BIOTECH LINKS

• CLONING PETS
  
  On August 04, 2005 the story of "Snuppy", the first cloned dog, came out. The research was carried out in South Korea.
   

  "Snuppy" and genetic donor

  "Snuppy" and surrogate mother

  Here is the link to the story on the BBC. It has a video where you can see Snuppy and hear what the scientists who worked on the project have to say:
  
  Click => BBC Story

  Click => Movie

  Apparently the idea isn't just to make people who like dogs happy. The article says:
  
  "Scientists hope dog clones will help them understand and treat a range of serious human diseases.

  "The dog has characteristics similar to human beings," lead researcher Woo Suk Hwang of Seoul National University, South Korea, told the BBC. "Some of their diseases are almost the same as human diseases.

  "So [dog clones] could be very valuable in finding technologies useful for curing human diseases. This is our main research call."
   

• In June, 2004 a US company called Genetic Savings & Clone, Inc. announced that after over five years of research and development, it launched its "Nine Lives Extravaganza," the world's first commercial cat cloning service. It uses what was then a new cloning technique called chromatin transfer (CT), which involves pre-treating the cell of the animal to be cloned to remove molecules associated with cell differentiation.
  
  The motivation seemed*  to be mainly to make cat owners happy and to make money for the company. A cloned cat originally cost $50,000, but the company reduced the price to $32,000. Apparently even this was too much to attract customers.
  
  (*past tense - read below about what happened to the company)
   

• Oct 2006: Genetic Savings & Clone has gone bankrupt! It seems not enough people were interested in spending so much to clone their pets.
  
  Here's a link to the story.
   

• THIS, HOWEVER, MAKES A BIT MORE SENSE... BIOTECH CATS FOR PEOPLE WHO ARE USUALLY ALLERGIC TO CATS
  Click => CNN - 27 OCTOBER 04
  
  And here's the company that's producing them
  Click => ALLERCA
  
  Apparently, this company is doing OK financially. One of the reasons seems to be that the service is not as expensive as the one described above.
   

• Also, a company called ViaGen - which was financially connected to Genetic Savings & Clone but has proven to be more successful - is using gene technology to offer products and services to commercial livestock breeders. This company seems to be doing well, too.
  
  Click => ViaGen
   

• ESSAY
  Please write an essay of about 100 words that explains what you think about cloning animals.
  Click => HERE
   

• GLOSSARY (with listening sections)
  Click => U.S. National Human Genome Research Institute's Glossary of Genetic Terms
   

• GRAPHICS
  Click => Access Excellence of the U.S. National Health Museum
   

• NEWS
  Click => www.biospace.com
  

GRAMMAR LINK

• Past Simple Tense