commit to defend their cloning patents against infringers or to grant to BioArts the right to do so on their behalf. Start was afraid to defend their patents against challengers in the dog cloning space because if they lost, they might also lose the ability to control markets they actually cared about – mainly agricultural cloning. Start’s strong preference was to do nothing to defend the dog cloning market against patent infringers.
Our response to Start was fairly orthodox: patents are of little value unless and until defended successfully, and Start should welcome the opportunity to prove the value of their patent estate. Privately, we were appalled by what we perceived as the gutlessness of our licensor, a critical partner without whose support our success was essentially impossible.
In February 2008, when RNL Bio announced plans to clone Booger, we begged Start to respond strongly in the dual arenas of law and media. However, Start’s public statements were late, weak and poorly promoted, and their legal response was comparably anemic. This created a strong public perception that RNL was a legitimate competitor of BioArts, which did considerable damage to our brand. It also encouraged RNL to become more brazen in their infringement and more defiant in their public dismissal of both BioArts and Start Licensing.
Conclusion: Although RNL Bio is clearly a black market cloning company without respect for international patent law, Start Licensing is, in our experience, a paper kitten, and without meaningful IP we can’t function in the dog cloning market.
4) Unscalable Bioethics –
If RNL seriously intends to reduce the price of dog cloning to a fraction of current levels as announced, there is no doubt that they will have to compromise one of the most expensive aspects of the process, which is animal welfare. At BioArts, we don’t believe that the Western market – the largest for dog cloning – will (or should) purchase cloning services in the absence of strong welfare protocols, which is why we’ve decided not to compete at such low price points.
To understand the relationship between price point and animal welfare, it helps to begin with a question: Why were South Korean scientists the first to clone dogs? Is it because they are so much more talented than cloning scientists from other countries? If so, then why is it that all of the dozen-plus mammalian species that have been cloned except dog/wolf were first produced outside of South Korea?
The answer is that cloning dogs has far less to do with scientific acumen and far more to do with the availability of dogs as ova donors and embryo recipients (surrogate mothers). At current cloning efficiencies, an average of twelve dogs are needed as donors and recipients to produce a singled cloned puppy. It is only possible to master canine cloning in a country where dogs are very plentiful, as they are in South Korea. But why exactly are dogs so plentiful in Korea?
The majority of South Korean people are either indifferent to dogs or relate to them as pets, just as in the West. However, a small minority in South Korea – as in North Korea, Taiwan, East Timor, China and Japan – also eat dogs occasionally. According to the BBC, 8,500 tons of dog meat is consumed per year in South Korea, with another 93,600 tons used to produce a medicinal tonic called gaesoju. As of 2003, approximately 4,000-6,000 restaurants still served dog meat in Korea. In order to meet this demand, South Korea has an industry that raises a certain breed of dog as food, resulting in large numbers of these dogs also being available for use in cloning.
Obviously the idea of eating dogs is quite shocking to Westerners (just as U.S. consumption of 34 million cows per year is shocking to most East Indians). At BioArts, we felt we could operate within South Korea in an ethically defensible manner by contractually requiring that our Korean cloning vendor safeguard the wellbeing of surrogates used to produce our clones, which is exactly what we did. Our contracts with our cloning vendor guaranteed a certain standard of animal welfare, including that surrogates used to carry embryos for BioArts were never to be returned to the farms that produced them – where their destiny would surely be slaughter, and ultimately meat or tonic.
As long as the price for cloning a dog stays reasonably high, profit margins are sufficient to cover the cost of these ethical safeguards, which require that the surrogates either be adopted or maintained in perpetuity in relative comfort. However, as RNL moves aggressively to commoditize dog cloning at low price points, it cannot possibly maintain even marginally acceptable bioethical standards.
Conclusion: For every dog cloned by RNL in the future, it’s likely that a dozen or more will be slaughtered for food as a direct result.
