China Is Building Bigger, Strong Beagles Through Genetics...For Testing

These Chinese scientists are raising great controversy over their newest practice: genetically modifying beagles to be more muscular.

More muscles may seem innocent enough, but it’s the intended application that has animal rights activists up in arms. The scientists say it’s for medical reasons. The dogs could be used for military or other applications since they can run longer and stronger, but the main goal is to use these dogs for animal testing. Two out of 2,000 beagles at one laboratory are making headlines.

Scientists led by Dr. Lai Liangxue at the Guangzhou Institutes of Biomedicine and Health claim they’re the first to successfully alter the genetic makeup of dogs.

They doubled the muscle mass of beagles through the process of “gene editing.”

“We knocked out a gene which would ordinarily stop muscles from growing, so these dogs became much more muscular,” Dr. Lai said in Chinese. – Source.

Dr. Lai’s goal is to now apply this technique to create test subjects with mutations that behave like human diseases. This includes diseases like Parkinson’s so they can then test human treatments on the dogs.

Continue to page 2 to hear more about Dr. Lai and his goals.

Page 2 Here

Watch the video below to see the full story!

Feature Image Source: NewsBeat Social