How to Clone Animals

[BEEPS AND STATIC]
[MUSIC PLAYING]
NINA MAK: When the media covers pet cloning, it's often
fluff pieces and these warm, fuzzy pieces about, oh, look
how cute these animals are and isn't it cool
that we could do this?
And there's very little coverage, if any, of what it
really meant to clone that animal and what it took.
DR. DUANE KRAEMER: I think it more of reproduction.
If we had created her, we'd have started from
nothing and made her.
But we started with ova from other cats and cells from
another cat and just put them together in a way that they
could reproduce.
That's not vastly different than people
that arrange for mating.
It's just that we threw in some technology.

[MUSIC PLAYING]
DR. DUANE KRAEMER: I'm Duane Kraemer.
I'm a professor at Texas A&M University.
I've been working in the area of embryo transfer cloning and
genetic engineering.

My dream was to become a farmer.
And I went to the university intending to just get what I
needed to come back.
And then I got bit by the research bug.
My father was very disappointed that I didn't
come back to the farm.
My mother said, well, I knew you'd find something better.
And I didn't mean that it was better, it was just different.
Cloning, as it's most customarily practiced at the
present, involves the transfer of nuclei from cells and
transferring those cells into eggs where the nucleus has
been removed, and then the nucleus from the animal to be
cloned is put in its place.
If it's a mammal, those new embryos then have to be
transferred into recipient females for them
to carry on to term.
And usually, those recipient animals nurse them and raise
them as well.

This is the first of the deer to be cloned.
This is Dewey.
Students named him after me.
I think it's because I insisted that he be allowed to
be born natural birth.
And he survived.
I think that earned me that privilege, I guess.
NINA MAK: The truth is that cloning is highly experimental
and very problematic.
And most of the time, it doesn't work.
Only a few clones have actually been born
successfully.
And of the ones that have been, a good percentage
actually end up dying within the first six months, because
they have some sort of complication, health
abnormality, a physical deformity,
something like that.
You talk about using a very large number of animals to
even try to produce just one clone.
DR. DUANE KRAEMER: Some people just don't like anything
that's unnatural and think they can abide by that.
But of course, most of the things they do are unnatural.
I think it has to do with the Hollywood version, to some
extent, of cloning.
They have always pretty much made it a
monster kind of activity.
Well, I hope that there will be continued research to make
it more dependable.
At present, about 25% of offspring have some type of
abnormality.
They're developmental abnormalities.
They're not mutations.
They don't get passed on to the next generation.
But they need special care.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
DR. DUANE KRAEMER: These are microscopes we
use to find the eggs.
We have to get the eggs out of ovaries.
It is simple after you learn how to do it.
But there are just many, many details
that have to be followed.
And if you do one thing wrong, then the chain is broken and
you get nothing from it.
Well, our team is working on a genetic engineering of
livestock to produce animals that are resistant to disease.
This is the cloned bull that's resistant to brucellosis,
which is a disease that causes abortion in cattle and
undulant fever in humans.
The original bull was naturally resistant to it.
His cells that were used for cloning him have been stored
for 15 years.
His name is Bruce after brucellosis.
The process of selective breeding to produce superior
individuals has been going on for many years, even using
natural breeding.
And then embryo transfer and artificial insemination made
that process more efficient, where you could get more
offspring from the genetically valuable animals.
If they're superior and can't reproduce by themselves, then
the techniques such as cloning can produce offspring.
Anything we do could be used incorrectly and wrongly.
And most things are by somebody somewhere, sometime.
GEORGE W. BUSH: Chinese scientists have derived stem
cells from cloned embryos created by combining human DNA
and rabbit eggs.
Others have announced plans to produce cloned children,
despite the fact that laboratory cloning of animals
has led to spontaneous abortions and terrible,
terrible abnormalities.

Human cloning is deeply troubling to
me and to most Americans.
DR. DUANE KRAEMER: The issue of human cell storage is one
that we have not dealt with.
We don't have any--
don't even have my cells stored here.
We have not worked at all with the human cells.
Anyone who could effectively culture and preserve cells
from animals would be able to do so with humans as well.

[MUSIC PLAYING]
DR. DUANE KRAEMER: I still get goose bumps
when I see an embryo.
It's just kind of thrilling to be able to see something as
simple as a little embryo that you know can develop into
something as complex as a complete individual.

CC was, I think, a special cat, because she was the first
of the pets to be cloned.

It's not a new creation.
We're just helping with reproduction.
Cats had more to do with it than we did.
It was their eggs that made it possible and the recipient
that made it possible.
I'm pleased with the result and pleased to have been a
part of it.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
SHIRLEY KRAEMER: Come on over and meet those kitties.
-Yeah.
SHIRLEY KRAEMER: Yeah, come on over.
-Grazie.
SHIRLEY KRAEMER: Right over here's their house.

DR. DUANE KRAEMER: She's up in that window.
SHIRLEY KRAEMER: She's up in that window.
And that's her favorite place.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
SHIRLEY KRAEMER: Hi, CC.
Come on.
Say hello, CC.
Hi, Cece, how you doing?
How you doing, CC?
I worried when CC was expecting.
I thought, oh, what if she's born with two children without
ears and one without a tail?
I'm going to have to say, oh, this is not good.
But she came through for us.
She came through.
CC came through.
CC's a good kitty.
CC's a good kitty.
She said, I know, I know.

She knew exactly what to do.
I really worried about that, because I thought, I'm going
to have to buy little bottles and feed each kitten.
No, I didn't have to.
She was a wonderful mother.
DR. DUANE KRAEMER: It's in the genes.
SHIRLEY KRAEMER: It's in the genes.
DR. DUANE KRAEMER: Different species have different
instincts and behaviors.
That's one thing about the clones.
They all act like their own species.
SHIRLEY KRAEMER: Species, yeah.
DR. DUANE KRAEMER: It's a privilege to have been in a
situation where we could do this and also to be able to
enjoy her is an added privilege.
If people want to use their resources to get a genetic
copy of their original pet, I don't see
anything wrong with that.
NINA MAK: There's a life that gets lived-- a beginning,
middle, and an end.
And it's hard to deal with the end.
But that's part of life.
And trying to prevent that from being a part of life with
this idea that you could somehow have the same animal
your whole life--
these are still animals, and they still very much matter.
And to treat them like objects, it's not really
something that I find acceptable.
DR. DUANE KRAEMER: They say, accusatory, you're playing
God, creating something.
No more than anybody else is creating.
Besides, I'm doing it to serve God, not to take his place.
And I'm not playing.
This is my vocation--
work, but really good work.
SHIRLEY KRAEMER: There you go, CC.
[MUSIC PLAYING]