Whats your opinion on cloning racehorses?

Question

I've chosen the topic of racehorse cloning for an opinion paper in my Sociology class. What do you guys think about the subject? Please give a valid, specific reason for your answer. Try to weigh both the pros and cons as well. Consider how it could help or hurt the racing industry and how the genetics of the horses could be affected.

Thanks!

Abby

Answer 1

And financially, it would destroy thoroughbred breeding as an industry. If you could get a perfect clone of your favourite horse, why would you pay for some unknown foal? If the only use for non-cloned thoroughbreds is as host mares for cloned embroyos and as 'filler' for second-string races, where's the money?

Answer 2

Isn't that God's job? Seriously I think there are just somethings that should be left alone, you never know what could go wrong and the animal would have to pay for your mistakes.

Answer 3

Well Cloning is a touchy subject for one, but it can really help the world solve alot of problems, Cloning could be a good idea, to make Horses all have similar traits, and have a more well rounded competition, but if all the horses are too Genetically related, Recessive alleles will have a great chance of coming together and forming undesirable traits, Cloning is a bad idea, Genetic Engineering however would be very beneficial.

It is controversial however, some religious people will claim it is playing God, but they are not  the ones doing it so why should it bother them.

I hope my rambling helped a little bit

Answer 4

If i could clone secratariat or ruffin then i would be all for it.

Answer 5

Like Go4Gin said... the Jockey Club would never allow this.  you could maybe clone all the great racehorses, but the only think that horse would be allowed to do is pleasure riding... it would never be allowed to set foot on a track and it would never be allowed to breed racehorses.

Cloning, though, isn't much different from what we already do.  We try to breed a certain type of horse.  We have tried over time to make our horses faster and faster.  Only the successful ones (or ones with really good successful breeding... they can survive in breeding based on the sucess of their parents or siblings) get to breed.  People want to own successful mares and breed them to successful stallions.  It's not like we take random horses out of the field and then run them against each other... it's not like the breeding is random and we let all the mares and stallions out into the field together once a year to breed.  It's all carefully planned.  Owners of broodmares spend a lot of time and research considering which stallion they should select to breed with their mare.  The whole point is to make the same exact horse... everyone wants their own Secretariat.  People think that by breeding the best horses with the best horses, they'll get a remake of those horses.  

Look at what they're doing with La Ville Rouge and Dynaformer...  on their first mating, they produced Barbaro.  Since Barbaro, La Ville Rouge has not been bred to any stallion other than Dynaformer.  They think they'll make another Barbaro... and all the people in the world are waiting and hoping that Nicanor and Lentenor will become another Barbaro.  That's the whole point.  Look at AP Indy's heritage... he's by Seattle Slew out of a Secretariat mare... don't get me wrong, that's excellent breeding... but it was done for the specific purpose of making a Slew-creteriat.  That's the whole point of breeding in the thoroughbred industry... breed the best gene pools together... eliminate the weaker genes.

The problem is you need diversity in your gene pool... that's true for every species.  Any time you mix the same genes too many times, you start getting problems.  That's why there's laws against incest... because any child that was produced from such a union would have serious problems... mental or physical.  Look at dogs... Corgis have been bred together for far too long and it has made their legs all crooked so they have serious leg problems when they get older because their joints form so crooked.  Look at quarter horses... navicular disease wasn't always as big of a problem as it currently is and it's because they breed the same horses together all the time.

If we start limiting the gene pool even more than we already do, we're going to have a serious influx of problems in thoroughbreds.  There's a reason that some horses can't reproduce or die early or such things.  If we breed a Seabiscuit with a Dr Fager (ignoring the obvious complication of them both being stallions), we're going to create horses who die very young (Seabiscuit died at 14, Dr Fager at 12).  If we breed a Barbaro with a Secretariat, we're breeding horses who will have an increased chance of laminitis.  Ruffian's sire broke his leg 3 times in his career... in each year of his racing career he broke his leg... he made 2 returns, and was retired on the last.  Then he broke his leg in his paddock and was put down when he complicated the injury by thrashing around when he woke up from the anesthetic.  Ruffian broke her leg as a 2 year old, then suffered the serious fatal break as a 3 year old in the match race.  If we clone Ruffian so that she can reproduce and bring that speed back to the track, then we'd have some really fast horses with really brittle bones.  Personally I'd love to see Ruffian and even have my own personal Ruffian... but I realize that cloning simply not an option for the sport.

Furthermore, horse racing is supposed to be about uncertainty.  If we clone Secretariat and Sham and put them in the Belmont, then we know what will happen... the race track would do just as well to hand out the $2.10 return when the bettors place their bets because it's already forseen... you can't bet after the race is over... you can't even bet during the race.  The point of horse racing is that it's a game... it's a game for the horses, for the jockeys, for the trainers, for the owners, for the bettors... everyone.  The reason that it's fun is because you have to figure out from the past what will happen in the present.  Where would the game be if we had a bunch of horses that we already had?

