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9/11 ‘hero dog’ is cloned five times
Trust, Valor, Prodigy, Solace and Deja Vu are clones of Trakr, a German shepherd that with his handler was one of the first to arrive and begin searching for survivors on September 12, 2001 at the site of the World Trade Center. Trakr located the last human survivor rescued from the rubble.
The dogs were cloned by California firm BioArts International, in collaboration with South Korea’s SooAm Biotech Research Foundation, directed by disgraced scientist Woo-Suk Hwang .
“The physical similarities are uncanny,” he told AFP. “He’s the spitting image of the Trakr that I first met in 1995. He has exactly the same markings, the way he moves, everything. Very alert, very intelligent and intuitive.”
Of course, cloning is not a way of raising the dead. There are plenty of reasons why you might want to clone an animal - it may be an endangered species, a prize livestock animal, or a champion racehorse - but doing it to resurrect a beloved companion seems to be a dubious one.
The cost of cloning will prevent most people going down this route. BioArts boss Lou Hawthorne said dog cloning, at about $144,000 per clone, would remain beyond the reach of ordinary pet lovers. Hawthorne owns three clones of one of his own former pets, a collie-husky cross called Missy. (Read our interview with Hawthorne)
Meanwhile Hwang’s former employers, Seoul National University, have their own canine programme, and recently created the world’s first transgenic dog.