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!"

A bit pricey..

[tji]

From the site:

Priced at $3,500, the cost of an ALLERCA kitten is similar or less than some of the more exotic cat breeds available today.

Ummhh.. yeah.. But, it's a bit more than the "free kittens" we all see signs for throughout our home towns.

Re:Hyper-Allergenic

[Total_Wimp]

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

Boy, couldn't disagree more. Evolution doesn't allow such things in they types of numbers we're experiencing. They symptom is almost certainly there for a reason, albeit a reason we may not now fathom.

That's the real problem with genetic engineering. We can only account for what we know or think we know. Evolution accounts for "everything". When you short circuit evolution on a biosphere level, which we're all too close to doing, you are playing with fire. I would hope that we'd understand that kind of fire before playing. Evidence suggests we do not.

TW

Vapor...genetics?

[FiReaNGeL]

"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."

Notice the "will develop". Notice the 2007 date. Notice the high price tag. Genetic engineering is not like building a car. It's unpredictable. At this point, their 'research' is vaporware at best.

"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.

Using patented genetic technology, the ALLERCA team will focus on the particular gene that produces the Fel d 1 glycoprotein. Using a technique known as "gene silencing", the process reduces the gene's ability to produce the protein."

Will silencing this protein have undesirable effects? Nobody knows. And it's only the 'major' allergen, not the only one.

I wouldn't be betting 3500$ on this at the moment. Altought its a cute idea. Cats as guinea pigs for genetic engineering anyone?

Or a cheaper alternative....

[Savet Hegar]

Just build up a tollerance to the cat.

Since I was young, I've been extremely alergic to anything with fur. Guinnea pigs, gerbils, dogs, cats, you name it.

I had to get rid of a Guinnea pig because I broke out in hives.

I got a dog when I was about 13, and even though it killed my alergies for a while, I got used to it. Now I have 3 dogs and a cat, and none bother my alergies.

Alergies are an extreme response from the body to a foreign substance. By building up a tolerance, the body reacts less extremely.

How about...

[Gordonjcp]

... breeding some fuckin *non-allergic* people? Why is it that every third person you meet these days is allergic to something?

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

They Don't EXIST, folks!

[fanatic]

Clients will take delivery of the first ALLERCA kittens in 2007.

From the first hit on Google searching for cat gestation:

"Cats generally have pregnancies lasting from 58 to 65 days".

So the fact that the first one won't "ship" until 2007 is a bad sign. Anybody sending these folks money now, *please* contact me for a great deal on a bridge.

Re:Hyper-Allergenic

[Shadarr]

It's also interesting to note that "hypo-allergenic" has no medical definition [www.cbc.ca]. People assume it means the product will be safe for allergy sufferers, but there is no certification process because there is no such thing, from a medical perspective, as hypo-allergenic. Not such a big deal when you're talking about a $5 bar of soap, but I suspect people will be pretty pissed if their $3500 designer pet turns out to make them just as itchy as the free kitten their cousin offered them.

microchip implant

[Anonymous Coward]

in the licencing agreement, it is allowed that the Cat be implanted with a microchip. also the Cat may be spayed/neutered before delivery.

Re:Hyper-Allergenic

[Kenshin]

Evolution doesn't allow such things in they types of numbers we're experiencing.

Evolution doesn't account for modern living.

In theory, poeple with severe allergies (or similar conditions) would be wiped out by natural selection, removing that from the gene pool. But our standards of life nowadays allow people to lead full lives that they wouldn't be able to otherwise.

Re:Hyper-Allergenic

[Total_Wimp]

You're trying to tell me that there's an evolutionary benefit to being nearsighted? After all look how many people are!

Yep, pretty much. There's even an evolutionary advantage to dieing.

Sometimes an advantage is a long term statistical advantage based on past compensation and possible future compensation for a long gone threat. Sometimes it's a group advantage so that one person's individual disadvantage is of bennefit to the group.

Think of nearsightedness. Would that help you do close in work? But you couldn't hunt very well, could you? Maybe your tribe-mate is far-sighted. He'd be a better hunter, but not too good at close-in work like sewing.

I'm not actualy saying this is the reason, but it's a plausible, possible reason for a very common "disadvantage." The fact that you immediatly called this "disadvantage" bad is the exact reason GE scares me. You, and so many like you, miss important big-picture issues while you mechanically select for your "advantages." When you do this, you risk our entire biosphere by picking the wrong ones.

What would happen if you selected for high metabolism so people wouldn't be so fat? Great for now, but what would happen if food were to become scarse again? You'd basically doom us all. I'm not saying this cat is the end of civilization, but the changes GE brings have the potential to be far more risky in the long run than most people realize.

