Who's akin to the big bad wolf?

Everyone knows that the dog is Man’s Best Friend and that stories about health are Editors’ Best Friends. So what to do when there’s a story about dogs and human health? Time to dust off the Conflicted Writer’s Best Friend, the double-barreled lead. “The first detailed genetic comparison of pure bred domestic dogs that will change the way breeds are classified and help lay the foundations for new treatments for many human diseases is unveiled today,” the Daily Telegraph reported, trying to squeeze the essence of an entire report in Science into a single sentence. The study in question identified genetic markers that can uniquely identify 85 pure dog breeds. The work was led by a dog-lover at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, who felt compelled to portray the study as a serious stab at understanding human diseases. But with those niceties out of the way, the real story was about dogs. “Who’s akin to the big bad wolf?” USA Today asked. “The doggone Peke!” The report goes on, “The scientists found new information about the canine family tree as they were looking at genetic variations in dogs for clues to the nature of human diseases.” A favorite factoid from the study is that the Pekingese is, genetically speaking, among the most primitive dog breeds, so it has more in common with the wolf than the German shepherd does. The Seattle Times tracked down a Pekingese breeder who said that these diminutive dogs “seem to think they’re as tough as any wolf... ‘they’re tenacious and stubborn. They don’t give way even if approached by a much bigger dog’.” The New York Times picked out other surprises. “The German shepherd, for example, is closer genetically to mastiffs, boxers and other ‘guarding’ dogs than to herding dogs. The fleet greyhound, Irish wolfhound, borzoi, or Russian wolfhound, and lumbering Saint Bernard count herding dogs among their closest kin.” The big shocker to dog fanciers was that some breeds purportedly thousands of years old are actually modern pretenders. “The pharaoh hound and the Ibizan hound, for example, appear to be modern versions modeled after dogs depicted on the walls of Egyptian tombs,” The Chicago Tribune noted. As the questions turned to human health, the researchers responded with faithful words that would appeal to their institute, which is after all not dedicated to canine genealogy. “Dogs, they say, are a geneticist’s dream,” The San Francisco Chronicle reported. “[B]y analyzing the gene sequences of 85 different breeds, they have uncovered clues to many of the 350 hereditary canine disorders that, in turn, should shed new light on their disease counterparts in humans. Dogs suffer from many forms of cancer, heart disease, epilepsy, blindness, bone disorders and even mental illness, note the research team’s leaders.” Co-author Elaine Ostrander told New York’s Newsday: “The number one killer in dogs? Cancer, the same thing we care about in humans.” The story relates how the same group used dog genetics to track down a mutation for kidney cancer in German shepherds. “Because we had all the pedigree information, we could trace it back 20 generations and say ‘Aha! This is where the problem is’.” The report continues: “A mutation in the same gene has been linked to kidney cancer in humans, demonstrating the potential for genetic detective work in dogs to aid both the canines and their faithful human companions.” Nobody delved into the delicate question of how one might use purebred dogs as animal models for disease — considering many people revere their dogs as much as they do their fellow human. But journalists did probe some of the deepest intellectual questions inherent in the research. Ostrander (who owns a pure bred border collie) told the Associated Press, “One of the most interesting questions still to understand ... is why did the wolf keep locked in its genome everything that was necessary to make a Pekingese to a Great Dane.” Ostrander’s collaborator, Leonid Kruglyak, added in an interview with the BBC that he was amazed how much variation has arisen in dog breeds — most of which are just a few hundred years old: “It’s a much more striking difference than is seen among human populations that evolved on different continents”. As Reuters noted, a few hundred years of inbreeding has produced “far more [genetic differences] than the so-called racial differences between humans.” This issue sparked speculation from a reporter at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. He wondered what else could we breed if we applied the same zeal as has gone into canine selection? “Could we produce a pocket cow? How about a cat that treats its owner with respect? Could we create in humans the same kind of physical variations that we did with the wolf? ‘We don’t know,’ Ostrander said. ‘But that’s not something we’re working on here’.”