When cloning pets became a business... Spending exorbitant prices to revive pets sparked controversy and determination | Pets | Cloning

Since the introduction of cloning technology, controversies about it have always been intertwined in public opinion. The considerable commercial prospects and high scientific research value are driving the rapid development of cloning technology. Whenever new research results emerge, it triggers a new round of attention and discussion.

Liu Xing's "male cat" is on a ventilator and is dying. "male cat" is a local cat adopted by Liu xing. when he chose this name, he hoped that it would be "well-known and well-fed". She tried to get close to the "male cat" ears, lest it can not hear. "If you can stick to it, no matter what you become, I will take you home." Liu Xing paused, seemed to have made a lot of determination, and continued to say softly, "If you can't hold on and are willing to come back to me, I have already contacted the pet cloning company......"

Liu Xing is a designer. Her voice still trembles when she recalls the scene at that time.

Some companionship is not destined to last. The average life span of ordinary cats and dogs is between 10-15 years old, that is to say, they can only accompany their owners for a short period of time.

In the face of the departure of the pet, some people choose to spend money on cloning, so that the pet "resurrection".

"A woman spent 250000 yuan successfully cloning a dead pet dog" "Shanghai Grandma spent 180000 cloning a pet" ...... In recent years, similar news has been searched frequently, allowing the topic of "cloned pets" to enter the public eye. Some commercial organizations claim that "cloned animals are guaranteed to have more than 99.9 per cent of the same genes as the ontology and have been certified by a third-party authority."

A few days ago, 2023 the 11th Chengdu Tianyi Pet Expo was held, people felt the quiet rise of the cloned pet market. However, when cloning technology enters commercial applications, cloning pets brings people, in addition to the "sky-high" cost, there are many problems that cannot be ignored.

Continue with the lost pet

The final farewell was in a pet hospital in Tongzhou District, Beijing. That night, after three rescues, Liu Xing's 15-year-old "male cat" still left. Before and after, it cost nearly 100,000 yuan in medical expenses.

In Liu Xing's heart, after living together for 15 years, the "male cat" has long become a family member. It was "male cat" who accompanied Liu Xing from Shenzhen to Beijing and spent many unforgettable years. "The relationship between people and animals is wonderful. If you like it, it will give you back in its way. This is a two-way rush."

Even when money is the most strapped, Liu Xing can give priority to ensuring that the "male cat" eats "wonderful fresh bags" twice a week. It is a very happy thing for Liu Xing to see how it enjoys delicious food.

When it was cold, the "male cat" would hide in the bed and curl up on her body. Liu Xing said that the warmth brought by that kind of companionship, like the light in the dark night, gave her great comfort. With the departure of the "male cat", Liu Xing's heart seemed to be hollowed out at once.

Fortunately, there is cloning technology.

Liu Xing contacted the pet cloning company in advance and let the staff arrive at the pet hospital in the first place. From skin sampling to cell incubation, step by step. Liu Xing was extremely nervous because she knew that failure in any link would lead to failure.

The whole process of cloning really answered that sentence: good things take a long time.

After successful cultivation, the cells were frozen and resuscitated, and finally entered the cloning process. Unfortunately, the first two rounds of cloning ended in the abortion of the surrogate female cat.

Although pet cloning companies have repeatedly shown that cloned animals with stripes, patches and spots, even if they share more than 99.9 percent of the genes, there may still be some differences in appearance. However, when Liu Xing first saw the "male cat" of the "resurrection", he almost cried with joy. The horoscope face, big ears and white spots are still the original "male cat".

"Like! Too much like!"

At this time, Liu Xing's "male cat" has passed away for nearly a year.

"In the face of loss, what we fear most is to leave regrets." Liu Xing said that cloning technology gave her and "male cats" the opportunity to renew their leading edge. "This kind of feeling is like a loved one returning to you after leaving."

Nobel Prize technology behind the "sky price"

For the "resurrection" of the "male cat", Liu Xing spent 138000 yuan, which is still the preferential price given by the pet cloning company.

