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A Biohacker's Plan to Upgrade Dalmatians Ends Up in the Doghouse

posted by cmn32480 on Thursday February 02 2017, @04:57PM   Printer-friendly
from the teenage-mutant-ninja-doggies dept.

Phoenix666 writes:

Ishee, a member of what's called the "biohacker" movement, says he is hoping to use inexpensive new gene-editing techniques to modify the genes of Dalmatians. By repairing a single DNA letter in their genomes, Ishee believes, he can rid them of an inherited disease, hyper uricemia, almost as closely associated with the breed as their white coats and black spots.

In early January, Ishee sent the agency a sketch of his plans to fix Dalmatians expecting to be told no approval was needed. He didn't immediately hear back—and soon found out why. On January 18, the agency released a sweeping new proposal to regulate cattle, pigs, dogs, and other animals modified with gene-editing.

The federal health agency already regulates transgenic animals—those with DNA added from a different species. But what about a dog whose genome has been tweaked to repair a disease gene? Or to endow it with the gene for a trait, like fluffy fur, already found in another canine? According to the newly proposed regulations, such creations will also need federal approval before entering the marketplace.

Is it government overreach, or do such restrictions make sense?

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  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by gringer on Thursday February 02 2017, @09:00PM

    by gringer (962) on Thursday February 02 2017, @09:00PM (#462097)

    Direct gene manipulation will result in a lot fewer fuck-ups than the current "acceptable" methods of breeding dogs with their siblings and cousins. At least if you're manipulating a single gene, you know that the effects are specifically associated with that gene manipulation, rather than one of many different modified areas of the genome.

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  • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday February 02 2017, @10:22PM

    by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Thursday February 02 2017, @10:22PM (#462148) Homepage Journal

    Which is all fine and good until you flip the Super Mutant Hellhound gene. Or the Exude Toxic Sweat gene. And it somehow gets into the wild.

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    • (Score: 2) by gringer on Friday February 03 2017, @01:24AM

      by gringer (962) on Friday February 03 2017, @01:24AM (#462200)

      And it somehow gets into the wild.

      • And is resistant to all attempts to kill it.
      • And manages to breed (and produce similarly-adjusted offsprint) before it's been found to be dangerous.

      A dog that caused problems of the scale that you're suggesting would be pretty quickly Darwined out of the population. We have a lot more to worry about from mutant bacteria and viruses (with generation times of days and hours) than we do from mutant mammals (except perhaps Donald Trump).

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      Ask me about Sequencing DNA in front of Linus Torvalds [youtube.com]