🐕 Tom Brady cloned his dog. Should you?

Tom Brady just cloned his dog. Should you?

In retirement, former NFL star Tom Brady has embraced what he calls a “second chance.”

Brady revealed that his dog, Junie, is actually a clone of Lua, a pit bull mix he and his ex-wife, Gisele Bündchen, shared before the dog’s passing in late 2023.

The announcement came as part of a news release from Colossal Biosciences, which detailed its acquisition of Viagen, a biotechnology company. Viagen holds the rights to the same cloning technology that produced Dolly the sheep in 1996. Brady, an investor in Colossal, said he collaborated with the company “a few years ago,” noting that the cloning process required only a simple blood draw from Lua before her death.

“In a few short months, Colossal gave my family a second chance with a clone of our beloved dog,” Brady said.

Cloning adult cells was once considered impossible, as mature cells were thought to have fixed functions. That perception changed in the 1990s when Scottish researchers cloned Dolly by removing the nucleus from a mammary gland cell, inserting it into an enucleated egg, and stimulating it to divide. The embryo was then implanted in a surrogate, resulting in the birth of Dolly, the first mammal cloned from an adult cell, in July 1996.

Viagen has since cloned pets for celebrities including Paris Hilton, who is also a Colossal investor, and Barbra Streisand. The company has successfully cloned 15 species, including endangered animals such as the black-footed ferret and Mongolia’s Przewalski’s horse. Earlier this year, Colossal reported producing three dire wolves—extinct for over 10,000 years—through a de-extinction program.

On Viagen’s website, preserving a pet’s genetics costs about $1,600, while cloning a dog or cat runs around $50,000. Streisand began the cloning process for her dog Samantha in the pet’s final days, describing the experience as a way to “keep some part of her alive” even after her passing.

Since Dolly, dozens of animals have been cloned worldwide using similar techniques. South Korean researchers announced the first cloned dog in 2005. Experts emphasize that cloning produces only a genetic twin; it does not recreate the original animal’s personality.

A dog’s behavior is shaped by both genetics and environment. Even if Junie looks like Lua, experts caution the clone may not bond with Brady in the same way and will have no memory of shared experiences.

A 2022 study of 1,000 cloned dogs found that only about 2 percent of attempts resulted in a living puppy, with roughly 20 dying shortly after birth. The researchers noted no evidence of increased disease or premature death among surviving clones.

Samuel Gorovitz, a philosophy professor at Syracuse University who studies medical ethics, said the greatest risk of animal cloning is “self-deception.”

“There’s no harm to the pet being cloned, nor to the resulting animal,” Gorovitz explained. “But the new pet will not be the beloved prior pet. At best, it will share some important traits.”

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• 🍎 This might be a good reason to do your next grocery run at Aldi.

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• 😲 This mom-to-be was stunned to see a scan of her baby that looked like her dog.

Today’s Last Laugh:

Why are we like this…?

@trezanderson_

The dog parents that get it, get it. #treztiwaun #funny #comedy