Anyone who has pets suffers just thinking about losing their best friend. Over the years, the friendship built between the tutor and the pet becomes inseparable and it is not uncommon for the animal to occupy the position of companion number 1, overlapping even the relationships between humans. The pain of departure, therefore, can be excruciating. The novelty is that, thanks to technological advances in recent years, it has become possible to alleviate some of the anguish of death in dogs or cats. Unprecedented achievements in cloning have led genetic companies to specialize in creating genetically identical copies of pets, giving rise to an industry as innovative as it is controversial.
One of the biggest exponents of the field is the American ViaGen, which offers the service of cloning dogs, cats and horses. Generally speaking, scientists take samples of live pet and then grow the cells in the laboratory through artificial processes until they develop into an embryo (see on the board). It is then gestated for some time to result in a 100% faithful copy, at least in genetic terms, of the original pet. To clone a dog, ViaGen takes eight months. Cats—whose conventional wisdom holds that they have seven lives—are more work, requiring at least a year to complete the process. The cost is also high: 240,000 reais for canines and 167,000 reais for felines. Not that the values scare. The company has a waiting list of tutors willing to hire the service. Although the company does not disclose the exact number of cloned animals, business has doubled in the last five years.
The phenomenon is not restricted to the United States. Companies such as Sooam Biotech, from South Korea, and Sinogene, from China, are also active in the field of domestic cloning. In videos on TikTok, several users show the day to day with cloned pets. In Brazil, the practice is still not allowed. But in January the Environment and Sustainable Development Commission of the Chamber of Deputies approved a bill that regulates the research, production and sale of cloned domestic animals. For now, only animals of zootechnical interest — cattle, sheep, horses, pigs, rabbits and birds, among others — can be copied, but authorization for pets is already under discussion.
The subject is fascinating, but it is necessary to make a caveat: although the animals resulting from the cloning are biologically identical, the clone will not have the same temperament as the original pet. If the owner’s goal is to “resurrect” the pet that has died, he will likely be frustrated with the process. Science knows that the environment in which the animal is raised and different experiences throughout life shape its personality. That is, a pet with playful behavior can, for example, give rise to an aggressive copy.
The same rule, it should be noted, applies to the so-called monozygotic twins, genetically identical humans. “The clone is like a twin brother”, reinforces Marcelo Demarchi Goissis, professor at the Animal Reproduction Department at USP’s Faculty of Veterinary Medicine and Animal Science. “Twins, even exposed to very similar developmental conditions, have different behaviors, each with their individuality.” In the case of animals of specific breeds, there is a spectrum of expected behavior, but it is not possible to obtain an identical copy.
Ethical issues must be added to the debate. What if families want to clone their loved ones? To what extent is this morally acceptable? What are the risks involved in the large-scale production of clones? Science does not have definitive answers to such questions, and they will certainly gain volume in the coming years. There are, however, more promising possibilities. Since the British John Gurdon discovered a way to clone African frogs in the 1950s, and especially after the birth of Dolly the sheep, the first mammal in history to be cloned from an adult cell, in 1996, scientists have not stopped to look into the matter. A path that is being drawn is the revitalization of almost extinct species through the cloning of the few specimens that are still alive. It’s a real, if terrifying, possibility, synonymous with the fascinating—and sometimes controversial—adventure of science.
Published in VEJA of April 6, 2022, issue no. 2783