"It's worth it! It's worth it!" When repeatedly asked whether it is worth spending "sky-high price" to clone "male cat", Liu Xing always blurted out without hesitation.

In Liu Xing's view, his annual salary of hundreds of thousands of yuan can fully afford such expenses, and his family and friends are also very supportive.

"It's like you spend a lot of money on a bag or a car because it brings you happiness," Mr. Liu said.

Liu Xing's attitude is quite a bit of "I 'd like to buy if I have money. "I don't think anything in this world can replace it. If it can come back to me, I am willing to pay all the price."

In recent years, a phenomenon called "pet loss syndrome" has been taken seriously by the psychological community. It is said that once a pet dies, 60% of pet owners will enter a state of extreme sadness, and even lose the courage to live. Cloning pets can help them get out of painful emotions.

Liu Xing represents a huge pet group and consumer market.

The White Paper on China's Pet Health Consumption jointly released by iResearch Consulting and Jingdong Health Data Research Institute shows that at present, the scale of China's pet consumption market is growing rapidly, with a market size of about 311.7 billion yuan in 2022; the market size is expected to reach 392.4 billion yuan in 2023; the 21-30-year-old group in second-tier and above cities is the main force of pet health consumption. For most pet owners, pets are more like family, accompanying themselves and adding fun to life.

Pet cloning agencies claim that cloning pets is "to make pet return" and "never say goodbye". On some e-commerce platforms, the cloning of pets that cost hundreds of thousands of yuan at every turn provokes the sensitive nerves of the public and also puts a mysterious veil on the cloning technology.

"Today, cloning technology has gone through nearly a hundred years of development and won the Nobel Prize twice, which is rare in the field of technology." Dr. Liu Hongbo, chief scientist of Henan Chuangyuan Biotechnology Co., Ltd., said that cloning is actually the abbreviation of "somatic cell cloning", also known as "somatic cell nuclear transfer", which is essentially a "replication" technology.

Liu Hongbo vividly likened cloning technology to a "porter" of genetic genes ". "Specifically, the nucleus of an animal oocyte is replaced with the nucleus of a somatic cell, which is formed into an embryo and then implanted into the animal's mother. The oocytes and somatic cells used in this process are naturally occurring, with only the movement of the nucleus taking place. In essence, cloning is just an artificial combination of genetic material and does not create new genetic material." He said.

From the world's first nuclear transfer animal "salamander" to the world's first individual nuclear transfer animal "Xenopus", cloning technology won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine twice in 1935 and 2012, which is the history of human science. A major milestone in the progress. However, for quite a long time, cloning technology seems to have been "hidden in the boudoir".

It was not until 1996 that British scientists cloned the world's first somatic cell nuclear transfer mammal, which is known to the public as the cloned sheep "Dolly", and the cloning technology was finally "known to the world". Since then, in the developed countries of animal husbandry represented by the United States, cloning technology has taken the lead from the laboratory to the commercial application market.

Enter the new commercialization track

In 2017, Chinese scientists used gene editing and cloning technology to successfully cultivate the first domestic cloned dog "Longlong". Two years later, China's first domestic cloned cat "garlic" was born.

This has brought the gospel to the vast number of pet lovers.

Previously, the core technology of cloning dogs and cats has been in the hands of South Korea and American scientists. The arrival of "Dragon Dragon" and "Garlic" brought their owners, Beijing Sinogu Biotechnology Co., Ltd., to the surface, and indirectly announced that China had broken through technical problems and entered the commercial track of pet cloning.

According to the data, Beijing Sinogu Biotechnology Co., Ltd. focuses on animal gene technology. It is a commercial pet cloning enterprise with completely independent intellectual property rights. It has the international leading gene editing dog technology and has gone through four rounds of financing.