TW

Re:Finally, a dog I can love

[DogDude]

My sincere hope is, Allerca 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.

Real simple solution: Don't buy your dog. Purebreds are much, much, much more likely to have genetic problems (like a weak bladder, bad temperment) than mixed breeds. Next time, visit your local shelter or rescue and rescue a nice mutt. You'll be much happier.

Re:Hyper-Allergenic

[Total_Wimp]

You seem to be confusing evolution with something sentient. Evolution doesn't have any plan at all.

Ah, but evolution does have a plan. The plan is: Whatever survives and reproduces gets to go to the next level.

The thing is, surviving and reproducing are far more complicated than many sentients happen to think. They think they can label traights "good" and "bad" willy-nilly and have a good chance of being right.

Humanity has figured out a lot of stuff, but there's a lot of other stuff we haven't figured out. Why do we think we know so much about living organisms that we're willing to risk every future generation on our best current guess?

TW

Re:This cat is also Zero-G approved!

[Guppy06]

Personally, I think this borders on cruelty, what with the guy repeatedly throwing the cat against the wall. Or was I the only one who noticed how fat the cat's tail looked?

Re:How about...

[gaijin99]

Allergies have a direct relationship with the level of pollutants in the area the person grew up in. As, not coincidentally, do cancer rates.

Note that all the research, work, effort, and awareness programs directed at both cancer and allergies focus on drugs to control the conditions rather than prevention of the condition. The reason for this becomes apparent when you note that the majority of the funding for the cancer and allergy research comes from polluters.

The obvious step would be to reduce pollution, but somehow that doesn't get mentioned in any cancer or allergy literature. I wonder why...

Re:This cat is also Zero-G approved!

[Anonymous Coward]

i agree. the cat looks really unhappy to me. poor cat!

Re:Yeah, but...

[RedBear]

Or maybe it's that we evolved with the rest of the animal kingdom living in the great outdoors, where vast volumes of relatively clean air tend to move through our personal space and dilute the levels of particulates in the air, and we aren't used to having such a high concentration of animal dander and other things getting into our lungs on a daily basis. If you think about it, it's really only within the last century or so that we've started developing buildings that are basically airtight. No drafty doors or open windows to transfer air from outside. As the air quality experts say, the air in your home these days is about 5 times as dirty as anything outside, even in areas with poor air quality.

Re:Or, for a lot less money.

[Anonymous Coward]

Along the same lines, if Claratin costs about $1 a day and the cat's life expectancy is around 10 years, then it looks like you'll just about break even with a free cat.

Re:Yeah, but...

[iso]

I've heard this before, and chuckled. But after hearing co-workers say things like "nah, I can't go out for drinks: I need to go home and let the dog out," and watching people walk behind a dog and pick up its shit off the ground, I wonder sometimes, which animal really has the staff?

Re:Yeah, but...

[johnlcallaway]

I hope you get a ton of 'funny' modifiers for your karma, because that is very, very true.

True story. Every night, at least once, my cat comes to the bed and meows. He will stay down at the side of the bed until I take my hand and rub my fingers together to make whatever sound two fingers rubbing together make. If I don't rub my fingers together, he will leave. If I do, he will jump up beside me and expect to be scratched and petted. Eventually, he will stand on my chest, at which point I stop petting him until he gets off (he weighs 15 pounds and it is not very comfortable). Repeat at least two more times. Then he will lie next to me and I will continue to pet him until I get tired of it. Then he will get down and go do whatever things cats do at night.

Did I train him to respond to my cues, or did he train me? Human ego says I trained him. Reality says otherwise.

Re:How about...

[bheer]

'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".

Good point. Another interesting datapoint is the much lower rate of allergies in crowded, dirty Asian cities (these cities have decent healthcare, so it's not like allergies are underreported). Also, Asians (at least South Asians) seem to have much lower rates of nut allergies, hayfever allergies, etc.

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

I'd love to see some research on the correlation between 'cleaner societies' and immune systems development.

Re:And what happens...

[zardor]

But what happens if you take the neutred moggie to your local pet cloning company?
If this covered under the DCMA?

This seems like a hoax to me...

[Taed]

I'm sure that the technology exists, but it's just a bit too... Je ne sais quois? Plus this seemingly came out a few months ago and /. is the first I'm hearing of it... I would have thought the press would have been all over this... And to top it all off -- genetically-engineered NightSave Deer (http://www.genetiate.com/nightsave.html)? However, someone else had the same idea as me: http://www.okpatents.com/phosita/archives/2004/08/ hoax_or_horror.html