5) Unpredictable Results –
Bioethical concerns pertain not just to the treatment of surrogates but also to clones that are born with physical anomalies that render them undeliverable. Fortunately, when dog cloning works, it seems to work well. The four clones of my family dog – the first dog clones commercially produced – are all healthy, as are the five sets of clones delivered to the winners of our auction. All of these clones received detailed veterinary examinations before leaving the cloning lab, plus the clients were free to conduct additional examinations using their own veterinarians before formally accepting their clones.
Unfortunately, in addition to producing and delivering numerous perfectly healthy dog clones, we’ve also seen several strange anomalies in cloned offspring. One clone – which was supposed to be black and white – was born greenish-yellow where it should have been white. Others have had skeletal malformations, generally not crippling though sometimes serious and always worrisome. One clone of a male donor was actually born female (we still have no good explanation for how that happened). These problems are all the more worrisome given that cloning is supposedly a mature technology in general – Dolly was born in 1996 after all – and dog cloning in particular is supposedly the most advanced application of cloning.
Equally maddening, our cloning vendor’s kennels have been repeatedly stricken by assorted canine diseases and parasites. Several Missy clones died in an outbreak of Parvo – a highly infectious though also generally preventable disease. In addition, numerous clones were delivered with parasites including Giardia, Cocidia and Demodex – all treatable, but again also preventable. The scientists and technicians at Sooam all seem to be highly competent and conscientious, but that just highlights a larger concern: if our high-tech cloning vendor can’t manage the disease/parasite problem while fulfilling just seven orders in two years (including the Missy and Trakr clones), how can we possibly expect to avoid such problems while scaling up to the hundreds or thousands of orders per year required for profitability at low price points? Again, with higher margins it might be manageable, but those margins won’t exist at RNL’s proposed price points.
In addition to problems with abnormalities and diseases, our cloning vendor has also been unable to predict cloning efficiencies with sufficient precision for commercial operations, again despite what we believe to be their sincere and earnest efforts. On more than one occasion, no clone was born for many months, only to have multiple clones of the same donor born in rapid succession (five in one case). Multiple births of cloned dogs are both common and unwelcome, given that most clients only want one or two clones at most. What are we supposed to do with the rest?
RNL Bio will no doubt argue that there’s something wrong with the methods used by Sooam, our cloning vendor, but the teams at both Sooam and Seoul National University (SNU) – which performs all cloning for RNL, which has no cloning facilities or staff – were trained by the same scientist, Dr. Woo-suk Hwang, and according to recent scientific publications, both teams use almost identical methods and have almost identical efficiencies. Furthermore, many of the same anomalies we’ve observed in cloned offspring – such as the unexplained sex-change – have also been reported by the cloning team at SNU, suggesting that these occasional problems are inherent with the technology, not either team’s specific method.
Despite curtailing our cloning service, we’re continuing to work with Sooam to find homes for all unwanted dogs of whatever type. However, given that there is no tradition or infrastructure for pet adoption in Korea, we’ll probably have to ship unwanted dogs to other countries for adoption – yet another expensive and unscalable solution.
Conclusion: Cloning is still an experimental technology and consumers would be well-advised to proceed cautiously.
6) Distraction Factor –
As mentioned in Point 1, the controversial nature of pet cloning makes it enormously popular with the media. If the market were larger, this media attention would be most welcome, but when it consistently fails to result in sales, it’s just a distraction.
In addition, while some of the smartest people I’ve had the privilege to meet are journalists on the cloning beat, there is also a seemingly endless supply of hacks asking the same inane questions over and over, such as, “How dare you clone pets when so many are homeless?” It takes a huge amount of staff time and energy to answer these questions – which is time/energy that could be going into better things. (For the record, one last time, blaming cloners for pet overpopulation is like blaming Ferrari for the traffic on the nation’s highways.)
