Of Course Tom Brady Cloned His Dog
Tom Brady is a man who has never eaten a strawberry but is, apparently, brave enough to clone his family dog. Really! On Tuesday, the former athlete revealed that his pit bull, Junie, is a clone of a previous family dog named Lua (the very same one he shared with his ex-wife, Gisele Bündchen).
For this scientific feat, Brady teamed up with Colossal Biosciences, a company that claims to be “the world’s only de-extinction company.” Colossal recently acquired Viagen Pets & Equine, another biotech company that has a history of cloning celebrity dogs. Barbra Streisand and Paris Hilton are two of Viagen’s past customers, for what it’s worth, and Streisand used the company to clone her dog Samantha twice.
“A few years ago, I worked with Colossal and leveraged their non-invasive cloning technology through a simple blood draw of our family’s elderly dog before she passed,” Brady said in a news release, according to People. He added that the technology “gave my family a second chance with a clone of our beloved dog,” and he’s “excited how Colossal and Viagen’s tech together can help both families losing their beloved pets while helping to save endangered species.” Black Mirror writers, are you listening?
Besides bringing cherished pets back to life, Colossal claims to have cloned and resurrected ancient dire wolves from extinction, although Philip Seddon, a zoology professor at the University of Otago in New Zealand, told the BBC that the animals produced by the company are just “genetically modified grey wolves.” Does that mean Brady’s new dog is just a genetically modified pit bull? Seems like it.
If his new partnership with Colossal suddenly makes you interested in bringing a modified version of your dog or cat back to life, Viagen said that producing your pet’s genetic twin would cost $50,000 in 2016. (It’s presumably higher today, though I’m unsure whether inflation applies to genetic cloning.) While I can’t say I see this going well, I do hope that one day they’ll bring back the most fashionable dog on Instagram: Tika the Iggy.
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