Pet cloners hope new lab, lower costs helps spur demand

RYAN NAKASHIMA

Associated Press
4/17/2005

WAUNAKEE, Wis. - David Cheng says his deceased cat Shadow was part of his family - "like my brother or my son."

After taking in the abandoned black-and-white domestic short-hair in graduate school, Cheng came to love his pet's penchant for coming on command, and scooping up instant noodles with its paws.

So when Shadow died in November after a yearlong fight with cancer, Cheng was saddened, but prepared. He spent $1,500 to bank away two sets of his pet's DNA so he could one day create Shadow's clone, Shadow 2.

"I'm not looking for a cat to behave exactly the same. As a matter of fact, it won't," said Cheng, a 36-year-old computer engineer living on the East Coast. "It's more of, I save part of his memory and make the grieving process a little bit easier."

Cheng is among nearly 1,000 people who have banked their pets' DNA with Genetic Savings and Clone Inc., which became the world's first firm to deliver a cloned cat to order in December.

Cloning is a process in which an animal's genetic material can be harvested from cell tissue, implanted in an empty egg and inserted into the womb of a surrogate animal that gives birth to its genetic clone.

Like many others, Cheng said he is waiting for the company to cut its prices, which were dropped in February to $32,000 from an initial $50,000.

While it is unclear what the demand for pet clones is, many say decreasing the price will help spur an untapped market - as long as the company can survive legal and ethical challenges.

The American Anti-Vivisection Society calls pet cloning a "cruel industry" that is experimental and uses many animals in the lab. It has set up a Web page attacking the business called nopetcloning.org. California Assemblyman Lloyd Levine has introduced a bill to ban the sale of cloned or genetically altered pets in his state.

"They're preying on people when they're very vulnerable," Levine said. "The problem is, they go through lots of surrogate parents and a lot of the animals are born deformed."

"Here in California, we spend over $50 million at the local government level euthanizing dogs and cats every year. We don't need another supply source."

But the cloners bet that a fraction of the 58 million pet owners in the United States who dote on their pets are willing to ignore the critics and clone their pets when they die.

"We don't really know how much demand is out there," said Genetic Savings & Clone CEO Lou Hawthorne. "It's a grand experiment."

After cloning the world's first cat in December 2001, the company embarked on a mission to clone the pets of grieving owners, backed by billionaire investor John Sperling, who started the company to clone his deceased dog Missy. It has fulfilled two of its six orders for cats so far, and this year plans to clone dogs.

Observers said with rising spending on veterinary care - reaching $19 billion nationally in 2001 - many people would clone their deceased pets if it became affordable.

Charles Long, director of advanced reproduction technology at Global Genetics and Biologicals, a livestock breeding and cloning firm, estimated that "thousands" of pet owners don't object to cloning.

"I have talked to many people ... who will spend everything they have because they have such extreme devotion to a particular animal," said Long, who is a former manager at Genetic Savings & Clone. "There are others, who don't have the resources to clone, who are banking their animals in the hopes that some day the price of cloning will come down to an affordable level."

Max Rothschild, distinguished professor of animal science at Iowa State University, said if the cost of a clone fell to what some spend on pet surgery, the market would open up.

"Maybe that's $10,000, maybe that's $5,000 - and you'll start seeing people do it," said Rothschild.

The company now plans to ramp up production and cut costs at the new laboratory it plans to open in June in the Wisconsin village of Waunakee. It is consolidating its cloning operations there, after breaking off its relationship with Texas A&M University in 2003. Its headquarters are in Sausalito, Calif.

Hawthorne said in the next six months, the company will save money by buying animals' reproductive tracts - from which it harvests eggs - from spay clinics exclusively, rather than performing surgery to spay the animals itself.

And in two years, the company will introduce automated embryo production, reducing the labor involved in transferring a pet's DNA into an empty egg, he said.

The company will be slow to reduce its price, however, Hawthorne said. The price is not likely to drop for the next 12 to 14 months, to be careful not to trigger a rush that would overwhelm the eight to 10 scientists that will work in the lab, he said.

"Below about $20,000 we couldn't even fill the demand," Hawthorne said.

Cheng, who makes a six-figure salary, said if the price came down to between $10,000 and $20,000, he'd pay for Shadow's clone.

The Hong Kong native already spent some $6,000 on chemotherapy and surgery to save his cat.

"I tried to give him the quality of life that I could," he said. Raising Shadow's clone is like "getting a second chance."