First cloned cat-to-order cost $50,000
Woman wanted `identical' pet
Sale of `Little Nicky' stirs ethics debate

PAUL ELIAS
ASSOCIATED PRESS

SAN FRANCISCO-The first cloned-to-order pet sold in the United States is
named Little Nicky, an eight-week-old kitten delivered to a Texas woman
saddened by the loss of a cat she had owned for 17 years.

The kitten cost its owner $50,000 (U.S.) and was cloned from a beloved cat,
named Nicky, that died last year. Nicky's owner banked the cat's DNA, which
was used to create the clone.

"He is identical. His personality is the same," the woman said in a
telephone interview.

The company, Sausalito-based Genetic Savings and Clone, made her available
to speak to reporters only on condition the woman's name and hometown not be
used. The woman said she fears being the target of groups opposed to
cloning.

"Nicky loved water, which is an unusual characteristic of cats. Little Nicky
jumped into my bath," said the woman, who said she is in her early 40s and
employed in the airline industry.

The company delivered Little Nicky two weeks ago and was expected to
publicly announce the news today.

While Little Nicky frolics in his new home, the kitten's creation and sale
has reignited fierce ethical and scientific debate over cloning technology,
which is rapidly advancing.

By May, the company said it hopes to have produced the world's first cloned
dog - a much more lucrative market than cats.

Commercial interests already are cloning prized cattle for about $20,000
each, and scientists have cloned mice, rabbits, goats, pigs, horses - and
even the endangered banteng, a wild bull that is found mostly in Indonesia.

Several research teams around the world, meanwhile, are racing to create the
first cloned monkey.

"It's morally problematic and a little reprehensible," said David Magnus,
co-director of the Center for Biomedical Ethics at Stanford University. "For
$50,000, she could have provided homes for a lot of strays.''

Animals' rights activists complain that new feline production systems aren't
needed because thousands of stray cats are euthanized each year for want of
homes.

Lou Hawthorne, Genetic Savings and Clone's chief executive, said his company
purchases thousands of ovaries from spay clinics across the country. It
extracts the eggs, which are combined with the genetic material from the
animals to be cloned.

Critics also complain the technology is available only to the wealthy, that
using it to create house pets is frivolous and that customers grieving over
lost pets have unrealistic expectations of what they're buying.

In fact, the first cat cloned in 2001 had a different coat from its genetic
donor, underscoring that environment and other biological variables make it
impossible to exactly duplicate animals.

"The thing that many people do not realize is that the cloned cat is not the
same as the original," said Bonnie Beaver, an animal behaviourist who heads
the American Veterinary Medical Association. "It has a different
personality. It has different life experiences. They want Fluffy, but it's
not Fluffy.''

The company says it carefully counsels its customers about what they'll
receive, but insists myriad personality and physical traits will be passed
from genetic donor to cloned offspring.

Little Nicky's owner said the company "underpromised and overdelivered" her
cat, which is of the Maine coon variety. A native New England breed, the
Maine coon gets its name from the resemblance of a tabby Maine coon's tail
to that of a raccoon.

Still other scientists warn cloned animals suffer from more health problems
than their traditionally bred peers and that cloning is still a very inexact
science. It takes many gruesome failures to produce just a single clone.