Re: Cuban cows

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

>I'm sorry, but it sounds as if Fidel -- or one of his advisors -- has
>partaken of some grass grown in drawers under fluorescent lights. The intent
>is good, but Lysenko's ghost is hovering near-by.
>
>Jim Devine jdevine@xxxxxxx &  http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine

Lysenko? What does he have to do with cloning? Leaving aside the merits of
such an experiment, a far less smirking article appears in today's WSJ:

Udderly Fantastic: Cuba Hopes
To Clone Its Famous Milk Cow

By PETER FRITSCH and JOSE DE CORDOBA
Staff Reporters of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

SAN JOSE DE LAS LAJAS, Cuba -- Fidel Castro denies his scientists are
developing deadly biological agents for the so-called axis of evil, as U.S.
officials have alleged.

But as part of what Mr. Castro calls the "battle of ideas" with the
capitalist world, he has scientists hard at work on a project that could,
if it works, strike fear in the hearts of Wisconsin dairy farmers.

Cuban communism's most sacred cow -- a phenomenal milk-producing bovine
called Ubre Blanca, or White Udder -- could come back to be milked again --
and again and again, if a team of geneticists has its way.

The Cubans are cloning.

Extolled by Mr. Castro for years as a symbol of the 1959 Revolution's
endowments, Ubre Blanca holds the world record for milk production. On a
single day in 1982, Cuban scientists say, farmers drew 241 pounds of milk
-- more than four times a typical cow's production -- from an udder so
distended from its service to the Revolution that it had begun to drag on
the ground. That torrent was recognized by the record keepers at Guinness,
who have also bestowed their titles on Mr. Castro: world's longest-serving
head of state (43 years and counting) and world's longest United Nations
speech (four hours and 29 minutes).

To Cubans for whom fresh milk is now a rare and expensive luxury, the late
Ubre (pronounced OO-bray) Blanca evokes memories of the days before the
so-called Special Period -- the spectacular economic collapse that followed
the implosion of the Soviet Union, Cuba's main benefactor, beginning in 1989.

"It seems like Ubre Blanca took all of our milk to her grave," says retiree
Agustín Rodriguez, who spends a third of his $8 monthly pension on
black-market milk, which he says is often ochre-colored. To Mr. Rodriguez,
Ubre Blanca brings back memories of the early 1980s, when the cow was a
staple on the state news and in newspapers -- and Soviet subsidies still
kept Cuba afloat.

Daily Milk

Until the early 1990s, Cuban children got a daily glass of milk at school
through age 13. Today, they are cut off when they reach seven. At times,
there is no milk at all and people make do with a soy substitute. Last
year, a milk producer in the eastern province of Guantanamo was arrested
and fined by the National Revolutionary Police for illegal transportation
of milk in the form of a 12-pound block of cheese.

Scientists performed surgery on Ubre Blanca to harvest her eggs, hoping to
create a master strain of heifers by fertilizing them and implanting them
in other cows. But in 1985, she was put to sleep at about the age of 13.
(Nobody knows exactly when she was born.) Her death was commemorated by
Communist Party newspaper Granma with a long-winded eulogy. Her lactations
earned her a place in the pantheon of Cuba's revolutionary heroes -- not to
mention an air-conditioned resting place. Taxidermists stuffed her and put
her in a climate-controlled glass case at the entrance to the National
Cattle Health Center 10 miles outside Havana, where she still stands at
attention. Ubre Blanca was honored by her home town of Nueva Gerona, which
erected a marble statue in her memory.

"She gave her all for the people, even broke a U.S. record," says Pastor
Ponce, an agronomist at the center who knew the famous cow in her glory
days when Mr. Castro would stroke her fondly on TV. (He confirms, a bit
sheepishly, that Ubre Blanca's grandfather was actually a Canadian Holstein.)

Before Ubre Blanca was packed with sawdust, however, scientists carved
tissue samples from her that remain frozen and preserved in special fluids
at the Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology in Havana.

"We hope Steven Spielberg was prophetic when he made dinosaurs come back to
life in Jurassic Park," says Fidel Ovidio, the center's chief of animal
biotechnology. One of his proudest moments occurred earlier this month when
Cuba's cow-cloning project was included in a slide presentation to Jimmy
Carter.

Jose Morales, leader of Cuba's cow-cloning team, cautions that while Cuba
is "very, very close" to producing its first cloned cow, the island's
scientists don't yet have the know-how to begin replicating Ubre Blanca
from tissue that has been in the freezer for 17 years. "But we do not
discard the possibility that we'll be able to do this someday," he says.
"This project is very important to Comandante Castro."

After the Soviet Union disappeared, animal feed, fuel, fertilizer and spare
parts went with it. The result: Cuba's already thin dairy herd was
decimated. Since 1989, Cuban milk-production has fallen about 60%, the
World Bank estimates.

"The devastation of our dairy herd and significant drop in milk production
made our work a priority," says Dr. Morales. He says milk is also needed
for continuing experiments in the development of new drugs and vaccines,
where Cuba's scientists have achieved great success.

Building a Better Cow

Building a better cow has long been an obsession of Mr. Castro's. In a 1987
speech, he said super cows could be achieved under a socialist system,
where scientists and the government both pull in the same direction. "If
another Ubre Blanca is found or a prodigious descendant of Ubre Blanca
capable of producing cows giving 100 quarts [a day], what can prevent us
from immediately applying that practice ... to all the cows of the
country?" he asked.

That same year, Mr. Castro proposed his scientists shrink cows to the size
of dogs, says Boris Luis Garcia, a molecular biologist who worked for three
years at the Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology. The idea:
solve the scarcity of milk in the cities by providing families with
miniature milk-cows they could keep in their apartments.

The pint-sized beasts would graze on grass grown in drawers under
fluorescent lights. "That was what Castro had planned for us," says Mr.
Garcia, who now lives in Spain. Nothing ever came of it.

Ubre Blanca was the product of more conventional genetic tinkering. In the
early days of the Revolution, Mr. Castro's desire was to create a race of
super cows that would stand up well to tropical heat and yield bigger and
better quantities of meat and milk. Scientists struck pay dirt in the early
1970s with Ubre Blanca -- a cross between a Holstein and a Zebu.

But there Cuba's great leap forward stalled. Ubre Blanca's seven offspring
turned out to have disappointingly average mammary glands, scientists say.
"The production of milk depends on many genes, so rarely do later
generations stack up to the parent," says Dr. Ovidio.

In theory, cloning avoids that problem. Cuba's scientists got excited with
the birth of the cloned sheep Dolly in 1997. A year later, Cuban
geneticists began working on a rabbit clone. But cloning a rabbit --
injecting the genetic material of a donor into the unfertilized egg of a
subject -- proved difficult because rabbit cells develop too quickly.

Soon, Cuba could join the ranks of countries including the U.S., France and
Germany that have successfully cloned a cow. "We have big things coming,"
says Dr. Morales. Mr. Ponce, the agronomist, says the Revolution will not
let its people down. "We must succeed in such projects if we are going to
feed our people," he says, leaning against Ubre Blanca's glass case.

Asked if all this is one day going to lead to the cloning of "The Horse" --
as the 75-year-old Mr. Castro is known -- scientists say absolutely not.
"We are morally opposed to the cloning of humans," says Carlos Borroto, the
center's deputy director.


Louis Proyect
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