BoingBoing points out an update to the Allerca reserve your allergy free cat article. From the New Scientist:

Allerca’s claims that a technique called RNA-induced gene silencing can work in cats are “unfounded”, says Greg Hannon at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York state, and author of the book RNAi: A Guide to Gene Silencing. So far the technique has been used only in mice.

While it seems like we won’t be getting our hypo-allergenic cats for some time, that’s not a bad thing in my opinion. Allerca’s research has not even begun, and is not even taking place in their own labs–rather, they are outsourcing it in 2005. Why pay for a product that is not even in development? And, the ethical considerations of a modified breed are considerable, as RNA-induced gene silencing may cause defects in the animals.