Man Clone’s Best Friend: Tom Brady’s new puppy is a copy of the original

Seven-time Super Bowl champion Tom Brady stepped into one of biotechnology’s thorniest debates this week when he revealed that his dog Junie was a genetic clone of Lua, the pit bull mix he once shared with his ex-wife, Gisele Bündchen.

The revelation placed one of the world’s most famous athletes at the center of a growing commercial market for pet cloning. The field continues to raise ethical questions about animal welfare, scientific oversight and how far private companies should push genetic engineering.

Brady said Texas-based Colossal Biosciences created Junie using a blood draw shortly before Lua died in late 2023.

“Tom is an advisor and investor in Colossal, which is how we originally started discussing the possibility of cloning Lua,” said Matt James, Chief Animal Officer of Colossal. Declutter. “Tom continues to provide critical advice and insights on Colossal’s mission.”

Brady’s involvement in the projects extends beyond the client: the former quarterback is working with the biotech company.

“A few years ago, I worked with Colossal and took advantage of their non-invasive cloning technology through a simple blood draw from our family’s senior dog before she passed away,” Brady said. ABCNews. “Within a few months, Colossal gave my family a second chance with a clone of our beloved dog.”

On Tuesday, Colossal announced its acquisition of Viagen, the Texas company that owned the rights to the technology that scientists at the Roslin Institute used to clone Dolly the sheep in 1996.

Viagen has long been a central player in the field of pet cloning.

The company previously cloned dogs for Paris Hilton and Barbra Streisand and said it had cloned 15 species, including a black-footed ferret and the Przewalski’s horse. The acquisition supported Colossal’s broader cloning ambitions.

“Viagen’s success in companion animal cloning has been critical to their ability to develop and optimize their world-class cloning technologies and expertise,” said James.

“By using this model to fund and drive this technology development, we have been able to unlock and enhance tools that drive progressive conservation efforts. This type of approach to conservation complements and accelerates Colossal’s mission for species recovery and conservation.”

Colossal Bioscience’s work attracted widespread attention earlier this year when the company said it had produced three “dire wolves,” puppies that carried dire wolf DNA.

That effort was based on ancient DNA extracted from a 13,000-year-old tooth and a 72,000-year-old inner ear bone, which scientists developed into a modern wolf cell line.

The resulting puppies, Remus, Romulus and Khaleesi, were part of what Colossal described as a long-term animal extinction and conservation program involving partnerships with conservationists and indigenous groups.

‘Playing God’

When asked if these projects amounted to “playing God,” Colossal founder Ben Lamm responded Declutter people had already crossed that threshold.

“We play God every day,” he said. “We are on track to lose up to 50% of all biodiversity by 2050.”

Complementing the ethical question surrounding cloning of pets, especially dogs, is the type of lifespan the new dog will have. A survey from July 2022 in Nature of 1,000 cloned dogs found that only about 2% of attempts resulted in a live puppy and about 20 cloned dogs died shortly after birth.

However, James said Viagen’s data showed that cloned animals led normal lives.

“With more than two decades of cloning experience, Viagen has been able to demonstrate that cloned animals have the same length and quality of life as their peers,” he said.

Animal rights groups warned that the industry remains opaque and lightly regulated, with high rates of failed pregnancies and premature newborn deaths during the cloning process.

In a 2018 article, the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) criticized Streisand’s decision to clone her dog, noting that millions of adoptable animals were already in shelters.

“Cloning is a horror show: a waste of lives, time and money,” PETA said in a statement. “The suffering caused by such experiments is unimaginable. There is no good excuse for them, and they must end now.”

The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) took an even stronger stance, calling for a moratorium on the research, promotion and sale of cloned and bioengineered pets. The organization said reports of anatomical and physiological problems in cloned mammals raise unresolved welfare concerns.

“It is difficult to fully document the impacts of cloning or bioengineered applications of companion animals, as many of these activities fall outside the scope of government-funded and regulated research programs,” the group said in a release. “While this work is privately funded, it requires public attention and critical scrutiny.”

Despite these concerns, Colossal says it is working to ensure “optimal welfare” for the animals it clones.

“We have robust wellness monitoring tools and strategies in place to consistently track these metrics,” James said.

“In addition, the tools and techniques developed and optimized through Viagen’s processes are only available because of their work and are applied to projects of conservation importance, which also ensures the well-being of critically endangered species and ecosystems,” James added.