Hypo-Allergenic Cats Now Available for Pre-Order

humuhumunukunukuapu' writes "Allerca Inc is now taking reservations for genetically engineered hypo-allergenic cats, which it calls 'lifestyle pets'... and apparently they are just the beginning... Read the press release here... and you can take delivery of a cuddy non-sinus bothering bundle of joy for just $3500. 'The hypoallergenic cats produced by ALLERCA will allow consumers to enjoy the love and companionship of a pet without the cost, inconvenience, risk, and limited effectiveness of current allergy treatments. Clients will take delivery of the first ALLERCA kittens in 2007. The hypoallergenic cat is the first of a planned series of lifestyle pets that ALLERCA will develop over the next few years.' Meow!"

Re:And what happens...

[Akai]

One word for you: Monsanto

They prosecute people who illegally grow their GE corn/etc.

I'm sure the same applies.

Hell, last time I bought a rose bush for my lady it had a warning on it that it was illegal to propigate without permissions.

Re:Hyper-Allergenic

[Carnildo]

However, like the old saying "One person's meat is another person's poison", I believe there is a reason for such allergy symptoms (maybe telling your body to get away from that bleeming cat?), and without this warning, I wonder if the still-allergic-to-cat person will suffer from far worse sickness because one of the cat allergens wasn't identified and removed?

An allergy, by definition, is an inappropriate immune reaction to a harmless substance. The only thing an allergic reaction is telling you is that your immune system screwed up. Again.

Re:Prior Art

[Stonent1]

Dander is skin cells not hair.

Not the only way to get a hypo-allergenic cat

[jparker]

In case you're a cat lover with allergies (like me) and not entirely fond of genetic engineering (also like me), there are a few breeds of cats that are naturally hypo-allergenic. We had a devon rex (http://www.cfainc.org/breeds/profiles/devon.html) that never gave me any allergy problems. They look a little odd until you get used to them, but now all other cats just look strange to me. I believe there are other breeds as well (the cornish rex, for one) that play nice with your allergies.
And the $3500 price tag on one of these makes the $600 I spent look a lot more reasonable.

House training

[ryane67]

house training huh... my wife and I have 2 cats.. first thing ya do is drop them in the litter box when you bring them home, scratch their paws in it.. and you're done. they are trained for life. havent had an accident.. ever.

Re:Hypoallermagenic...

[Zooka]

" I can make my cat like that with a shaver..."

It's not really the animals hair/fur that is the most significant allergen, but rather their *dander*. (Dander is flakes of dead skin). Their saliva and urine can also cause an allergic reaction.
http://www.theallergyreliefcenter.com/animal_aller gy.htm [theallergy...center.com]

Re:Finally, a dog I can love

[Gentlewhisper]

My sincere hope is, Allerca [allerca.com] will someday engineer a Yorkie that won't constantly pee on my carpet. Now that would be marketable. Cute yes... but Yorkies are damn monster sprinklers.

Dear Sigalarm,

You have raised a very good point, please accept our job offer as Marketing Executive in Allerca.

We can sell these "Pee Wee" Yorkies to all the fire departments in the country!

Regards,

CEO Allerca

But not allergen-free

[Autumnmist]

From their site:
A glycoprotein, Fel d 1, secreted by the sebaceous glands, is the major cat allergen. This allergen is found in the fur, pelt, saliva, serum, urine, mucous, salivary glands, and hair roots of the cat.

Allerca cats will only lack one of the potential cat allergens... potentially deadly for people allergic to other proteins secreted by the cats. In addition, the gene silencing technique (I assume they refer to RNAi perhaps using siRNAs) cannot be guaranteed 100% effective--all it takes is one mutation.... More info about RNAi here [miami.edu] and here [nature.com].

However, as someone with moderately severe cat allergies, this is definitely a start.

Re:Prior Art

[Racter]

Dander is skin cells not hair.

You may notice that, of the four breeds, three of them have fur. Further investigation is left as an exercise for the stonent.

Re:And what happens...

[khendron]

Probably. You buy any pure bred cat nowaday you have to sign an agreement that you will have the cat neutered/spayed at the earliest opportunity.