In fact, after "Dolly", cloned cattle, cloned pigs, cloned monkeys, etc. have come out one after another, and cloning technology has developed rapidly at home and abroad. As for why the new track of cloning pets is only locked, Mi Jidong, chairman of Beijing Sinogu Biotechnology Co., Ltd., said frankly, "it is because of business opportunities".

In 2012, pet craze was on the rise, but orders for cloned pets continued to flow to South Korea, Europe and the United States. Subject to technical barriers, domestic enterprises can only "look at the ocean and sigh". Mi Jidong decisive job-hopping entrepreneurship, hand in hand with the country's top scientists, began to overcome technical problems.

"It is not easy to clone pets. Whether it is the establishment of somatic cell lines, the acquisition of mature oocytes, or somatic cell nuclear transfer, embryo fusion activation, and embryo transfer, it is a difficult and long process." Mi Jidong said that although the technical route of cloning different species has not changed much, the reproductive and physiological characteristics of each species are different, and it is destined to develop different technical means.

Mi Jidong, for example, said that one of the main difficulties in cloning dogs is how to obtain mature oocytes. When cloning cats, when extracting somatic cells, they have higher requirements for organization. "It can be said that every kind of pet cloned is a new scientific research topic".

In just a few years, Beijing Sinogu Biotechnology Co., Ltd. rose rapidly and became the head enterprise of domestic pet cloning industry.

Mi Jidong revealed that up to now, the company has delivered nearly 500 cloned pets. After long-term follow-up, the growth and health of these cloned pets are very good.

In response to the price of cloned pets that the outside world is concerned about, Mi Jidong said that the price of cloned pets fully takes into account factors such as R & D and production costs, market conditions, and other factors. In addition to invisible technical thresholds, cloned pets do require more resource support, including Hard costs such as high-end equipment and technical personnel. "In fact, our price is already the lowest in the world. In the future, through technology optimization, efficiency improvement and cost control, the price is expected to be further reduced."

Nowadays, with the influx of other domestic enterprises, the new track of cloning pets is becoming more and more lively. People found that the price of cloned pets also seems to be moving in the direction of "people-friendly. On the e-commerce platform, the lowest price of cloned cats has dropped from a peak of several hundred thousand yuan to about 100000 yuan.

Regulatory gaps fuel public anxiety

Scientists have developed a cloning technology that immortalized people, but unexpectedly, after the hero was successfully cloned, the clone in turn pretended to be his identity and hunted him down, and a fierce battle was launched ...... The plot in the science fiction movie "The Sixth Day" shows the challenge of cloning technology to the traditional social order and ethics.

Since the introduction of cloning technology, controversies about it have always been intertwined in public opinion. The considerable commercial prospects and high scientific research value are driving the rapid development of cloning technology. Whenever new research results emerge, it triggers a new round of attention and discussion.

What the outside world is most concerned about is that at present, the license for the use of experimental animals is the only basis in China to supervise the cloning pet industry, which covers animal welfare, ethical review, biosafety and other aspects. however, this license issued by the science and technology department actually only recognizes the qualification of science and technology enterprises and scientific research institutions to carry out animal experiments, and does not limit the experimental use.

In other words, the particularity and possible risks of cloning pets have not been paid enough attention. At the same time, in view of the fact that the cloning of pets itself is a whole reproduction, theoretically speaking, it does not produce "new species" and bring harm. Therefore, there are no relevant laws and regulations at home and abroad to prohibit it.

The regulatory gap seems to be fueling public anxiety.

In recent years, as more and more cloned pets appear in front of the public, the call for supervision in the society has become higher and higher. How to establish a sound market access mechanism and bring cloned pets into the whole process of supervision has become an unavoidable social proposition.

"In fact, it is to avoid cloning people in the name of cloning pets." Pan Helin, co-director and researcher of the Digital Economy and Financial Innovation Research Center of Zhejiang University International Joint Business School, suggested that risk management and control should be strengthened through the "reporting system", otherwise, "it can be done without prohibition by law".

