Frankenstein's Cat: Cuddling Up to Biotech's Brave New Beasts (10 page)

One of these companies, PerPETuate, was founded all the way back in 1998, and it’s still going strong. The company’s website makes the hard sell, assuring prospective customers that it provides the opportunity to “produce extraordinary, matchless, one of a kind, physically superior, brilliant, and innately talented replacements for lost pets.” I called up the co-founder and president, Ron Gillespie, to find out how it all works. Gillespie guided me through the process. If I wanted to store my Cavapoo Milo’s cells, he told me, the company would send me a tissue collection kit. With the help of my vet, I’d take “two small punches” of skin from the scruff of Milo’s neck and mail the samples back to PerPETuate. In the company’s lab, technicians would isolate the skin cells, let them reproduce like crazy, and then tuck them away in a tank of liquid nitrogen. Milo’s cells would hibernate in this stainless steel “Bio-Kennel,” sitting in a deep freeze alongside DNA from other pet dogs, cats, birds, and lizards.

PerPETuate plans to offer its clients the opportunity to transform these cellsicles into clones of their furry friends when the technology becomes more reliable and less expensive. In the meantime, several of its customers have had their dogs’ cells sent to South Korea, the de facto capital of canine cloning. Sooam, BioArts’s former partner, continues to crank out dog doubles, as does RNL Bio, another South Korean cloning company.
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But few people can afford to shell out six figures for a Korean clone, and Gillespie says the price will have to drop considerably (to $10,000 or less) before he adds cloning to PerPETuate’s list of services.

Still, animal lovers keep sending in DNA samples, eagerly awaiting the day when they’ll be able to order a clone. When we spoke, in fact, Gillespie had just gotten a call from a woman in Florida who had a rat—he emphasized this word when he told me the story: “a
rat
,” he said—that she wanted to preserve. Sadly, the rodent, dead by the time its owner had called PerPETuate, no longer had viable cells. The owner insisted the tissue be stored anyway, Gillespie said, “because it gives her hope.” As PerPETuate’s website reassures potential customers: “There is almost no fee that would be too much to ensure the possibility of replacing your beloved pet with a twin sometime in the future.” After all, you can’t put a price on love. (But if you had to, it would be somewhere in the neighborhood of $1,300, plus a yearly storage fee. All major credit cards accepted.)

Despite the visions of mini-Milos scampering around in my head, I don’t think I’ll be sending my dog’s cells to PerPETuate anytime soon. Cloning simply wouldn’t give me another dog exactly like Milo, and even if it could, I wouldn’t want one. When Milo’s gone, I’ll want to start over with an unrelated dog, free of expectations and unencumbered by constant comparisons between the old dog and the new.

But if we understand cloning’s limitations—and researchers figure out how to create healthy, thriving clones with less collateral damage—I don’t begrudge pet owners the right to make their own choices. We all have different values when it comes to caring for animals, and our bonds with our pets are full of emotion. Must grieving dog owners have a logical reason for wanting Fido’s DNA to live on? Making pets in a lab is not strictly “necessary,” but when our shelters are jammed full of unwanted canines, most dog breeding is unnecessary, too. Is one method of creating new animals really more abhorrent than the other?

I hope cloning outcomes improve, because we have more to gain from the technology than a few doubles of dead pets. Westhusin, for instance, cloned a bull that had natural resistance to brucellosis, a common cattle disease. Lurking somewhere out there in the wider world may be cows that are resistant to mad cow disease or chickens that are immune to avian influenza. Cloning these genetic freaks could lead to populations of farm animals that are healthier themselves—and safer for us. We might be able to use the same approach to create healthier pets. Imagine starting a new breeding population of Labrador retrievers with clones of dogs that are free of the hip problems that often plague these canines.

Then there are the wildlife biologists who have been racking their brains for ways to boost the populations of endangered species. Zoos have been running breeding programs for decades, but captivity makes it difficult for many animals to get in the mood. The work is arduous and the results inconsistent. So wildlife breeding specialists have taken note of the reproductive technology that’s revolutionizing livestock breeding. They have paid close attention as scientists learned to make DNA doubles of sheep, cows, cats, and dogs. And they have decided to borrow the technique to help threatened critters make a comeback.

