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Lawsuit Over Quarter Horse's Clone May Redefine Animal Breeding
schwit1 sends this report from the LA Times:
"Lynx Melody Too, a clone of a renowned quarter horse, is at the center of a lawsuit that could change the world of animal breeding and competition. Texas horse breeder Jason Abraham and veterinarian Gregg Veneklasen sued the American Quarter Horse Assn., claiming that Lynx Melody Too should be allowed to register as an official quarter horse. A Texas jury decided in their favor in 2013, but a three-judge panel of the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals reversed that ruling in January, saying there was 'insufficient' evidence of wrongdoing by the association.
The suit is among the first to deal with the status of clones in breeding and competition, and its outcome could impact a number of fields, including thoroughbred horse racing and dog breeding. The quarter horse association is adamant that clones and their offspring have no place in its registry. "It's what AQHA was founded on — tracking and preserving the pedigrees of these American quarter horses," said Tom Persechino, executive director of marketing for the association. "When a person buys an American quarter horse, they want to know that my quarter horse has the blood of these horses running through it, not copies of it."
The suit is among the first to deal with the status of clones in breeding and competition, and its outcome could impact a number of fields, including thoroughbred horse racing and dog breeding. The quarter horse association is adamant that clones and their offspring have no place in its registry. "It's what AQHA was founded on — tracking and preserving the pedigrees of these American quarter horses," said Tom Persechino, executive director of marketing for the association. "When a person buys an American quarter horse, they want to know that my quarter horse has the blood of these horses running through it, not copies of it."
"they want to know that my quarter horse has the blood of these horses running through it, not copies of it"
Unless American quarter horses are sinister equine vampires of some kind, I'm fairly sure that no quarter horse has the blood of any other quarter horse, let alone multiple quarter horses, running through it. That's just not this 'heredity' stuff works.
If they can clone 1/4 horse today, it won't be long until they can clone an entire horse.
If he doesn't like it, he can set up his own "2/8 Horse" association and certify which horses are officially "2/8 Horses".
"When a person buys an American quarter horse, they want to know that my quarter horse has the blood of these horses running through it, not copies of it."
Well, ick. Blood from horses that lived fifty or a hundred years ago must be getting seriously stinky by now.
In other news, this spokesman appears to be willfully ignorant of the most rudimentary concepts of biology. I guess "understanding" would ruin the nobility and romance of breeding...
This is no different than the music and movie industry - an archaic business segment eliminated through innovation that allows better quality for 1/10th the price.
n/t
Have gnu, will travel.
Imagine the future NBA if it permitted clones. Every team would be fielding a dream team with clones of the same player on multiple teams.
It completely destroys their monopoly. They basically just discovered how to factory produce diamonds, they have to make sure they are never worth as much or their entire organisation is doomed.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
Cloning would completely destroy the sport. The whole fcking point is the slow and laborious process of breeding the prefect horse. Every one unique. It is not about stealing a clipping of the winner horses hair and creating a copy, or generically engineering an even better race horse. Considering that both the sports and the breeding would be destroyed by the ability to just create whatever you want in the lab, how else are they to respond?
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
At the moment, natural-born animals have fewer complications throughout their lives.
Keeping track of pedigrees is arguably more important now that clones are starting to show up.
Horses are expensive; who wants to lay out $10K (or more) without some assurance that your horse will live a heathly life.
See problems with animal cloning:
http://learn.genetics.utah.edu...
said Tom Persechino, executive director of marketing for the association. "When a person buys an American quarter horse, they want to know that my quarter horse has the blood of these horses running through it, not copies of it."
Does Mr. Persechino not understand what the word "copy" means? Perhaps he's never met twins?
It sounds a lot like the diamond industry where they finally perfected an industrial means of making diamonds at a much lower price than the ones that De Beers charge for their "precious" diamonds. So what does the "precious" diamond industry do? They claim that manufactured diamonds aren't as "precious" as the ones they dig out of the ground. No shit Sherlock! The price is set by the supply, but now the supply is not so small now is it? And as for the diamonds? I don't think they "care" whether they're made in some deep volcanic process or in an industrial plant. They're still... DIAMONDS!
In Canada the hypermale Starbuck clone was create from Starbuck the more prolific semen donor in history, the semen of the clone was illegal in Canada (article in french) the funny part hs semens is legal in USA.
By the way the Starbuck name was use as a title of a Canadian film that was remake in the USA under the name of Delivery Man . think of that the next time you put milk in your coffee.
Ceci n'est pas une Signature !
Any sufficiently profound stupidity is indistinguishable from malice.
Yes, the American Quarter Horse Association is woefully ignorant of science and biology here. But none of that matters. The bottom line is the association is a private, non-governmental organization, and provided they are following federal law and state law where they are headquartered, they should have the right to admit or bar any horse they want. If they decide to bar white horses because its Tuesday, that's their privilege.
I want a new quote. One that won't spill. One that don't cost too much. Or come in a pill.