"From a global perspective, human cloning is prohibited. This is also a high degree of consensus in academia and industry, and it is an insurmountable red line." Mi Jidong said that pet cloning is an emerging field, and he hopes that relevant regulations can be introduced at the national level to ensure that the technological innovation of enterprises always moves in the right direction. "We also hope to explore the way for the healthy development of the industry and contribute some experience from enterprises to the supervision of the country."

Zhong Yougang, an associate professor at the School of Veterinary Medicine of China Agricultural University, believes that the concerns of the outside world are understandable. Relevant institutions must strictly abide by relevant regulations and regulations when carrying out pet cloning, but from the perspective of technological innovation, they should still encourage and tolerate pet cloning. Attitude.

Of course, the focus of public controversy is not limited to the security boundaries of cloning technology.

In foreign countries, the voice of protest is heard from time to time. Although animal welfare has been greatly improved with the continuous maturity of cloning technology, some animal protectors still resist the cloning of pets, believing that every time a commercial organization clones a pet, it will sacrifice countless experimental animals. This is entirely to satisfy the personal self-interest and mutilate countless animals, "very cruel".

More questioning, focusing on the value and significance of cloning pets. Opponents believe that cloning pets does not really bring pets back from the dead. It is just an emotional placebo, and it is even suspected of harvesting IQ taxes.

In this regard, Mi Jidong expressed his understanding, because people look at the problem from different angles and starting points, it is very normal to have disputes. "We will provide a choice for society from the perspective of science and humanistic care."

Technology brings more possibilities.

During the "May 1st" holiday this year, Harbin Polar Park was full of tourists. The world's first cloned Arctic wolf "Maya" attracted countless fans with high popularity. This made people see the dawn of cloning technology in saving endangered species.

In 2006, the park introduced two wild Arctic wolves from Canada, "Maya" is one of them. In 2020, after "Maya" entered old age, in order to "retain" old friends, the park joined hands with Beijing Sinogu Biotechnology Co., Ltd. to start tackling a new worldwide project-cloning Arctic wolves. After more than two years of hard work, the world's first cloned Arctic wolf "Maya" was born and appeared in the park.

As one of the world's endangered animals, the Arctic wolf was included in the 2012 Red List of Endangered Species of the World Conservation Union. The birth of "Maya" is regarded by foreign media as a "milestone" in the protection of endangered species in China ".

Coincidentally. Previously, Liu Hongbo led the team to cultivate the first batch of cloned horses in China. Since then, after the United States and Argentina, China has become the third country to master the technology of cloned horses.

In this batch of cloned Mali, there are legends in the minds of countless Chinese people-sweat and blood horses, a kind of excellent horse species recognized in the world. Its total number in the world is more than 3000, very rare.

At present, Liu Hongbo's team already has industrial-level cloning capabilities for animals such as cattle, pigs, horses and cats.

In recent years, with the increasingly serious global ecological crisis, biodiversity conservation is facing severe challenges. As of September 2021, the World Conservation Union has updated its Red List of Threatened Species, and of the 138374 species it assesses, 38543 are threatened with extinction. Therefore, the species resources have been paid more and more attention by countries all over the world.

He Zhengming, director of the Institute of Experimental Animal Resources of the China Institute for Food and Drug Control and vice chairman of the National Experimental Animal expert Committee, publicly said that cloning technology provides a good starting point for the protection of endangered wild animals. this has made a great contribution to the protection of biodiversity.

"The basic scientific issues of cloning technology, such as the safety of cloned animals and their offspring as human food, have been explained very clearly." Liu Hongbo said that cloning technology is the only technology that can transform a single somatic cell into a living individual or group, and has an irreplaceable role in the field of life sciences.

In foreign countries, cloning technology has long been commercially applied, providing good support for the development of animal husbandry, biomedicine and endangered animal protection and other related fields.

Liu Hongbo called on: "we should fully respect the laws of science and industrial development, adhere to the 'science and technology for good' and formulate relevant policies, so that commercial cloning can develop in an orderly manner, and get extensive support and help from all walks of life."