| A small army of elite, highly trained clones are sent on a mission to route out drugs and ammunition from the city. Every few hours they report back to their masters, to whom they've been devoted since birth. But this isn't the set of a low-budget sci-fi flick; it's the departure lounge of South Korea's Incheon Airport, where seven "super clone" sniffer-dogs have been dispatched in the war against contraband luggage. The pack of golden Labrador Retrievers are all genetically identical to "Chase," whose legendary snout kept him top of Incheon's drug-detection rankings right up until his retirement in 2007. But now after years of training, the new class is following in their genetic donor's paw-prints, consistently outperforming the rest of South Korea's naturally born sniffers in the hunt for heroin, cocaine and methamphetamines. hey are the work of Professor Byeong-chun Lee, who established his reputation in 2005 as the driving force behind Snuppy (an amalgam of Seoul National University puppy), the world's first ever dog clone. "The officers in Korean Custom Service read our dog-cloning article and they suggested the project to us," recalls Lee. Indeed, Korean customs had a problem on their hands. Only three out of every 10 selectively bred sniffer dogs that it trained --- at a cost of about $40140 each -- had the nostrils and the discipline for the job. Although the seven Labrador clones cost upwards of $100000 each, every single one of them made the grade. But Lee ... |
