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I read about dog cloning a few years ago. I _believe_ it was done in China. One of the company's promises was that they would not charge for failed attempts a

I read about dog cloning a few years ago. I _believe_ it was done in China. One of the company's promises was that they would not charge for failed attempts at cloning. That lead me to think that they clone dogs and kill them if they don't look like they should and keep doing that until they're happy. Is this true?

gwern 9y ago
You almost certainly read about the South Korean company. (I'm not sure if there are any Chinese ones yet, it's plausible, but they must get less publicity.) Killing dogs would probably cost too much since the yields won't be too great, and more importantly, they have to deliver both quickly and as puppies. No one pays ~$50k for a clone of their dog or cat and doesn't take delivery as a puppy/kitten. How do you know they will grow up to not look like they should? They're just cute little balls of fluff.
- nkkollaw 9y ago
  Well, they said there would be multiple attempts, so I assume they're looking for eye color, patterns in the fur and stuff like that?
  - gwern 9y ago
    I think by multiple attempts they mean the viability of the cloning process itself. It's a tricky process and a lot of the cells or embryos will just die on you for various reasons. This is true even of human IVF: if you harvest 5 eggs from a woman, she'll be somewhat lucky to get 1 child born. This is because some of the embryos are clearly abnormal, die while stored, when implanted don't 'take' and result in a pregnancy, or the pregnancy ends in a miscarriage or stillbirth, so on average you need 5+ eggs to start with and many women will have to do 2 (or even more) IVF cycles to get their child. (And you can lose them after birth too! As OP notes, the runt of the litter died.) Similarly with cloning: you just lose lots of embryos along the way from 'cell sample' to 'happy panting healthy puppy delivered to new owner'.

gwern 9y ago

You almost certainly read about the South Korean company. (I'm not sure if there are any Chinese ones yet, it's plausible, but they must get less publicity.) Killing dogs would probably cost too much since the yields won't be too great, and more importantly, they have to deliver both quickly and as puppies. No one pays ~$50k for a clone of their dog or cat and doesn't take delivery as a puppy/kitten. How do you know they will grow up to not look like they should? They're just cute little balls of fluff.

nkkollaw 9y ago
Well, they said there would be multiple attempts, so I assume they're looking for eye color, patterns in the fur and stuff like that?
- gwern 9y ago
  I think by multiple attempts they mean the viability of the cloning process itself. It's a tricky process and a lot of the cells or embryos will just die on you for various reasons. This is true even of human IVF: if you harvest 5 eggs from a woman, she'll be somewhat lucky to get 1 child born. This is because some of the embryos are clearly abnormal, die while stored, when implanted don't 'take' and result in a pregnancy, or the pregnancy ends in a miscarriage or stillbirth, so on average you need 5+ eggs to start with and many women will have to do 2 (or even more) IVF cycles to get their child. (And you can lose them after birth too! As OP notes, the runt of the litter died.) Similarly with cloning: you just lose lots of embryos along the way from 'cell sample' to 'happy panting healthy puppy delivered to new owner'.