5-Animals: News about the Missyplicity Project

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TITLE:  Dog's Owners Are Throwing Late 'Missy' A Clone
SOURCE: The Washington Post, USA, by Helen Rumbelow
        http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A8092-2002Jul26.html
DATE:   July 27, 2002

------------------ archive: http://www.gene.ch/genet.html ------------------


Dog's Owners Are Throwing Late 'Missy' A Clone

When much-loved family dogs die, owners often distract themselves with a 
new puppy, even though they know their pet was irreplaceable. The owners of 
Missy, a 15-year-old mongrel, think differently.

Yesterday they announced the news of Missy's demise along with the 
investment of an additional several million dollars to speed up the 
creation of her genetic replacement.

That Missy did not live to meet "herself" in the form of a cloned puppy is 
a major setback to Joan Hawthorne and John Sperling, who are planning a 
memorial service for their mixed-breed border collie and Siberian husky.

While Missy lived at Hawthorne's California home and died there died July 
6, the Missyplicity Project to replicate her has been funded by Sperling, 
an Arizona millionaire, and has been running for five years.

With a $3.7 million grant from Sperling, scientists at Texas A&M University 
were able to create the world's first cloned cat, CC, last December, but no 
Missy clones have survived to term.

"We had hoped that a clone would be born in Missy's lifetime," said Lou 
Hawthorne, son of Joan Hawthorne and head of Genetic Savings & Clone, the 
corporate arm of the Missyplicity Project.

"She was not just exceptional but a wise old dog with a body of experience 
she could relay directly to her clones," said Hawthorne.

Hawthorne said that work on a Missy clone had accelerated as the dog's 
health declined over the last six months, with "several million more 
dollars" invested.

His company, he said, planned to reduce the difficulty of maturing dog 
embryos by using assembly lines, with robots performing the cloning and 
checking the embryos for viability. If successful, he said, mass production 
would also make cloned pets more affordable.

Wayne Pacelle of the Humane Society of the United States said that the 
Missyplicity Project was "perfectly awful" when so many animals are killed 
in shelters for want of homes.

Hawthorne predicted that a Missy clone would be born next year. Meanwhile, 
he said, the late Missy's owners would seek a new pet by visiting dog 
shelters.



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