Cloned Drug Sniffing Labradors - GDG

[Andy Carlson]

Pretty interesting. Not sure if it is a good thing or not, but still interesting.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/n...,1538891.story

Andy

[MRGD]

I think that is pretty cool if it works well. I think it is different for people, but mutts I'm ok with.

tt

[Bud]

Still not big on the cloning thing. Could they be AKC registered, assuming parent was?

[Larkin]

Many breeds can sniff for drugs, not just Labradors. There is no way to know if these clones will have a better chance of being successful drug dogs than those produced by traditional breeding methods. Identical twins may be gifted in different areas after all. This strikes me as a terrible waste of money. They produced these dogs because they wanted to; the reasons they stated for doing so don't really hold up under scrutiny.

[Aussie]

Hey, what happened to Snuppy (was that it's name?) an Afghan, the first dog they cloned?

[cgoeson]

Seems kinda stupid to me... Wouldn't it be a lot cheaper to just breed dogs that are good at it?

[dreamer2385]

This is one of those "thought-provoking" scientific experiments that I have to question, "Just because they can, it it "meant" to be. It , to me, sounds like such a waste of money. There are many dogs that are from great breeding, with outstanding in-depth history of health clearances and proven intelligence. You mean to tell me that they can't find a dog capable of such in-depth training in the gene pool of field-bred Labs. They can also find many dogs in shelters that can be screened and tested for such jobs. Dogs that would other wise be killed. I just think the money is wasted when there are other alternatives. Maria