2. There's an element of "follow the money" here. Breeding in those industries is big money. Will the ones who make the most from breeding be opposed to cloning, or would they want to be able to copy their best animals for perpetual breeding income long after the original died? Of course, the species can't improve through cloning, so even if the process is perfect it really shouldn't have a huge impact. Couple three generations later, the breeding competition should be able to come along with a much better animal than that copy some breeder has been hoarding for a few decades.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Synthetic ruby and sapphire are even better examples. They are dissed because they are flawless and inexpensive.
Scientifically, I agree the clone should qualify.
But how is this an issue for the courts? Why should there be a legal definition of a certified quarter horse?
I just think if a dorky organization wants to certify horses that exclude clones, they should be able to until such time as it comes becomes bankrupt.
-Dave
As we saw with Dolly the Sheep, a clone is not an exact copy of an animal. It may contain nearly all the DNA information but first this DNA may be damaged (if nothing else, shortened telomers) and second it may not contain all the exact matrilineal content. This include both midocondral DNA as well as an epigenetic controls the mother's cell line places on its DNA. It is possible someone could have take those into account and made the best possible approximation to those. But it also possible that the crucial developmental characteristics of a quarter horse are in those missing elements.
Thus at a minimum the Quarter horse association could reasonably say that unless the donor cell line is from a quarter horse, it is not a quarter horse. It would also be someone reasonable to say that even with that precaution the shortened telomers mean this is a genetically damaged quarter horse and they want to exclude it from breeding with genetically healthy quarter horses.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
I know what they mean, but I also know it is meaningless. There is no real "bloodline" which is broken by cloning; the foal of a clone has the same grandsire and granddam as the original.
Think one half of a side of beef, only horse instead of cow.
Seriously though, it's a breed name - if we were talking Collies or Persian Cats would you still make such inane comments? (Incidentally it got its name for its ability to outpace other breeds in sprints of a quarter-mile or less)
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
... so it's their rules.
We're done here.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
Horse racing is all about genetic and breeding differences. The whole industry is predicated on unique horses that provides artificial scarcity. Horse race gambling is entire predicated on the chance that an unknown will be bred with enough genetic difference that allows it to be a better athlete.
While it's true that there isn't a huge difference between genetically created clones and breeding (genetic manipulation either way, breeding is just more random), the fact that cloning can lead to multiple copies and genetic enhancements would destroy the industry. Requiring traditional breeding techniques may be seen as "idealistic rubbish" but it supports a multi-billion dollar industry (39 billion in the US alone).
If clone makers really want to race their creations, why don't they start their own horse racing league and their own horse registry?
If you want to watch a race with a level playing field and where the rider/driver makes the major difference, it's called NASCAR.
That actually *would* be a reasonable objection, but I have no reason to believe that the spokesman understood this. But do note that clones currently are not likely to be as healthy as the original, and are likely to have various epigenetic markers which will mean that they will not perform in the same way that the original would. Also even in normal reproduction there tend to be copying errors. Clones have a much larger number of these "copying errors" because many error correcting processes are suppressed. (Check on the rate of "spontaneous abortions" prior to the first month of pregnancy. Probably shorter on animals with shorter gestations. You'd be surprised at how high it is, but generally these are never noticed.)
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Different AC.
> they'd realize that the blood of a horse is indistinguishable from the blood of its clone
I can't imagine gene expression would be *exactly* the same between the two, unless they lived relatively identical lives. ;)
They're quite right not to allow some shimmy shammy clone to register on the merits of it's DNA, just look at what happened with the Storm Trooper fiasco. They took one incredible bounty hunter, with mad skills and fantastic aim - and churned out millions of copies that couldn't hit the side of the huge desert crawling robot factory. They also had no appreciable hand to hand skills or the same muscle tone.
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.
Up until now if someone had an elite horse there was a limited amount of breeding it could do but that limit was still a huge number of horses. Thus most of the racing elite could get a taste of that DNA on their ranch. This kept out the riff-raff but still allowed the fairly rich to play. But with full on Cloning this will leave all but the richest unable to pay for this. For most of the horses that result from breeding a great horse just aren't champions.
But even worse is that if a real uber-champion comes along the normal course of events is that it would have a few good years and then be put out to breed. Now a very rich person could breed a new copy pretty much every year so that at least one copy of the uber-champion is ready to run. This person might not even sell the copies, just keep running them and keep wining.
So think of hockey team where they are able to buy only the entire line up of the best players. But then these players literally never retire.
So while these guys obviously have no real idea how DNA works; what they are doing is trying to twist reality into a form that suits their needs. The general rule of thumb is the further you bend reality the worse it hurts when it snaps back into your face.
No, insubstantial difference. That is, if the "bloodline" is a shorthand for real physical things, cloning does not break it. If it's some sort of nonphysical woo, sure, cloning could break it, but nonphysical woo isn't real.
If they want to make arbitrary rules for their horse-breeding game, I'm fine with that. But I'm not going to pretend they're anything but arbitrary rules.
that as a clone, the horse will of course be a soulless tool of Satan, existing only to usher in the era of the Antichrist.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.