Among the many “better things” we plan to focus on now are several powerful new technologies we’ve invented in the decade we spent developing commercial cat and dog cloning services – technologies with far greater value outside the cloning industry than within it. To give just one example, it turns out that the technology used to transport biopsy samples from veterinary lab to gene bank or cloning facility actually makes a huge difference in the cloneability of the resulting cell line – as well as the health of the resulting clones. We produced six clones of one genetic donor using two cell lines – one shipped using an ice chest (sadly, the industry standard) and the other shipped using the “GoldiLox”, an advanced shipper developed by BioArts subsidiary RoBio Systems of London. The patent-pending GoldiLox is so named because it provides very precise over and under-temperature protection for the biological payload, keeping the temperature “just right.”
The four clones we produced from the cell line shipped in the GoldiLox were all completely normal. Both of the other two clones produced from the cell line shipped in the ice chest were abnormal.
The GoldiLox shippers and various other technologies we developed for cloning are going to be particularly useful to the burgeoning regenerative medicine industry – which offers both dramatically greater ROI and humanitarian benefit than does pet cloning. Why waste time applying our new technologies to a small and problematic industry like pet cloning when they’re worth so much more in other fields?
Conclusion: At this point, pet cloning represents more distraction than opportunity for BioArts.
첫댓글 이런 이유도 있다고 하네요.....
개복제와 관련하여 논문등을 낼려고 해서 루호손이 관련 데이터를 보내달라고 하니...
엄한 데이터를 보내서....루호손이 다시 " 장난하지 말고 데이터 보내 " 했더니....
또 엉뚱한 데이터만 보내서리....." 뭐 이런 말귀도 못알아 먹는 연구소가 다 있냐 썅~~~" 그러면서 쪽 냈다는 소문이....^^;
호주특허니 돼지줄기세포니 재검증논문이니... 하나 같이 올바른 데이터를 사용하지 않고 귓구멍 막힌 사람인냥
엉뚱한 데이터가지고 장난이나 치니 맨날 그 모양이네요. ㅠㅠ
도데체 누가 수암을 이런 꼬라지로 만들었는지....
개 복제를 포기한 이유를 한마디로 말하자면 돈이 안된다 이거죠.
개를 복제하기를 원하는 수요도 그리 많지 않고, 여러가지 윤리적 문제 기술적 문제 따위도 결국은 비용 증가로 귀결되고...
그런데 어떻게 복제를 했는데 성(sex)이 바뀔 수가 있는지 모르겠네요.
은해사라는 절에서 수암에서 기증한 복제개를 기르고 있다는 얘기를 들었습니다. 몇몇 지방자치단체에 기증한 복제개들도 있었지요.
선심 쓰면서 기증한 이 개들이 어쩌면 위 글에서 말하는 unwanted dogs일지도 모르겠네요.
한마리 복제해 달라고 했는데 다섯마리를 낳았다.
그러면 그중에 제일 똘똘한 놈 납품하고,
나머지는 잡아 먹을 수도 없고 모란시장에 팔 수도 없고(바이오아츠사에서 그런 것을 원치 않으므로),
수암에서 기르려면 손이 가고,
결국 누구에게 분양을 해 주는 수 밖에 없죠.
미씨프로젝트가 성공했다고 주장할때
수암발 보도자료를 보면 비글 복제, 사자견 마스티프 등을 복제했다고 홍보
사자견 마스티프로 사기를 쳤으면 미씨도 복제했다고 사기칠수있는 인간이다.
진실은 슬프다를 읽고
그 글에 있는 이미지 사진을 보고
그 사진이 무엇을 의미하는가를 생각하다가
이 복제개도 가짜, 저 복제개도 가짜..
그러다 보니 어제 오늘..
미씨도 가짜였을수 있다는 생각에 필이 꽂혀있습니다.
"미국에서 10년동안 실패한 개 복제를 황우석박사팀이 성공"
ㅡ 이것도 구라 같다는 생각이 듬. ㅋ
현재까지 개 복제를 성공한 것은 한국 밖에 없습니다.
서울대 팀과 수암 팀 : 원래는 하나였으나 갈라졌죠.
