Posted on 09/30/2024 8:04:21 PM PDT by Red Badger
A Montana man found guilty of illegally cloning sheep is due to be sentenced today in a first-of-its-kind case.
Arthur 'Jack' Schubarth of Vaughn, 81 , used sperm imported from Kyrgyzstan to create a gigantic Marco Polo sheep he called the Montana Mountain King.
The decade-long attempt to clone and create hybrids from the hulking sheep, which can weigh 300lb and have curled horns up to five feet long, aimed to provide sheep to be used for trophy hunts in Texas and Minnesota.
Schubarth's attorney described his client's efforts as being like 'Jurassic Park' and told the court that cloning the enormous sheep has 'ruined his client's life'.
Schubarth - who has been in the trophy hunting business since 1987 - successfully cloned a Marco Polo argali sheep using remnants he bought from a hunter who had killed a sheep in Kyrgyzstan in 2019.
Schubart got a laboratory to create cloned embryos from Marco Polo argali sheep sperm.
After implanting the embryos in a ewe, a pure Marco Polo argali sheep was born, which Schubert named 'Montana Mountain King'- and which was used to artificially impregnate other ewes.
Montana Mountain King has now been confiscated by U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services.
Prosecutors are not seeking prison time for Schubarth - the maximum punishment is five years in prison, or a fine up to $250,000 or twice the defendant's financial gain.
His attorney said in the sentencing memo, 'Jack did something no one else could, or has ever done.
'On a ranch, in a barn in Montana, he created Montana Mountain King. MMK is an extraordinary animal, born of science, and from a man who, if he could rewrite history, would have left the challenge of cloning a Marco Polo only to the imagination of Michael Crichton ...
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
Dirty Deeds...Done With Sheep!
Why is this a problem?
AI breeding is a very common thing. Artificial Insemination is vert common—I have close friends who did AI for many years with animals, and sent of animal sperm around the world.
Montana. Where men are men, and sheep run scared!🤣
Sometimes sheep need to be pushed through the fence.
Must have the biggest balls of all.
He was using sperm from a wild breed that is endangered.................
He cloned a very large sheep. That was the horrible crime?
I was expecting him to admit to Carnal Knowledge of the Bo Peeps. At least he’s not doing that! PETA might have a cow. though.
If had created Sheep Flu and cut Dr. Falsehood in on the deal, he would have gotten government grants.
This, boys and girls, is why genetic tampering is a bad idea.
Well, dammit, the "unthinkable" became thinkable but it wasn't the unthinkable I had originally thought, but the thinking I thought so not so unthinkable was thinkable, at least in my thinking.
He cloned a critically endangered wild Asian sheep............
A baaaaaaaaaaad man indeed.
The more I think of it. I don’t like it.
These huge sheep would have grown up in an artificial environment, being fed and cared for. These sheep would have had no predators. They wouldn’t even learn what a Hunter was until it was too late. It would be like shooting fish in a barrel. No contest. All this, to get a gigantic pair of horns to hang on your wall for bragging rights?
Don’t seem Kosher to me.
I don’t like the idea either. Canned hunts............
From WIKI:
Conservation
Hunting the Marco Polo sheep first became popular when Mohammed Zahir Shah, king of Afghanistan, hunted and killed a ram in the 1950s.[39] He thereafter declared that the valley in which he hunted be a protected habitat for the sheep as a hunting grounds for Afghan royalty, and it was not until 1968 that an American tourist was allowed to hunt in the reserve.[39] In 2008, it was estimated that American hunters paid an average of $20,000 to $25,000 for an expedition to hunt a Marco Polo sheep.[40] A recent study put the cost at $40,000 per permit.[41]
In 1976, in Khunzerav, the sheep’s population was estimated to be 300.[29] This number declined to a maximum of 160 between 1978 and 1981, and declined again to only 45 in 1991.[29] George Schaller of the Wildlife Conservation Society estimated the worldwide population in 2003 as around 10,000, half what Ronald Petocz estimated in his 1973 tour.[11] Their population density has been recorded as fewer than two animals per 1 square kilometre (0.39 sq mi).[16] The Marco Polo sheep was included on the first list of protected species issued by the Afghanistan National Environmental Protection Agency in June 2009.[42]
In 2024, an American man plead guilty to illegally importing body parts of Marco Polo sheep to create clone hybrids, which he planned to sell to private hunting reserves in Texas.[43][44]
Is that deed a crime now? The guy could believe he is a sheep. That would probably be acceptable today for the establishment.
Unthinkable, not unspeakable. You thought of it after all.
What’s the crime here?
Are there “Sixth Day Laws” like in the Schwarzenegger movie?
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