Pure bred cat breeders don't want you to breed their cats any more than these guys do.

Re:I'm not sold yet...

[Anonymous Coward]

Pet rock!

Re:Hypoallermagenic...

[LightStruk]

The allergen is not in the cat hair. [saveacat.org] Cats generate a protein called Fel d-I in their skin that many humans are allergic to.
Male cats make more allergen than female cats. [catsinternational.org] My parents keep a female cat in the house as a pet and a male cat in the garage as a mouser, and I've found that cat sensitive people are far more aggravated by the male than the female . . .
and there's a joke in that last sentence somewhere, I'm sure. :-)

Re:Now...

[cachorro]

Due to the latency between invention and delivery (and presupposing several generations of testing), I suspect that we will not see this in our lifetime.

The consolation is that it is commonly accepted that fashion models are over-rated, although I would need to perform direct testing to confirm that hypothesis.

Don't think so

[signe]

Yeah, I'm not buying it. Digging back, we find that Allerca claims to be owned by Geneticas [geneticas.com]. If we check out the other "companies" under that umbrella, we'll find Genequus [genequus.com], who claim to do horse cell banking and cloning. Yes, that's right. They'll sell you a clone of your horse for $100k. Discounts for 10 or more.

Another one, LifeARK [lifeark.org], claims to be doing cell banking for endangered animals. They want donations, and they accept them through PayPal. Don't think so. A large company that was doing such work wouldn't deal with PayPal's onerous agreement and high fees. Especially not if their other divisions were dealing with large sums of money already.

ForeverPet [foreverpet.com] does cell banking for companion pets. But they can't yet clone them. But another division can clone horses? Yeah, right.

Re:And what happens...

[Anonymous Coward]

In Canada they even prosecuted a seed farmer who's crop had gotten contaminated by the Monsanto corn in the next field.

Re:Prior Art

[Aidtopia]

...are all "hypo-allergenic" breeds (don't produce dander).

It's not all about dander. Many of us have no problem with the dander but are allergic to the saliva, which--due to their grooming habits--is all over their fur. My doc says people who don't seem to be allergic to dogs but are allergic to cats are almost certainly reacting to the allergen in the saliva rather than the dander or the fur.

Re:How about...

[vsprintf]

Please, for the good of humanity, let evolution take its course and remove these people from the gene pool!

Allergies often arise after years of repeated exposure to something. Be careful what you wish for.

RESERVATIONS

[That's Unpossible!]

I wouldn't be betting 3500$ on this at the moment.

Me neither. But if I could afford $3500 for a cat, I might be willingly to bet the amount they are actually requesting for a deposit ($250):

"Please note that reservations require a deposit of $250 that will apply to the purchase price. On completion of your online reservation, we will provide you with an attractive personalized ALLERCA Reservation Certificate."

Re:Yeah, but...

[cmowire]

Well, the claw thing is kinda a contreversial [about.com] thing.

"Hypoallergenic" is a myth

[sanermind]

The term 'hypoallergenic' is not meaningful in any scientific sense whatsoever.

The FDA states that "There are no federal standards or definitions that govern the use of the term 'hypoallergenic'." Back in 1973, they tried to establish definitions for the use of the term hypoallergenic, but the regulation was overturned in court.

A little bit of googling returns this [fda.gov]

It's a nonsense marketing claim, with no scientific standard or basis. People can be allergic to anything... even themselves. [www.hon.ch]

Re:Yeah, but...

[WormholeFiend]

magine a Siamese with a pleasant disposition! Maybe they could splice in some dog genes to get a cat that wags it's tail and plays fetch.

I had a Siamese cat a few years ago that acted pretty much like a dog. He'd fetch balls of crumpled paper for me, and he had quite a pleasant disposition too. He didn't wag his tail though. To catch my attention, he'd run around the house for momentum, then jump onto the back rest of a sofa, grip it with his front claws, then release.

When I saw him fly and spin across the room, I knew he wanted out.

they might as well add that "glow in the dark" gene they put in fish

May I point out that those fish don't produce any light by themselves?