좋은 기술을 개발했기 때문에 성공할 수 있었을 겁니다. 그러나 난자와 대리모를 어려움 없이 쉽게 구할 수 있는 한국의 환경도 큰 영향을 미쳤다는 것은 분명한 일.
기술은 별 것 아니지만 난자와 대리모가 많아서 성공한 것이다. 이런 식으로 비하할 것 까지는 없겠죠.
음 ㅡ 홍민성님은 제가 온에서 잘(잘이라기 보다는 조금. 브릭에서 어떤 논쟁시에 같은 위치에 있었지요) 아는 분입니다. 이분이 개 복제에 대해서까지 업급했다니 새롭군요.ㅎㅎ
죽순님이 지적한 사항은 향후 개 복제 사업이 활성화되었시에 굉장히 클로즈읍 될 수 있는 매우 중요한 사항이죠. 그에 대한 대책은 수암에서는 없는 것으로 보이고요. ㅎㅎ
만약 년간 10000마리를 복재한다고 쳤을때, 덤으로 더 태어난 놈들은 아마 5만-10만 마리 정도. 이것 매우 골치 아프죠. 요것을 해결하려면 창의력이 필수인데.. 아마도 아무 생각 없는 듯. ㅎㅎ
복제에서 성별이 뒤바뀐 개체, 특이한 유전병을 가진 개체들이 태여나는 건 별 희한한 일이 아니고 여러가지 사례들이 보고되어 있습니다.논문들도 아주 많습니다. 복제과정중 사용되는 케미컬들이 유전적 변이를 일으킨 원인으로 일부 밝혀져 있기도 하고, 아직도 원인불명으로 남아있는 것들도 많습니다. 주로는 sex-determining genes들인 SRY 같은 유전자들에 DNA, 또는 염색체 레벨에서의 변이가 생기기 때문입니다. 이런 유전자들이 위치해 있는 부위가 결손되거나 위치가 뒤바뀜으로 해서 성별이 뒤바뀌게 되지요. 염색체는 남자나 성징은 여자, 머 이런 딱한 아이들이 논문에 많습니다.
이런 경우?
XY----> X(Y는소실)----->XX( 소실된 부위 다시 자가 복제): XY가 XX로 성별이 뒤 바뀐 경우.
또 다른 가능성은
X1X2----->X1(X2는 소실)------> X1X1(자가 복제): DNA는 암컷인데,몸에서는 뭔가 암컷 징후가 부족한 놈
X1은 모계로부터 유래된 X.
X2는 부계로부터 유래된 X
또 다른 예
XY----> YX(뒤 바뀜)----->Y(X는 소실)-----YY(자가 복제): 이상한 놈. ㅋㅋ
춘님 말씀은 염색체 레벨에서는 이상이 없는데 특정 유전자 레벨에서 이상이 있는 넘들 이야기인 듯.
"염색체는 남자나 성징은 여자, 머 이런 딱한 아이들이 논문에 많습니다."
생식기관이...여성생식기로부터 남성생식기로 더 진행된 것으로 알고있습니다...성염색체가 바뀌었다 소멸한 것인가...아니면..복제초기부터 개체수립에 까지의 있을수있는 한 상황인가....후자라면...복제의 위험에서 남성이(수컷) 여성(암컷)으로 출현할수 있는 가능성은 언제라도 배제키어려울거라는 생각입
니다....어떤 레벨에서의 이상이면...이걸 잡아내지 못하면....막말로 남자 김성진을 복제했는데...여자김성진 등장....눈째지고..코찔찔거리는 개체특성과 괴기스런 음모론과 억지캐릭터는 그대로 공유하는...김성녀?
