- The Scottish company involved in the creation of Dolly
the sheep will today begin a mass slaughter of its flock in an effort to
cut costs in the face of mounting financial problems.
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- PPL Therapeutics, the Midlothian-based biotechnology
company, is to destroy up to 3,000 transgenic sheep at two farms in East
Lothian as it struggles to survive after Bayer, the German pharmaceutical
giant, pulled the plug on joint drug trials.
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- The genetically modified sheep - kept in farms near Wallyford
and Ormiston - were being monitored under the trials involving AAT, a drug
which could slow the progress of diseases such as hereditary emphysema
and cystic fibrosis.
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- The sheep produced milk containing AAT but the cost of
the trials has proved prohibitive. The sheep must be continually monitored
for potential infections that could contaminate the flock, while there
is additional expense in electronic tagging and keeping computerised records
on the history and health of each animal.
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- The animals must be slaughtered and incinerated on the
same day under strict Home Office regulations to avoid environmental risks.
Meat from the animals cannot be sold as food.
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- PPL last night confirmed the slaughter of the sheep to
The Scotsman, but could not confirm exact numbers.
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- A spokeswoman said: "The sheep will be euthanased
with full concern for animal welfare and in line with the necessary government
regulations."
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- Last month, the company announced that up to 140 jobs
were to go after the AAT drug plans were dropped at its Scottish and New
Zealand sites. Sheep in New Zealand are also due to be destroyed.
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- The spokeswoman for PPL added: "On 18 June, Bayer
Healthcare LLC and PPL Therapeutics plc announced that their joint transgenic
AAT development programme was to be put on hold. In light of this announcement
concerning the future of the transgenic AAT programme, PPL announced a
significant restructuring of its business in order to substantially reduce
its cash burn to below half its existing level.
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- "Unfortunately, placing the AAT programme on hold
has also meant that PPL can no longer support all its AAT sheep flock,
and work is underway to reduce sheep numbers on its farms in both Scotland
and New Zealand." Up to 3,000 sheep are kept in 500 acres of farmland
in Scotland, with a further 3,500 on the 440-acre Waikato estate in New
Zealand.
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- PPL Therapeutics was established in 1987 to commercialise
transgenic technology developed by the Roslin Institute, then called the
Animal Breeding Research Organisation.
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- The institute gained enormous worldwide publicity through
Dolly, the worldís first cloned mammal, who was born in 1996.
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- She who was put down earlier this year at the age of
six after suffering from a lung tumour. The stuffed sheep was put on display
at the Royal Museum in Edinburgh but today, moves to the Museum of Scottish
Country Life in East Kilbride for the summer.
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- Dr Donald Bruce, the director of the Church of Scotlandís
society, religion and technology project and the external member of PPLís
ethics committee, said he was sad to hear of the flocksí demise.
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- He said: "There is a ruling on what happens once
the trials end. If the experiments are over then the animals need to be
destroyed. PPL has suffered from a really unfortunate set of events and
made every effort to consider all their work in an ethical environment.
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- "The implications for the animals of their research
was small but the benefits to humans would have been fantastic. Iíve
watched their research for ten years and it was seen as a very reliable
way of getting protein and would have been used for treating cystic fibrosis.
Itís sad."
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- PPL said it hoped to retain some of the sheep in an effort
to keep its hopes of developing transgenic technology alive.
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- The spokeswoman said: "PPL is evaluating the option
of keeping a significant number of its transgenic sheep to maintain the
viability of its transgenic technology business."
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- Doreen Graham, of the SSPCA, an animal welfare group,
said sheep were slaughtered every day and that the society would have no
concerns so long as the operation was carried out humanely.
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- However, she added: "They seemed to be on the cusp
of something new and itís a shame that will have ended."
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- Transgenic technology involves transferring a genetically
engineered segment of DNA into the genetic material of another species.
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- Dr Bruce said: "Using sheep to find better ways
to reproduce pharmaceutical proteins in milk, the original reason why Roslin
and PPL got into sheep cloning, is ethically acceptable.
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- "PPL continued with a good ethical performance,
but unfortunately the AAT research takes a long time and could take years.
The companies involved werenít able to wait."
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- PPL is now trying to persuade investors to support the
restructuring programme after some of its largest shareholders criticised
the strategy.
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- The restructuring was forced by Bayer putting its main
research programme on hold.
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- ©2003 scotsman.com
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- http://www.thescotsman.co.uk/index.cfm?id=768342003
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