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South Korea Deploys Cloned Drug-Sniffing Dogs

Posted by timothy on from the gee-your-dogs-sure-like-cocaine-a-lot dept.

Hugh Pickens writes "BBC reports that six puppies cloned from a Canadian-born sniffer dog in late 2007 have reported for duty to check for drugs at Seoul's Incheon International Airport after completing a 16-month training course. The customs agency says clones help to lower crime-fighting costs as it is difficult to find good sniffer dogs. Only about 30% of naturally-born sniffer dogs make the grade, but South Korean scientists say that could rise to 90% using the cloning method. The puppies, each called 'Toppy' for 'Tomorrow's Puppy,' are part of a litter of seven who were cloned from a 'superb' drug-sniffing Canadian Labrador retriever called Chase at a cost of about $239,000. 'They are the world's first cloned sniffer dogs deployed at work,' says customs spokesman Park Jeong-Heon. 'They showed better performances in detecting illegal drugs during the training than other naturally-born sniffer dogs that we have.'"

19 of 154 comments (clear)

  1. Standing still by Norsefire · · Score: 4, Informative
    I followed the Snuppy project quite closely, (in fact I am the main contributor to the Wikipedia article - shameless plug), so it's great to see further developments stemming from that. However something that a Kennel Club spokesman said when Snuppy was first cloned comes to mind here:

    "Canine cloning runs contrary to the Kennel Club's objective 'To promote in every way the general improvement of dogs' ... Cloning cannot be used to make improvements because the technique simply produces genetic replicas of existing dogs." [src]

    So what they have now are the best drug dogs they will ever have, their abilities can't improve any - they will be the same as the dog they were cloned from.

    1. Re:Standing still by thisnamestoolong · · Score: 5, Insightful

      This also raises big problems as far as disease resistance goes -- if all the dogs are genetically identical they will all have identical immune systems, making it far easier for a single strain of disease to wipe out a large chunk of them.

      On a totally unrelated note -- why are we so concerned with drug sniffing dogs? OMG!! Someone wants to get high!!! Quick -- clone some dogs so that we can put them in jail!!! This whole drug prohibition thing is beyond infantile, but I digress. Why not use the time and effort to create better service dogs, or bomb-sniffing dogs?

      --
      To the haters: You can't win. If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine
    2. Re:Standing still by Barsteward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      "Canine cloning runs contrary to the Kennel Club's objective 'To promote in every way the general improvement of dogs' ... "
      The KCs objective is complete and utter crap. Since when has encouraging bulldogs and the like to get more deformed to be as close as to the KCs definition of what makes a perfect example of a breed. Bulldogs should be at least twice the height they are now and should be able to breath properly.
      I'd take dog cloning that produces a healthy dog over a KCs definition any day of the week.

      --
      "The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
    3. Re:Standing still by Em+Emalb · · Score: 3, Informative

      you're 100% correct...English Bulldogs are an abomination.

      Did you know they can't even reproduce without artificial insemination? How is that considered a good thing? It's horrible. Our neighbors have one, and we dog-sat while they were gone. The poor thing could barely breathe. It was so bad, that when it was sleeping, if you didn't hear this rasping groaning snore coming from it, you'd think it was dying.

      Unreal. I feel so badly for the dog. It's a sweet dog too, that's the thing of it. I just wish people would stop breeding them the way they do and let nature take its course.

      --
      Sent from your iPad.
    4. Re:Standing still by asdf7890 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      On a totally unrelated note -- why are we so concerned with drug sniffing dogs? OMG!! Someone wants to get high!!! Quick -- clone some dogs so that we can put them in jail!!!

      It is not quite as simple as that. These dogs are not just out there to find the little bag-o-mary in your inside coat pocket, they are there to pick up on a variety of stronger drugs that are massively addictive and cause the country various troubles such as the extra crime created by the badly addicted running out of money but still needing their next fix, needing to run treatment programs for the addicted, needing to fund medical care for the health complications that result from certain drug use and persist even long after the addiction is dealt with, and so on.

      I would agree that seeing this research go into bomb sniffing as well as drug sniffing dogs, but how do we know it isn't in another lab? This report is specifically about one set of dogs resulting from one lab's work, which happens to center around a particularly proficient drug detecting animal.