비유가 좀 그런거 같습니다 ㅋ. 김성진이란 사람 나이가 어케 되는지요? 우리 또래입니까? 아님 더 젊은? 애국자님 올리신 사진에서 보이는 젤 젊은 사람? 침묵님의 질문에 대해선 죽순님의 답변이 맞고요. 융님의 질문도 내용이 맞습니다. 시인이 발생학까지 건드리시면 안 되는데요. 제가 본 발생학자(?)들도 님정도로 콕 찝어서 핵심 말 못하던데요. 염색체는 다 정상인데, 성을 결정하고 남성 성기의 발육을 콘트롤하는 유전자들에 변이가 생겨서 나타나는 현상으로 봅니다. Y 염색체위에 있는 남성을 결정하는 유전자부위가 다른 염색체위로 마실가도 이런 현상이 일어납니다.(전문용어로는 Translocation).
꼴에 쪽팔리는 줄은 알아서 모자 하나 얹고 나온 인간이 그 위인입니다...
참, 랄락님과 떡진님이 찾아올리셨던 그 엔도리뷰 논문건 기사, 그게 사실 학회에서 포스터 발표한 내용들이었고 떡진님이 관련페이지 찾았었죠. 거기에도 관련내용이 좀 나옵니다. 양성개 어쩌구 한게,바로 성별이 뒤바뀐 개라는 뜻이지요, 죽순님, 그 페이지 한번 찾아서 읽어보세요.제 이름도 원래 그 초안 작성시에는 그 발표요지에 있었는데 또 나중에 보니 없어졌더라구요. 저자명들이 하도 귀신같이 신출귀몰 조화를 부리는 지라.
와우 다들 박사급 수준이네요
대리모 처리 문제도 있어요.
개 한마리 복제하자면 평균 12마리의 대리모가 필요한데, 복제 끝나고 난 뒤 이 대리모 개들은 어쩔 것이냐?
복제 끝난 후에 모란시장에 판다. 결국 보신탕이나 개소주가 된다. --> 돈 내고 개 복제를 의뢰하는 사람들은 주로 서구 사람들이 될 것인데, 이걸 복제 의뢰한 서구 사람들이 이해를 할 것이냐? 그렇다고 설명해 주지 않고 숨겼다가는 나중에 소송 걸릴 수도 있거든요. 결국 일단 대리모로 들어온 개들은 모란시장에 팔지 않고 끝까지 보호를 해 준다(입양을 주선하는 방법으로)는 것이 바이오아츠사의 방침인데, 그러려면 개 복제할 때 몇천만원 받아가지고는 타산이 안맞는다는 겁니다.
새삼 많이 배우고 있습니다.
기술 외적인 여러 관련 이쓔들,,
기술이니 특허니의 관점에서만 단순하게 볼 수있는 것 만은 아니란 거,,,
이 글은 바이오아츠사에서 개복제 사업을 접겠다고 결심한 후에 나온 글이므로 감안해야 할 면은 있습니다.
이솝우화 여우와 신포도에 나오듯이, 어차피 자기들은 안할 것이니 개복제 사업이란 것이 문제가 많다고 까발리는 것이죠.
경쟁업체인 RNL바이오에 대한 억하심정, 특허분쟁시 좀 더 강하게 나서주지 못한 스타트라이센싱에 대한 섭섭함, 썩 훌륭하다고만 말할 수는 없는 수암이란 파트너
이런 곳들에 대한 감정도 글에 좀 섞여 있습니다. 물론 글 내용 중에 허튼 소리는 한마디도 없다고 봅니다.
수암에 대한 불만은 직접적으로 표현하지는 않았지만 복제 개에 기생충 같은 것이 감염된 채로 고객에게 보낸 것을 보면
미덥지 못하다는 느낌.
2년 동안 7건의 복제를 하는 데에도 이런 사항이 제대로 관리되지 않았으니, 만일 수백 수천건의 복제 의뢰가 온다면 수암의 능력으로 제대로 관리가 되겠느냐는 것.
도요다 자동차 리콜처럼 복제개 리콜 사태가 발생하지 않으리라는 보장이 없죠.
