<a
href=‘http://www.kfoxtv.com/technology/4424856/detail.html’ target=’_blank’>Texas Clones
Their First Horse
(There are also 2 clones in Italy.)
I’m interested in seeing how
long these clones live…didn’t Dolly the Sheep die when she was about 3? Translating that
into horse years, these clones would likely only live until 8 or 10, I would guess.
Yeah I read that they die so
early because some gene (I forget what it was called) ages and when they make a clone that
clone is born with that gene already being aged…in fact after the birth of the clone it
seems to accelerate in them.
It’ll be interesting to see how all the horse registries
around the world handle the ability to make clones if this is really successful and the foal
lives a normal lifespan. I doubt they really want ppl cloning champions (once in a lifetime
type horses) and than reaping all the benefits over and over. Although they did say that that
cloned foal might not be able to do the same things that the champion original could…but
it would pass on the same genes that the original horse could. But for the thoroughbred
industry I think they’d be happy enough with the breeding aspect of it. Imgaine having
several Storm Cat’s around the world? Or Danzig’s etc. Not sure if that would be a good
thing. I doubt the Jockey Club would allow clones to be registered tho.
It sounds like the main
thing people want cloning for is to be able to breed from geldings. So you’d be able to
breed to Funny Cide’s clone, since you can’t breed to him.
I highly doubt the JC would
ever go for it, though, since they won’t even go for AI.
Man if i could clone my
holsteiner/TB mare I had that died when she was only 4 that would be awesome. Prolly outta
my price range though…lol. Only had her for a month before she died of a ruptured stomach.
Long story…
I personally am hoping to
see /every/ breed society refuse to register clones, period.
One, at the moment, clone
degredation is a real problem. I don’t consider it good from a welfare viewpoint to bring
animals that are going to die early into the world.
Two, many breeds /already/ have a
problem with inbreeding and too much linebreeding. Cloning three or four top studs, plus the
use of AI…is going to make these problems worse.
Thankfully, cloning TBs is already
‘illegal’ under the ‘no artificial reproduction’ rules that every major jockey club has.
I agree that producing
animals that you know will die before age 10 is unethical.
However, I wouldn’t mind the
idea of using genetic material to artificially produce babies. For instance, I take skin
cells from Java (obiously before she died 
), somehow combine that with sperm/skin cells
from a stud, and implant the embryo into a host mare and get a baby. Who knows if that’ll
ever be possible, but that would rock. 
(Assuming, of course, that the baby were fully
normal and didn’t have the short lifespan problem)
I dunno that you could breed
like that without going through the effort/time/expense of making a full Java clone… I
suppose it’s theoretically possible but I"m not sure if we can make normal cells develop
into egg/sperm cells at the moment.
But yeah, it has some nice possibilities to it, but I
agree I don’t see it being very useful/happy for breeding purposes in general. I know most
of what I’ve heard is people wanting to clone like beef cattle or whatever. Again, probably
not the best idea .
Though how is the JC going to know you haven’t substituted a clone
for a registered horse? Blood typing won’t work and it’s obviously possible to fake
tatoos. I don’t know if clone markings would always match up 100% but it’d be
tough…
Ahh, the joys of dealing with technology
Well, yeah, I know it’s not
possible now, but that’s the only extension of it that would be cool (since cloning, even if
you can get rid of the early lifespan, is icky…cool in theory, strange in reality).