    5. Re:Standing still by ljw1004 · · Score: 4, Informative

      On the other hand, the Kennel Club's ideas about "improvement" just mean that their committee picked an arbitrary and unhealthy dog aesthetic and then got breeders to breed towards it. There was no "improvement" in it at all...

      http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/7828455.stm

      "The Kennel Club has introduced new standards for 209 breeds, following concerns about ill health in pedigree dogs caused by years of in-breeding. Last year, the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals pulled out of Crufts, saying breeding to exaggerate certain features, such as bulldogs' jowls, had led to painful deformities. Now new rules designed to prevent exaggeration and incestuous breeding have been brought in.

      "Ryan O'Meara, from the K9 dog magazine, said the changes were long overdue. "When we breed dogs to a set of physical standards and ignore the health consequences, it's really unforgivable," he told the BBC News website. Mr O'Meara said the bulldog was "a vivid illustration of how wrong we can get it". "Bulldogs have been bred to a point where they die at about seven years of age - in human terms that's just 45 or 46," he said. "They can't breathe properly. They can't support themselves because their heads are too big. They have terrible skin conditions. "The public must be educated to see dogs not for their aesthetic appeal but to think about their health."

    6. Re:Standing still by mea37 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I don't think you can say that immune systems are identical among genetic twins. At birth, if they were carried by the same mother, probably; beyond that there are other variables. Fundamentally similar, but not identical.

      In any case, I'm not sure genetic monoculture is that big a threat here. If you have a sizable population of these dogs living together, I suppose it becomes an issue.

      Why the focus on drug dogs? You've really raised two questions there. The broader social question of "why the focus on drugs" may be valid, but it's beside the point. That's the legal/political background of the story. Given that background, the more relevant question - why drug dogs instead of, say, service dogs - is a simple matter of cost/benefit. Service dogs aren't cheap, but this cloning project cost $40k per dog, and that doesn't even include the normal costs of training each dog.

      For drug dogs, they say that's cheap compared to normal breeding programs once you adjust for the higher success rate. For service dogs, I'm just gonna go out on a limb here and say they need to let others pioneer the process and get the cost down.

      Of course, with a relatively large population like service dogs, the concern of a genetic monoculture is greater.

    7. Re:Standing still by Dunbal · · Score: 5, Informative

      if all the dogs are genetically identical they will all have identical immune systems

            Bzzzt - wrong.

            Sorry, I'm a doctor, and I can't let this one slide. Not sure how it is in dogs, but it can't be that much different than humans. Although their immune system will be GENETICALLY the same, the nice thing about immune systems is that they learn and adapt throughout your life. You are not "born" with immunity to certain diseases. You ACQUIRE it. Animals are not like plants where a monoculture is vulnerable to a single pathogen. Plants don't have active, adaptive immune systems like animals do.

            While certain genetic disorders of the immune system would be cloned, in theory, these disorders tend to be rare. I think it would be safe to assume that the goal of the program was to clone healthy dogs. Provided these dogs get their shots, they should be just as "safe" as any other dog.

      --
      Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
    8. Re:Standing still by thisnamestoolong · · Score: 5, Insightful

      It is not quite as simple as that. These dogs are not just out there to find the little bag-o-mary in your inside coat pocket, they are there to pick up on a variety of stronger drugs that are massively addictive and cause the country various troubles such as the extra crime created by the badly addicted running out of money but still needing their next fix, needing to run treatment programs for the addicted, needing to fund medical care for the health complications that result from certain drug use and persist even long after the addiction is dealt with, and so on.

      I don't think the fact that some drugs are bad for you and can be detrimental to society is really is question -- the only question is whether or not prohibition helps the situation. In nearly every regard, prohibition fails to improve the situation and only serves to exacerbate it. Users get lower quality product with no dosage control, making accidental overdose far more likely. People are much less likely to come forward with drug addiction problems when they can be thrown in prison. Prohibition greatly increases the price of drugs, making addicts far more likely to turn to crime to fund their addiction. Prohibition puts the distribution in the hands of hardened criminals, rather than say, a licensed professional. Prohibition makes no financial sense -- the government spends money fighting the drugs rather than raking in tax dollars from the purchase of the drugs. Finally, and possibly most importantly, making drugs illegal does absolutely nothing to stop people from using them. In fact, there is much evidence to suggest that prohibition increases drug use. I could go on and on, but I think I make my point fairly clear, drug prohibition is entirely infantile and serves no purpose other than to be a huge burden on our society.

