Expert: Cloning pets ‘ethically dubious and a waste of money’

Replicating pets is a waste of money and “ethically very dubious”, a leading expert has said following the birth of Britain’s first cloned dog.

Professor Robin Lovell-Badge, one of the UK’s top stem cell scientists, joined anti-vivisection campaigners in condemning pet cloning.

He pointed out that cloning procedures frequently went wrong, leading to physical defects and ill-health, and even when successful never produced an animal identical to the original.

“I see no valid justification for cloning pets,” he said. “It is a ridiculous waste of money and hope as well as being ethically very dubious.”

Britain’s first cloned dog, a tiny dachshund puppy weighing just over 1lb, was born in Seoul, South Korea, after a competition offering the winner the procedure free of charge.

She was copied from a 12-year-old dog called Winnie owned by London cook Rebecca Smith.

The £60,000 (€72,718) pet cloning featured on a Channel 4 show that was to be screened last night.

Ms Smith told the show: “The world will be a better place with more Winnies in it. Everyone who meets her loves her.”

But Prof Lovell-Badge, head of developmental genetics at the Medical Research Council National Institute for Medical Research, suggested Winnie’s owner could be disappointed. In reality, the “new” Winnie was likely to be very different from her clone donor.

“Apart from similarity in outward appearance, you would have about as much chance of replicating your favourite pet by choosing one from Battersea Dogs’ Home as you would from cloning it,” he said.

“Dogs, like humans, are not just a product of their DNA sequence and the genes this contains, which is all that the cloning procedure copies.”

He stressed that “nurture” played a big part in animal behaviour and personality as well as genes. Early life experiences including interactions with themother, siblings, and humans all had a significant effect.

Cloning failures resulted in abnormalities that led to stillbirths, animals born with defects, or “adults with compromised anatomy, physiology, or health”.

“I personally think that cloning even remarkable working dogs would still be hard to justify, given the inevitable suffering associated with failed attempts,” said the professor.