MagazineR451

Everyone knows that the dog isMan’s Best Friend and that storiesabout health are Editors’ BestFriends. So what to do whenthere’s a story about dogs andhuman health? Time to dust offthe Conflicted Writer’s BestFriend, the double-barreled lead.

“The first detailed geneticcomparison of pure bred domesticdogs that will change the waybreeds are classified and help laythe foundations for newtreatments for many humandiseases is unveiled today,” theDaily Telegraph reported, trying tosqueeze the essence of an entirereport in Science into a singlesentence.

The study in question identifiedgenetic markers that can uniquelyidentify 85 pure dog breeds. Thework was led by a dog-lover at theFred Hutchinson Cancer ResearchCenter in Seattle, who feltcompelled to portray the study asa serious stab at understandinghuman diseases. But with thoseniceties out of the way, the realstory was about dogs.

“Who’s akin to the big badwolf?” USA Today asked. “Thedoggone Peke!” The report goeson, “The scientists found newinformation about the caninefamily tree as they were looking atgenetic variations in dogs forclues to the nature of humandiseases.” A favorite factoid fromthe study is that the Pekingese is,genetically speaking, among themost primitive dog breeds, so ithas more in common with the wolfthan the German shepherd does.The Seattle Times tracked down aPekingese breeder who said thatthese diminutive dogs “seem tothink they’re as tough as anywolf... ‘they’re tenacious andstubborn. They don’t give wayeven if approached by a muchbigger dog’.”

The New York Times picked outother surprises. “The German

shepherd, for example, is closergenetically to mastiffs, boxersand other ‘guarding’ dogs than toherding dogs. The fleetgreyhound, Irish wolfhound,borzoi, or Russian wolfhound,and lumbering Saint Bernardcount herding dogs among theirclosest kin.”

The big shocker to dog fancierswas that some breeds purportedlythousands of years old areactually modern pretenders. “Thepharaoh hound and the Ibizanhound, for example, appear to bemodern versions modeled afterdogs depicted on the walls ofEgyptian tombs,” The ChicagoTribune noted.

As the questions turned tohuman health, the researchersresponded with faithful wordsthat would appeal to theirinstitute, which is after all notdedicated to canine genealogy.“Dogs, they say, are ageneticist’s dream,” The SanFrancisco Chronicle reported.“[B]y analyzing the genesequences of 85 different breeds,they have uncovered clues tomany of the 350 hereditary caninedisorders that, in turn, shouldshed new light on their diseasecounterparts in humans. Dogssuffer from many forms of cancer,heart disease, epilepsy,blindness, bone disorders andeven mental illness, note theresearch team’s leaders.”

Co-author Elaine Ostrander toldNew York’s Newsday: “Thenumber one killer in dogs?Cancer, the same thing we careabout in humans.” The storyrelates how the same group useddog genetics to track down amutation for kidney cancer inGerman shepherds. “Because wehad all the pedigree information,we could trace it back 20generations and say ‘Aha! This iswhere the problem is’.” The reportcontinues: “A mutation in the

same gene has been linked tokidney cancer in humans,demonstrating the potential forgenetic detective work in dogs toaid both the canines and theirfaithful human companions.”

Nobody delved into the delicatequestion of how one might usepurebred dogs as animal modelsfor disease — considering manypeople revere their dogs as muchas they do their fellow human. Butjournalists did probe some of thedeepest intellectual questionsinherent in the research.

Ostrander (who owns a purebred border collie) told theAssociated Press, “One of themost interesting questions still tounderstand ... is why did the wolfkeep locked in its genomeeverything that was necessary tomake a Pekingese to a GreatDane.” Ostrander’s collaborator,Leonid Kruglyak, added in aninterview with the BBC that hewas amazed how much variationhas arisen in dog breeds — mostof which are just a few hundredyears old: “It’s a much morestriking difference than is seenamong human populations thatevolved on different continents”.As Reuters noted, a few hundredyears of inbreeding has produced“far more [genetic differences]than the so-called racialdifferences between humans.”

This issue sparked speculationfrom a reporter at the SeattlePost-Intelligencer. He wonderedwhat else could we breed if weapplied the same zeal as has goneinto canine selection? “Could weproduce a pocket cow? Howabout a cat that treats its ownerwith respect? Could we create inhumans the same kind of physicalvariations that we did with thewolf? ‘We don’t know,’ Ostrandersaid. ‘But that’s not somethingwe’re working on here’.”

Richard F. Harris is a sciencecorrespondent at National Public Radioand past president of the NationalAssociation of Science Writers. Email:rharris@nasw.org

News focus

Who’s akin to the big bad wolf?Mediawatch: the recent publication of genetic studies on various breedsof dog sparked journalistic interest in a number of canine and humanissues. Richard F. Harris reports.