I was on the way to work and...
...was listening to a news story about whether or not genetically altered salmon (create to grow twice as fast as regular salmon) would be safe for consumption and the environment. Now this got me to thinking about other things, especially the use of genetic alterations done on dogs. I know that there are labs creating dogs (and cats) with altered proteins to make them hypoallergenic. But what if, one day in the future when this technology becomes even more advanced, a breeder decides to visit one of these labs and genetically create a dog that was considered "perfect" ( and for this argument, let's imagine that perfection is achievable), it fit the standard for a specific breed exactly.
How do you feel this will affect the show/dog world? Any thoughts or comments?
How do you feel this will affect the show/dog world? Any thoughts or comments?
Comments
I find the term genetic engineering a bit ambiguous when it comes to breeding practices. In reality, any time we are artificially selecting for certain traits over others and interfering with natural selection, we are performing genetic engineering. That being said, to me there is a fundamental difference between selective breeding and using technology to create something specific. For the purposes of this discussion, I will use "genetic engineering" to refer to using science to create something specific (i.e. not just selective breeding).
1) I would not personally participate in the breeding of or purchase of a dog genetically altered to fit a standard. Why? Because I think it fails to honor a tradition. Breeding is part science, part art, and a lot of luck. The science is your basic evolutionary biology. The art is in the experience of the breeders and their knowledge of how to run a breeding program. The luck, is well, luck. By genetically engineering a dog to fit a standard, you are moving all of the art to the science and therefore fundamentally changing what it means to have a dog and compete or work with it.
2) I would be happy to participate in the breeding or purchase of a dog genetically altered to eliminate crippling health problems like HD, LP, IBD, etc. I have no problem with using science to increase the quality of life for dogs. If genetically altered dogs can be healthier, then I believe it is an ethically responsible thing to do to create a gene pool that is free from these debilitating diseases. That being said, I still feel like the art of breeding to a standard should be retained in breeding programs. So I'm still not in support of genetically engineering a "perfect" dog.
3) I would be supportive of efforts to breed true working dogs using genetic techniques. I'm not talking about your average hunter who wants a dog to have fun with on the weekends. I'm talking about mission critical roles that dogs fulfill: guide dogs, assistance dogs, bomb sniffing dogs, etc. Provided the genetic engineering of these dogs does not reduce their quality of life, then I'm supportive of it.
I'll need time to pull together my thoughts coherently, but here are some bullets:
-A perfect dog is in the eyes of the beholder. A German Shepherd that is a powerhouse as a police dog may be mediocre as a sheep-herding/sheep-boundry dog. Both functions are true working functions, but different levels of prey drive components and different level of independence/decision-making are needed from the dog.
-There are still so many theories about what constitutes good functional conformation that are either contradictory to what's seen in working/native dogs or simply not relevant. As an example, see this link: http://saluqi.home.netcom.com/belkin.htm
-A dog that is is "genetically perfectly healthy" is only because it is currently well-adapted to his current environment. A dog or a group of dogs that is homozygously "perfect" sacrifices adaptability to change. In the plant kingdom, think of the potato blight that wiped out the potatoes in Ireland, or the fungal disease that wiped out the production banana in the 1950's.
I guess my thoughts have more been on the fact that using science to alter or eventually create an animal is starting to become more common place and that eventually someone who wants to compete can just go out and build their ideal dog for that situation. Is it cheating, I mean they didn't get a dog from a breeder but there would still be some training needed.
A lot of our food is being scientifically modified, at one point they were selling carrots that supposedly tasted like chocolate. And they've already altered the dna of some cats to make them hypoallergenic (made it so the cat produces a different type of protein than the one people are allergic to). And whose to say that science won't one day create a dog that looks like a shiba but has the textbook lab (or pibble, or spaniel or husky) personality.
Also, check out this one site, some people may have heard of it before:
http://www.genpets.com/index.php
It is a website advertising the sale a creatures created in a lab by mixing dna of various creatures, including human. These creatures, known as GenPets, are color coded according to personality and you have your choice of 1yr or 3yr lifespan. These creatures are packaged like a barbie doll, put in some sort of sleep mode, and if left on the shelf too long will spoil like the meat at a super market.
This site is actually part of an elaborate art display, which includes being exhibited in art galleries and a retail store. On his webpage (http://www.brandejs.ca/portfolio/Genpets/What) he explains the reasons and even offers up a link to emails he has received from his GenPets page. Looking through the emails, he has received more people requesting to buy one of these "pets" than complaints about how cruel he is for retailing living things. Though whose to say that one day something like this will be the only way to get a new dog.
"-A dog that is is "genetically perfectly healthy" is only because it is currently well-adapted to his current environment. A dog or a group of dogs that is homozygously "perfect" sacrifices adaptability to change. In the plant kingdom, think of the potato blight that wiped out the potatoes in Ireland, or the fungal disease that wiped out the production banana in the 1950's."
Wouldn't genetic science in essence give adaptability to dogs create, since you can modify future pups with immunity to any major plights that may occur. For example, using potatoes as well, in the mid 90s scientists had discovered a way to modify the genetic makeup of a potato to include the production of a certain protein that was deadly to the potato beetle. These potatoes were able to fight off a major threat to it's production, and scientists were ready to alter it further to be able to fight other diseases if it weren't for the protesting of people who found out about this modification. And today, it is very hard to find corn that has been or descend from plants that weren't genetically modified by scientists to resist certain diseases or become better producers.
Right when I was leaving college, people were starting to use viruses to splice into genes. Viruses naturally embed themselves into a genome, forcing affected cells to make more viruses, and researchers were exploring the virus's ability to both enter cells and make DNA changes. This technology actually worries me a bit. Viruses can stay embedded into a genome, laying dorment and unrecognized, until something switches them on into reproducing/lysis mode. How potent are the viruses that researchers are using? How controlled are their insertions? We humans can contract viruses through our digestive tract.
Link, in case you want to buy some.
-A dog that is is "genetically perfectly healthy" is only because it is currently well-adapted to his current environment. A dog or a group of dogs that is homozygously "perfect" sacrifices adaptability to change. In the plant kingdom, think of the potato blight that wiped out the potatoes in Ireland, or the fungal disease that wiped out the production banana in the 1950's.
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This sort of assumes that dogs everywhere are replaced with dogs that are all genetically identical to each other. I think the more practical application of making GMO dogs would just be eliminating genetic defects, but they'd have to know which gene is responsible. But, if you had a foundation stock of GMO dogs, which were known to be free of the gene, then you could continue to breed them as per normal, but without that one problem. The reason plants are susceptible is because they clone themselves, so of course, monoculture basically means the entire population has the same Achilles' heel, and they can all be felled by the same thing.
But, if you maintained diversity by only altering the undesirable trait, you could avoid this.