"We're waiting for our colleagues in mice and rats and laboratory rodents to teach us what to do," he said. "But if and when they do, and can, we will be there."Maggy Jennings, head of the RSPCA's research animals' department, in Horsham, West Sussex, said the society was opposed to the genetic modification of horses. "The Society considers genetic engineering of horses to be totally unacceptable, both ethically and on the grounds of it being unnecessary", she said.Joyce D'Silva, director of the animal welfare organisation Compassion In World Farming, said applying IVF to horse breeding is unethical. Could the practice be justified morally, she asked, "just so you can get an animal that can jump a few centimetres higher at Hickstead? It seems to me that here we are using a lot of low quality animals to produce high quality animals," Ms D'Silva said."I think if you are going to do any procedure to an animal you have to justify it morally The surrogate mothers are usually discarded.
And I think the most worrying thing of all is where we go from here up the road of genetic engineering. Can you really justify this?"Britain's horse industry, excluding racing, is worth an estimated £2.5bn a year, according to the British Equestrian Federation. However, owners of racing horses, who have banned artificial breeding, are unlikely to use the new technology.John Maxse, a spokesman for the Jockey Club, which regulates horse racing in Britain, said: "The breeding industry would be put in jeopardy by in vitro fertilization.". Ben Silverman was just another pushy American with a fondness for quaint sitcoms when he arrived to woo the British television industry. Ben Silverman was just another pushy American with a fondness for quaint sitcoms when he arrived to woo the British television industry. But five years later, as Survivor, The Weakest Link and Millionaire score big hits in the United States, he is the agent's agent, the man industry insiders credit with selling our most popular programmes to his fellow countrymen."Would it have happened anyway? Probably," says Rupert Dilnott-Cooper, chief executive of Carlton International. "But it did happen because of him."Mr Silverman, a New York-born fan of British TV, was dispatched to Britain by the William Morris Agency in 1996. He was convinced that the formats made popular by the BBC and ITV could succeed in America.
They had done so before, in the days when executives such as the television magnate Lew Grade regularly dealt with US networks. But after notable exports in the 1970s, including 'Til Death Us Do Part and Steptoe and Son, the UK turned insular. Partly encouraged by the franchise rounds in the early 1990s which demanded regional output, most of the companies had focused on making programmes for the domestic market.Mr Silverman insisted that Britain should think bigger "It was very valuable," Mr Dilnott-Cooper said. "He was very young, very enthusiastic and he refused to take no for an answer He would literally drag people to meetings He found his way through every corporation It wasn't a hostile environment. People were beginning to realise that we had to do better internationally. And it's always been necessary to have a middleman."What he did was spot the good ideas and then package them for America, in some cases putting together the concept, the producers and even the stars.
