Cloned Sniffer Dogs Begin Duties!

[donneo 0]

"Seoul, July 20 (MIA) - South Korea's customs service says it has deployed the "world's first cloned sniffer dogs" to check for drugs at its main airport and border crossings.
Six puppies cloned from a Canadian-born sniffer dog in late 2007 have reported for duty after completing a 16-month training programme.

The clones are all called Toppy, a combination of "tomorrow" and "puppy".

The customs agency says clones help to lower crime-fighting costs as it is difficult to find good sniffer dogs.

Only about 30% of naturally-born sniffer dogs make the grade, but South Korean scientists say that could rise to 90% using the cloning method.

The new recruits are part of a litter of seven puppies who were cloned from a "superb" drug-sniffing Canadian Labrador retriever called Chase in 2007, officials said.

One dropped out of the training due to an injury.

"They are the world's first cloned sniffer dogs deployed at work," Park Jeong-Heon, a customs spokesman at Seoul's Incheon International Airport, told AFP news agency.

"They showed better performances in detecting illegal drugs during the training than other naturally-born sniffer dogs that we have."

The cloning work was conducted by a team of scientists at Seoul National University, who created the world's first cloned dog - an Afghan Hound named Snuppy."

Notice from truefusion:

Warned.

Edited July 25, 2009 by truefusion (see edit history)

[kobra500 1]

But you really need to clone from puppies, there was the incident with dolly the sheep where her DNA was the same age as her parent. Which wouldn't be good. Though that is cool, I know some people are against cloning for moral and religious reasons, but since Religion has no part in secular society, and the majority of people have no problem with cloning provided the clones do not suffer. I think this is a good Idea, as long as they don't clone race horses.

[anwiii 17]

i beg to differ. it's not just the religious that are against cloning. i am not religious(or practice any one religion) and i am 100% against it or my personal reasons that i am just way too tired to explain right now and this is a VERY touchy subject.

i will say this though. technology is a killer and is also making everyone lazy. more technology=more laws=more rights we as human beings are supposed to have will be taken away. that's just the serious surfacy crap....but there are as you said moral and religious issues i may want to dive in to....even though i am not religious, i believe in some religious viewpoints by various religions

to say it's ok to clone a dog, but not a horse is ABSURD

But you really need to clone from puppies, there was the incident with dolly the sheep where her DNA was the same age as her parent. Which wouldn't be good. Though that is cool, I know some people are against cloning for moral and religious reasons, but since Religion has no part in secular society, and the majority of people have no problem with cloning provided the clones do not suffer. I think this is a good Idea, as long as they don't clone race horses.

[Tramposch 1]

That is pretty absurd.

You don't just clone the dog. Maybe the dog doesn't want to be cloned? Its just pretty immoral. Sometimes people do stupid things.

Oh yeah you should put it in quotes because the article is found here:
http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/

[Atomic0 0]

I suppose that I don't really support cloning, in the way just to create another 'copy' of the organism you are cloning. It isn't really the right thing to do because it is upsetting the natural balance life and subjects the cloned organism to unnecessary risks, such as medical problems e.g. Dolly the cloned sheep suffered arthritis and also died young compared to natural born sheep. This is particularly so because those medical conditions were not the result of genetic heritage, but because of genetic defects that occured as the direct result of the cloning process.

However, if the cloning process could bring medical benefits to humans without causing harm to any organisms, I would support that, although I think there will always be risks with cloning where the natural genetic DNA is tampered with. I would note though that genetic mutation can happen anywhere to anyone considering the amount of radiation around us, no one knows for certain whether cloning was the cause of the genetic defects.

Check out these articles on Dolly the cloned sheep:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/1741559.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/2764039.stm