언제부터 언제까지 복제하여 보낸 개들은 무슨 병에 감염된 것들이니 돌려 보내라. 고쳐서 다시 보내주거나 새로 복제해 보내주마. ㅋㅋㅋ
개 복제 사업상의 또 다른 문제점으로는(제 생각),
난자를 체취하려면 개가 발정기에 도달해야 하고, 이에 맞추어 난자 체취후 바로 핵 치환할 수있도록 체세포를 준비(기아 배양으로 G0에 도달하게)하고 있어야 하죠.
그런데, 다른 동물들과 달리, 개의 경우는 거의 1년에 한번(개 종류에 따라서 약간씩 차이가 있으나, 8-10개월(기억에 의한 것이니 정확하지 않을 수 있음)이 주중이고 긴 놈(큰 개 종류인 경우)은 1년 3개월인가(제 기억에 의한 것임. 거의 비슷함)에 한번씩 배란(발정)하는 생리 사이클을 가지고 있지요. 또한 대리모 개도 발정 상태(인위적이 아닌 자연 발정 상태로 하는 것으로 앎)에 있어야 되고,
즉,난자 체취 견도 발정 상태에 있어야 하고, 대리모 견도 발정 상태에, 또한 난자 체취 견 및 대리모 견이 한 마리씩만 필요한 것도 아니죠,
만약에 하루에 1건의 오더 소화씩으로 상업적으로 대량의 개 복제를 실시하려면, 발정 주기가 너무 긴 이유로 수 많은 개들(대충 적으로 아마 5천=1만 마리 이상일 것으로 추정됨)을 평소 항상사육하고 있어야만 매일 매일 발정하는 개가10여 마리가 항상 발견할 수 있게 된다는 계산이 나옵디다.(물론 성공율에 따라, 차이는 나게 됨)
그리고 매일 1건의 오더를 소화하려면, 위에서 언급된 잔류 견은 년간 천 여 마리(한 건당 5마리 잔류견이 나오는 경우엔 5x365일=약 1800 마리의 잔류견 발생
착상 및 임신 성공율을 고려하여 보통 대리모 견을 10마리로 잡고, 한 대리모 견 당 핵 이식란을 30개씩(착상률을 고려하여 다태 임신수보다 월씬 더 투입함) 넣는다 치고, 난자 체취 시에 한 마리당 15개의 난자를 체취할 수 있다고 치고, 세포 융합 성공율을 70%로 잡고.-----> 하여튼 이런식으로 조건을 잡고서 매일 한 주문씩 소화시키려면 매일 몇 마리의 발정개가 필요하며, 발정 주기를 1년으로 잡을 시에 매일 필요한 수 만큼의 발정개가 항상 있으려면 평상시에 몇 마리를 사육하고 있어야만 되는지?
죽순님 계산 한번 해 보소.(수학 잘 하실 것 같으니..ㅎㅎ)
개한마리 복제하는데 도데체 얼마만한 대리견이 필요한지 복잡하군요 ㅎㅎ
이러니 개복제는 상업적으로 가치가 없다고 바이오아츠 사가 포기를 했지
홍민성 : "복제를 했는데 개의 반점 색깔이 달라지고 골격에 이상을 보인 경우도 있으며,
병으로 죽기도 했는데, 심지어는 체세포 제공견 성별과는 달리 암수도 뒤바뀐 적이 있고
바이오아츠사에서 이제는 개 복제를 접었지만 그동안 수암과 함께 복제하면서 원치 않았던 녀석들도 태어났거든요"
죽순 :"복제를 주문한 사람은 한마리나 두마리만 복제하기를 원했는데
한꺼번에 다섯마리가 태어나게 된 경우에는 원치 않는 녀석이 서너마리가 되죠
제대로 복제되지 않아 기형으로 태어난 놈도 주문한 사람에게 줄 수는 없겠죠.
이런 넘들이 한국 내에서 입양이 되지 않으면 외국으로라도 입양하게 될 것이라는 것. 이게 다 돈 드는 일