4. Nine Lives

It’s tough to be a wild animal on Earth today. The world is teeming with 7 billion humans, and our wants and needs—for housing developments, cheap food, and the latest and greatest electronic gadgets—are destroying what’s left of the wilderness. Almost a quarter of the mammalian species roaming the planet are at risk of extinction; the same goes for almost one in three amphibian species and one in eight species of birds. There have been five mass extinctions in history—the most recent is the one that wiped out the dinosaurs—and many scientists believe we’re at the beginning of a sixth. Conservationists have been doing what they can to preserve habitat, but it’s like trying to bail out a boat that’s constantly sprouting new holes; demographers estimate that, by 2050, there will be more than 9 billion people on Earth.

So it’s not surprising that scientists have started searching for alternatives, looking to biotechnology for potential solutions to the extinction crisis. A few iconoclastic researchers think they’ve found one in cloning. On the surface, the idea is simple:
Animal numbers dwindling? Let’s just use science to make copies of the ones that remain!
But it will not be nearly as easy as it sounds. That much has been apparent since the birth of the very first endangered-species clone: a little gaur named Noah, an exact copy of a rare wild ox native to India and Southeast Asia. His birth, in January 2001, was a headline-grabbing feat, proving that it was at least technically possible to mimeograph endangered animals. It was also a bittersweet accomplishment. Thirty-six hours after he was born, Noah began showing signs of a gastrointestinal infection. Twelve hours later, he was dead. The researchers at Advanced Cell Technology, the Massachusetts company that brought Noah into being, said cloning had nothing to do with the calf’s tragic fate, but it’s impossible to say for sure, given the health problems that have been documented in other clones. Noah’s death suggested that wildlife replication would not be immune to the challenges and complications that have plagued those cloning pets and livestock. But when it comes to endangered species, there’s a pretty compelling rationale for forging ahead. Cloning these rare animals is about more than money or companionship—it’s about survival.

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With these high stakes in mind, I decide to take a trip to New Orleans, where a small group of researchers have positioned themselves at the forefront of endangered-species cloning. Their remarkable facility is hidden inside 1,200 acres of hardwood forest along the banks of the Mississippi River. At first glance, these woods look like any other slice of nature. But peek inside these thickets and you’ll find some surprising secrets: Some of the world’s most exotic animals—creatures that usually make their homes on the African savanna or in the mountains of Central Asia—are here, living quietly in this small patch of wilderness. Amble among these trees and you could find yourself face-to-face with a flock of preening snow-white ibises or a small spotted wildcat, pacing back and forth.

These are the grounds of the Freeport-McMoRan Audubon Species Survival Center. The entire compound sits at the end of a country lane, behind a locked gate. A guard checks my credentials, then allows me in. I drive slowly along a narrow gravel road that winds into the forest. Branches swoop over me, creating a lush canopy, and it’s impossible to see more than a foot or so past the trees that line the road. I half expect a leopard to leap out in front of my car at any moment.
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Suddenly, the forest opens up into a clearing, where a brick sign welcomes me to the sprawling Audubon Center for Research of Endangered Species (ACRES), the Survival Center’s 36,000-square-foot complex of genetic and veterinary laboratories. Each of the rooms inside is devoted to one small task in the much larger effort to save wild animals. Signs posted on the doors along one corridor announce, in succession:
GAMETE/EMBRYO LABORATORY, MOLECULAR GENETICS LABORATORY, RADIO ISOTOPE LABORATORY, CRYOBIOLOGY ROOM
. For a state-of-the-art research facility, it feels awfully homey, with its dark wood paneling and bucolic views. I have just settled down into a plush armchair when Betsy Dresser, the reproductive physiologist who directs ACRES, emerges from her office. Wearing a gray blazer the same color as her closely cropped hair, she offers a warm handshake and a smile.

