By Dr. Michael Salla
A February 28 report by the New York Times describes how Barbara Streisand paid $50,000 to have two clones made of her favorite pet dog that passed away last year. The story reveals how open source cloning has been quietly developed in scientific laboratories over the last 20 years, and is opening the door to human cloning becoming a reality in the near future. This is not a surprise given multiple whistleblower claims that human cloning was developed by the 1970’s in highly classified military projects.
The New York Times describes how cloning has evolved since “Dolly the Sheep” who was born in 1996. The New York Times tracks how research shifted over years to clone “about two dozen other mammal species, including cattle, deer, horses, rabbits, cats, rats — and yes, dogs.”
The first dog was cloned in 2005 by South Korean researchers at Sooam Biotech. This was followed in 2008 by a California company partnering with the South Koreans which successfully cloned three puppies from a group of five dogs. By 2015, Sooam Biotech, had cloned over 600 dogs according to reports from Business Insider and NPR.
The lead Korean scientist behind the cloning is Hwang Woo Suk, who became infamous for fraudulently claiming he had cloned human embryos in 2004. Despite his fall from scientific grace, no one is doubting that he is successfully cloning dogs.
NPR reports that the cloning process is successful in about one in three attempts, and raises many ethical concerns about the number of miscarriages and the sickly pups that are eventually born.
This did not deter Streisand who used either Sooam Biotech or another Texas based company, her publicist did not reply to the New York Times about which one cloned her dog.
The New York Times summarized an interview Streisand gave with Variety Magazine about her two cloned puppies, which suggested she was satisfied with the results:
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