The only possible good thing that cloning would do is allow us to see horses of different times race against each other so we would know who was actually the best.  The age old debate of Man o War v Secretariat would finally be decided.  And cloning might momentarily lure people back to the racetrack to see those sorts of classic races.  but if we have all horses that we've had before, at some point, the magic runs out... at some point there are no more classic races to be run.  Then the sport would be dead.  The point of horse racing is to re-create the past in the future... we all want to see another Man O War... but you have to make your own... it's cheating to re-produce Man O War himself.

And one last point - it wouldn't be fair to the new Secretariat, Man O War, Ruffian or whoever we re-create.  Clones are like twins... They're physically exactly alike, but they're two completely different people.  If we re-created a past horse, everyone would expect amazing things from the horse.  But that's not fair to the new horse.  Some horses win because they want to.  Ruffian had the spirit of a racehorse... she understood the game... she knew the point of the game was not to let anyone in front of her... she even knew that her morning workouts were a game (she'd pull her head down during workouts so that her rider would have to pull on the reins to get her head to come back up... but pulling on the reins means so faster... she wanted the rider to ask her to go faster... she knew.).  If we recreate another Ruffian, it would certainly have the raw talent to win, but it just might not care to.  There's plenty of horses in the world that just don't like racing... personally I hate running so I would hate any life where people made me do nothing but run.  If the new Ruffian doesn't want to race, it's going to have a miserable life because people will be asking it to do something it hates... other horses who don't like racing would end up as pleasure horses (hunter jumper show horses or something like that).  If we have a new Ruffian, we're going to force it to keep racing because we know that it is capable of winning.

Also, some horses like to run different strategies.  Maybe this could be a pro or con... Ruffian was always out in front.  Maybe the new Ruffian wants to be a closer.  It's a con because we expect that new Ruffian to do exactly what the old Ruffian did without figuring out the true potential of the horse.  It's a pro because it would bring some aspect of the game back into the sport... because you have this horse that's talented, but you have to figure out how to work it.  I think that pro is a con though because that will just encourage people to keep working these new horses that don't like racing... maybe the horse doesn't have any strategy, but it just doesn't want to run.  You can see this issue in normal racing and breeding today... if you breed speed with speed, you get a speed horse.  if you breed closers with closers, you get a closer.  Sometimes though, you take the strategy too far.  Thunder Gulch was a deep closer... he sat far back in the race and made one fast run to the finish line in the stretch.  Circular Quay's dam was also a deep closer.  And consequently, Circular Quay is a very deep closer... last year they were having trouble keeping him connected with the field enough that he would be able to make up the ground he was giving up by racing so far back at the start.  The point is to take a Circular Quay and teach him how to become a little bit of Ruffian... teach him to take the lead a little earlier than he wants and hold it from there.

Yes the point of racing is to make again what we already had, but racing itself wouldn't be able to continue if we just cloned all the horses we already had.  Everyone in racing wants to catch lightening in a bottle.  Borrowing it is not an option.

apologies for the answer being so long ;o)

Answer 6

I think NO. I am against all cloning though. It is just not how God intended to be. Even if you don't believe in God, it is still very unnatural.

Answer 7

Cloning is banned under the Jockey Club Rules, along with Artificial Insemintation and Embryo Transfer, so I cannot see it ever becoming permitted.

One point you have to remember is that cloning will only replicate the physical horse, it cannot replicate the circumstances the horse was raised in, the people that trained him or those that rode him.  I'd say that genetics only contribute 70% to a horses performance, the rest is down to the trainer and the jockey.

You could clone a horse like Secretariat a ten times, but I'd eat my hat if any of them reproduce the exact same performances!

If you are interested in reading more on cloning research try to find some of the papers written by Professor "Twink" Allen who used to run the Equine Fertility Unit here in Newmarket.  He did a lot of work on the subject and you may find his work of interest.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&rls=H...

Answer 8

It is not permitted by the breeding criteria set by The Jockey Clubs throughout the world. There has to be a mating and this will never change in the Thoroughbred industry. It is an assurance that the possible foal is the son or daughter of the stallion and mare.

Cloning or artificial insemination would destroy the industry as it has been constructed since racing began, since breeding fees would plummet to next to nothing. And a situation of fraud or manipulation would be much greater without a physical mating.

Genetics is hard to speculate on, since there obviously has been no case studies of cloned runners with a test group of "traditional" racers.

Answer 9

Right off the bat I don't see this ever happening. The Jockey Club doesn't allow artificial insemination, cloning is one step beyond that. I for one am totally against even the thought of it. Not for any religious beliefs, but there are already too many Breeders out there hoping for the second coming of a Secretariat or Man O' War, or a Ruffian or Go For Wand for that matter. Too many horses are being bred with less than regal pedigrees ( to put it politely) already.