Where man has led, man’s best friend has followed: a dog has been cloned for the first time, by the same team of scientists that first achieved the feat with human embryos.

The birth of Snuppy, an Afghan hound named after the Seoul National University (SNU) in South Korea where it was created, promises to advance both human and veterinary medicine by providing a new model species for research into therapeutic cloning.

The success also raises the prospect that dog owners could one day clone their favourite pets. Though the scientists who created Snuppy are opposed to this and pledged today never to attempt it, their work could help others attempting commercial canine cloning.

An American company, Genetic Savings & Clone, already offers cat lovers the opportunity to clone their pets at a cost of $50,000 (£26,000) a time, and last year produced the first made-to-order kitten, Little Nicky, for a Texan woman. It is also engaged in dog cloning research: it was established with the support of John Sperling, a billionaire who has invested millions of dollars in the company’s "Missyplicity Project" to clone his deceased pet, Missy.

Freda Scott-Park, the president-elect of the British Veterinary Association, said pet cloning was likely to remain ethically questionable for some time, chiefly because of concerns about the health of the animals and the inefficiency of the cloning process.

"No one can deny that techniques that advance our understanding of diseases and their therapy are to be encouraged but cloning of animals raises many ethical and moral issues that have still to be properly debated within the profession," she said.

Pet owners may also be disappointed by clones of their animals: while Snuppy has the same markings as his father, Tai, the first cloned cat, CC or Copy Cat, looked very different from its mother. There is no guarantee that cloning will produce an animal of similar temperament or personality.

Professor Gerald Schatten of the University of Pittsburgh, a member of the team that created Snuppy, said the nuclear transfer technique used in cloning was no more appropriate for making pets than it is for human reproduction.

"We are not in the business of cloning pets," he said. "Nuclear transfer is an extraordinary tool for scientific and medical research. It has never been about reproductive medicine or making any members of our family - even our pets."

While many animals, including sheep, mice, cows, goats, pigs, cats, mules and horses, have been successfully cloned, dogs have proved one of the most challenging species to reproduce in this manner. One of the chief problems is that dog eggs are released earlier than those of most other mammals, and are much harder to work with in the laboratory.

The Korean team, led by Professor Woo-Suk Hwang, which leads the world in cloning human embryos, has now overcome the technical hurdles. Professor Hwang created the first cloned human embryos last year, and in May announced the production of 11 batches of stem cells derived from clones of human patients.

In the new research, which is published in the journal Nature, cells were taken from the ear of an adult Afghan hound named Tai, and the genetic material was injected into eggs from which the nucleus had been removed. Three viable cloned embryos were produced from 123 attempts and implanted into the womb of a female labrador that acted as a surrogate mother. While one miscarried, two puppies were born - Snuppy and his brother, named only NT-2 as the second nuclear transfer dog. NT-2 was born with respiratory problems and though he seemed to recover he died 22 days after birth after contracting pneumonia. Snuppy, however, remains healthy and has his father’s black-and-tan colouring.

The team now plans to clone further dog embryos from which stem cells can be extracted, to learn more about these master cells that can form any type of tissue in the body.

Stem cells could eventually be taken from cloned embryos that are genetically identical to patients with conditions such as diabetes and Parkinson’s, and grown into replacements for damaged tissue. These cells would carry the patient’s genes and could be transplanted without risk of rejection by the immune system.

Professor Schatten said this technology, known as therapeutic cloning, might now be tested in dogs, both to provide new treatments for canine illnesses and to test techniques that could help people.

"Once embryonic stem cells are established from dogs, veterinary applications of stem cell transplantations for the various diseases and disorders that occur in dogs might well be the first clinical uses of therapeutic cloning," he said.

Professor Hwang said: "Our research goal is to produce cloned dogs for studying disease models, not only for humans, but also for animals."

Professor Ian Wilmut of the Roslin Institute near Edinburgh, the scientist who created Dolly the sheep, the first cloned mammal, congratulated the Koreans on their achievement. He said the work had succeeded in part because of the team’s use of fresh, high-quality eggs, which underlines the need to collect eggs from dedicated donors if the technique is also to work in humans. Professor Wilmut recently applied for permission to do this, instead of using eggs left over after IVF treatment, for his cloning research into motor neuron disease.

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