Dresser has spent her life in the company of other species. As a child, she constantly begged her family to take her to the nearby Cincinnati Zoo, and as soon as she was old enough, she began working there, moving up through the ranks from teen guide to zookeeper to junior zoologist. When Dresser went to college in the 1970s, she discovered the field of reproductive biology. She read the latest work coming out of Duane Kraemer’s lab at Texas A&M, in fact, and watched as scientists learned to manage herds of cattle through careful breeding, artificial insemination, and other reproductive technologies. But while scientists were futzing about with farm animals, populations of the world’s wild creatures were beginning to plummet. As Dresser recalls, “I saw the science and technology coming forward for our domestic animals, and I kept thinking, ‘Why can’t we do this with wildlife? Why can’t we apply some of this to at least try to save some species?’”

After earning a PhD in animal reproductive physiology, Dresser established the Center for Conservation and Research of Endangered Wildlife (CREW) at the Cincinnati Zoo in 1981. At CREW, Dresser and her colleagues made a number of breakthroughs, including producing a Persian leopard cub through artificial insemination and creating the world’s first test-tube gorilla. Impressed by the research at CREW, the Audubon Nature Institute, which ran a zoo in New Orleans, asked for Dresser’s help in creating a similar program. In 1996, Dresser found herself leading the brand-new Audubon Center for Research of Endangered Species (ACRES). “We exist because we want to see wildlife in the future,” Dresser says of ACRES. “I can’t imagine just seeing elephants and lions and tigers just in textbooks, like we see dinosaurs today.”

To make sure that these species stick around, Dresser, who directed ACRES for fifteen years and continues to consult with its scientific team, is willing to use whatever reproductive technologies are at her disposal. At first, the ACRES crew relied on the same techniques Dresser had honed in Cincinnati—embryo transfer, in vitro fertilization, and the like—and the walls of the research facility are hung with photos of tiny kittens and newborn whooping cranes that the scientists brought into being. Dresser acts every bit the proud parent, showing off each creature. “Here’s a caracal,” she says, pointing to an image of two kittens she created using in vitro fertilization. The otherwise sand-colored cats have tufts of black fur jutting straight out of the tips of their pointy ears. “Some people,” Dresser says, “call them Spock cats.”

Dresser goes down the line of photos, identifying each kitten: serval, fishing cat, Arabian sand cat, and more. Nearly all of these felines are under threat, a result of poaching and habitat destruction. The ballooning human population is hurting these cats in other ways, too—our pet tabbies and Persians can’t seem to keep their furry little paws off their undomesticated cousins. This freewheeling interbreeding creates litters of cute little hybrids, but it doesn’t help boost the ranks of wild felines.

ACRES has made a name for itself for its work with these small exotic cats, and as the technology evolved, so did the scientists’ strategy. Though in vitro fertilization had allowed biologists to help exotic animals breed in new ways, the technique had limitations. Creating test-tube caracals, for instance, required harvesting sperm and eggs from wild cats, fertilizing the eggs in the lab, and then implanting them in surrogate mothers. Collecting and storing specialized reproductive cells is technically difficult—and potentially dangerous for the animals, since the females must be anesthetized and cut open in order for surgeons to recover their eggs.

Cloning has several distinct advantages. Scientists can get all the DNA they need for cloning from an animal’s skin cells; stealing a quick swipe of skin from a rare cat is a much easier proposition than surgically harvesting ova. Cloning also provides a way to propagate the genes of animals without viable sperm or eggs: old animals, infertile animals, even dead animals. To Dresser, the technique has an obvious role to play in rescuing endangered species. As she imagines it, scientists could collect skin samples from rare animals and then churn out new copies of them in the lab. Field biologists could take these creatures and release them into their native habitats, where the clones would mingle with their wild brethren—both socially and sexually—and the population would slowly rise again.

The prospect of using cloning to save endangered species is a big dream, one that will require many researchers and many years to pull off. So Dresser and her colleagues are beginning with the basics. They’re not running large-scale repopulation projects. They’re not even trying to produce hundreds of endangered clones. Instead, their role is to nail down the technology itself—to test cloning in different species, fine-tune the laboratory procedures, and publish the results. That way, Dresser says, “If a habitat can’t be saved, and a population isn’t breeding naturally, and numbers dwindle to where there’re only five individuals left in a species, we can call on these tools.”