News that a top Irish-bred horse has been cloned – not once but twice – caught me on the hop. This was done on a commercial or at least semi-commercial basis and not as part of some advanced piece of scientific research. It means that we really have reached the point of being able to clone your deceased pet provided you have the money to pay for it.
The story of the clones, two identical copies of the famous sport horse Cruising, is remarkable in its own right. Cruising won many Grand Prix show-jumping competitions over the years, achieving the highest rating of any horse in Ireland at the time. This Irish champion died in September 2014 at the age of 29, but death was not the closing chapter in the horse's life.
The McCann family of Hartwell Stud in Co Kildare bred and owned Cruising and he was a successful sire with high-performing offspring. Offers to clone the ageing horse were made but the McCanns turned them down on the basis of cost. Then a US company agreed to prepare free of charge the DNA samples and tissues needed to produce clones.
Tissue was taken in 2011 long before Cruising’s passing. Two foals were born in 2012, but their birth was kept a secret until news emerged a week and a half ago. The two horses, Cruising Arish and Cruising Encore are now about to take up where their “father” left off, providing stud duties during the breeding season and passing on genetic material identical to that which was originally only available from Cruising.
The cloning of animals is now old hat with the first using a cell-transfer method, Dolly the Sheep, arriving in July 1996. The first horse clone appeared more than a decade ago in 2003, and the first cloned dog arrived in 2005. In the early days only top laboratories could participate in this research, and only major research universities and government-sponsored institutes typically had the scientific resources, equipment, personnel and money to pursue it.
Time passed however and better methods were reported in the scientific press. Costs fell for genetic research and access was democratised – if that is not an inappropriate word in this context. The most striking example of this is the effort required to prepare a human genome, being able to map out a person's DNA to a high resolution. A "rough draft" of the first human genome appeared in 2000, after 10 years of work and a stupendous $1 billion investment, with a more complete version arriving in 2003. Today you can achieve a reasonable level of accuracy in a human genome in a day or two for about €1,000 and the price continues to fall.
This makes the potential to pursue advanced genetic research that much more available, not only to well-regulated academic research labs but also to private-sector businesses seeking to exploit these technologies. The two Cruising clones cost a reported €100,000 each, but given they are already covering mares it may not take long to recoup this investment.
Pet cloning is also long underway with the first cloned pet, Little Nicky the cat, arriving in 2004 at a cost of $50,000 (€43,900). The costs are such however that this is still a specialised market available only to very rich people who really loved their pets.
What used to be all about the science however is increasingly all about the money linked to it, and clearly there are opportunities if you can develop reliable systems for cloning pets. Equally, human genetics works in the same way as in cats or horses even if the cells are different, so what is to stop colossal sums being paid to unscrupulous labs claiming to be able to replace a lost loved one?
For this reason it is timely that the Cabinet last week agreed to prepare legislation to control forms of genetic research and assisted human reproduction. The Bill on Surrogacy, Assisted Human Reproduction and Associated Research is meant to lay down the law on what is acceptable and unacceptable on this front, but one wonders whether it will get into cloning territory rather than remaining fixated on conventional in vitro fertilisation practices.
For example will it have a section on human embryo cloning, a relatively simple thing for a lab to do, or will there be legislation to control pre-implantation genetic diagnosis? This is a form of genetic profiling of embryos prior to their implantation in the womb, the goal being to choose embryos most likely to survive or embryos free of genetic diseases followed by the likely discarding of embryos with flaws.
Academic researchers in this area and private companies supporting IVF services will welcome the proposed legislation although it will be some time before we see any draft legislation. It will be contentious and the Government are approaching a difficult election and will not want to stir up contentious issues.