From glofish.com [glofish.com]:
Nighttime Viewing - In cases where the room is completely dark, a black light will create the appearance that the fish are glowing in the dark. This is a truly stunning and beautiful way to display your ornamental fish at night! But please remember that the black light will only be helpful in a completely dark room. Using a black light during the daytime will not result in the fish demonstrating its true beauty.

Re:Hyper-Allergenic

[sugar and acid]

Wrong. The immune system is a very powerful system in our bodies that is simply designed to identify nasty pathogens in our body, and kill them with extreme prejudice. Now an allergy is simply an inappropriate reaction by the immune system something that is present in the environment but is not actually a risk to us, like pollen and food. Basically through some process that is not well understood the immune system was supposed to learn that these things are not a threat and should be ignored, except they often are not. Even more extreme example of the immune system making a complete balls up is autoimmune diseases like type 1 diabetes and ms, where the immune system gets so wayward it actually attacks the body itself and kills off some important component, for example the cells that make insulin.

Re:They Don't EXIST, folks!

[_Swank]

if you look at the crap you have to agree to it says that the $250.00 deposit is non-refundable whether or not they ever produce or deliver a cat. with that kind of agreement i wouldn't reserve one until i saw one with my own eyes.

Re:Yeah, but...

[MarcoAtWork]

ummm, I was born via a c-section and was not breastfed (strikes 1 and 2 against developing a good immune system) and I have absolutely 0 allergies (pets or food) and have never had any sort of throat/lung problems (knock on wood), there goes the c-section theory.

BTW, I am originally from Europe, and it seems allergies are WAY more common here in North America (I don't think I've ever *met* a person allergic to something before moving here, where I'd say 20-30% of the people I know have an allergy of some kind, most of the time to cats but often to peanuts/eggs).

Re:Finally, a dog I can love

[supabeast!]

A weak bladder is usually the result of poor housetraining, or in the case of many bitches, being spayed too young. One thing a vet will never tell you about getting a bitch spayed is that if you do it before they're a year old, it causes hormonal imbalances that lead to severe bladder control problems. The bladder control problems can be controlled with medication, but the best solution is to wait until the dog is a year old to spay.

Disclaimer - I do not oppose spaying and neutering pets, just doing it when they're too damned young!

Or, for a lot less money.

[Internet_Communist]

You could also just buy a HEPA filter for around $180, for a bedroom size model. Don't fall into all the infomercial scams, you want a filter that's certified to remove 99.97% of particles under over 0.03 microns or whatever it is. That's why those ionic ones aren't considered HEPA. They can't filter to the specification. For $1500 you could get a medical-quality purifier that could do a whole house, and also take out gases and other such nasties. I really do think this is a better solution and cheaper then modifying your kitty.

Of course factor the cost of filter replacements in over the years, I still say you'd probably spend less on the filter then you would on the genetically modified cat. Note that this might not work so well with everyone, but it's definitely an alternative...and it could help with other allergies as well..

Re:How about...

[Anonymous Coward]

'Fraid not. Comparing the amount of the population in a city with relatively low pollution like, say, Stockholm (Sweden), with a relatively dirty one, say, Krakow (Poland), you'd expect the number of allergies to be far higher in the more polluted city. This turns out not true. Allergies are much more common in the modern "Western world" than in, for instance, the old "East block". And this even though there is a much higher percentage of coal used in heating homes, industry pollution levels are higher, and cars are generally older and typically generate worse exhaust. Just stating pollution as a factor doesn't make sense.

What is reasonably clear from a research perspective, however, is that growing up in a spotlessly clean environment makes you MORE susceptible to allergies. It seems better to be subjected to (a reasonable amount of) "filth" than to none at all. Unless, of course, you DO develop an allergy - in which case spotlessness is more or less your only option.

What I would personally like to see, is more research focused on this simple fact - what factors are different between the "richer" and the "poorer" societies - is it the chemicals we use to clean our homes? Or could there be some correlation with the kind of food we tend to consume?

I just think there's a lot we don't know here...

Plenty of sexy time....

[Anonymous Coward]

the dont cut the *bits* off, just sterilise them... So its really gonna be an orgy of non-allergenic cats.

hmm but perhaps without all those hormones they wont want to... sounds like the pill, prevent pregnancy by just not wanting it anymore...