      --
      To the haters: You can't win. If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine
    9. Re:Standing still by smartr · · Score: 4, Insightful

      While there is a strong rational argument for drug decriminalization (just look at Portugal), the real problem is that people hate liberty and loath tolerance.

    10. Re:Standing still by jonadab · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Actually, if you want a healthy dog, all else being equal, what you want is a mutt, a dog that resulted not from planned breeding but from an "encounter" between random parent dogs of entirely unrelated stock. Ideally, you want a multi-generation mutt, a dog of such mixed breeding that you can't identify which specific breeds any of its parents or grandparents may have been.

      All else being equal, a clone should be about as healthy as its "parent", but a *population* of clones would not be as healthy as a population with a more diverse genome, because part of the healthiness and robustness of the population stems from the genetic diversity it contains. (And that's true even assuming the clones are perfect copies, so that there's no replicative fading.)

      --
      Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
    11. Re:Standing still by Hatta · · Score: 3, Informative

      These dogs are not just out there to find the little bag-o-mary in your inside coat pocket

      But they'll happily get you for that too.

      they are there to pick up on a variety of stronger drugs that are massively addictive

      Like alcohol, tobacco, and caffeine?

      and cause the country various troubles such as the extra crime created by the badly addicted running out of money but still needing their next fix

      So by restricting supply we increase the prices of these drugs and amplify this problem. How does that help?

      needing to run treatment programs for the addicted

      Right, and how much does it cost to jail these individuals?

      needing to fund medical care for the health complications that result from certain drug use and persist even long after the addiction is dealt with

      What about the health complications that result from gang warfare that wouldn't exist in a regulated industry? Also, would not regulation and destigmatization of these drugs allow people to get treated earlier when it's cheaper? As it is, any addict sees doctors as the enemy, someone who wants to take their drugs away and force them into treatment. Change the legal status and we can change that relationship to something healthier.

      Prohibition is bad any way that you look at it. Every problem it's intended to solve, it only makes worse.

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  2. Retirement by Eddy+Luten · · Score: 4, Funny

    And when they retire they'll make for a tasty snack.

    1. Re:Retirement by KneelBeforeZod · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I've had dog meat. I'm in korea now and I've had it both grilled and stewed in soup. Its not bad. Kinda oily and a bit gamy but tastes like meat. Now I wonder what cat tastes like. They're much more worthless than dogs. ~If it has four legs and its not a table, eat it~ Cantonese saying.

    2. Re:Retirement by asdf7890 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Hear hear. The same with the disgust some people have about the French eating horse meat. As long as the animal has been well treated in life (including the end of its life not involving unnecessarily stress and pain) I don't see a Korean eating dog or a Frenchman eating horse as any worse than me eating pork.

      There are those that try bring intelligence into it, claiming that the intelligence of dogs makes them more objectionable as food than what we generally consider farm animals. This is crap as you'll almost certainly find your average pig to be no less intelligent than some dog breads (pigs are probably more than those yappy little rats fashionable people carry around).

      My argument stands or falls on the "being treated well" part, of course, and I'm sure you can find many examples of dogs being mistreated prior to being lunch. But the force feeding of geese to produce foie gras, and other examples of abuse closer to home than the east, means that we can't really claim moral superiority on the issue.

  3. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  4. would the spots be the same? by ionix5891 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I have a dalmatian

    with cloning i wonder if the spots be all the same shape on position?

    anyone??

    1. Re:would the spots be the same? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

      No, that was shown with cats a while ago :)

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CC_(cat)

  5. In other news... by needs2bfree · · Score: 3, Interesting

    "CBC reports that six soldiers cloned from Canadian-born Rick Hillier in late 2007 have reported for duty to check for terrorists in Afganistan after completing a 16-month training course. The Canadian Armed Forces says clones help to lower fighting costs as it is difficult to find good soldiers. Only about 30% of naturally-born soldiers make the grade, but Canadian scientists say that could rise to 90% using the cloning method. The soldier, each called 'Ricky', are part of a set of seven who were cloned from a 'superb' former chief of defense staff, General Rick Hillier, CMM, MSC, CD, at a cost of about $239,000. 'They are the world's first cloned soldiers deployed at work,' says current chief of defense General Walter Natynczyk. 'They showed better performances in detecting terrorists during the training than other naturally-born soldiers that we have.'"