Welcome to Breakpoint, a daily look, and an ever-changing culture through the lens of unchanging truth.

For the Colson Center, I'm John Stone Street.

Well, don't let anyone pull the wool over your eyes. Sheep are big business, so big in fact that they landed an 81-year-old Montana man in jail recently.

The Washington Post reported recently on Arthur Shubarth, who was sentenced to

six months in federal prison for illegally cloning a giant species of sheep and then using it to

produce even bigger hybrids for lucrative canned hunts. Back in 2013, Shubarth acquired tissue from

a Marco Polo Argali, which is a rare and protected species of

bighorn sheep from Kyrgyzstan.

He then contracted with a cloning facility to create embryos of what he called Montana Mountain

King, a 300-pound hybrid breed with the curling horns that are sought after by high-dollar hunters.

Shubarth then bred the Mountain King to North American bighorn sheep,

which resulted in an even larger hybrid species,

and he began selling those to captive hunting preserves for up to $10,000 ahead.

He also sold dozens of DNA samples to breeders around the country so they could do it too.

In the end, it's difficult to know just how many of these Jurassic Park hybrid sheep there are out there. Shubar's business

venture violated numerous conservation and commerce laws. As one assistant director of the U.S.

Fish and Wildlife Service put it, he risk, quote, introducing diseases and compromising the genetic

integrity of our wild big horn

sheep populations, end quote. This whole bizarre story raises an important question. Why is it that we are

so good at recognizing and enforcing ethical limits when it comes to medical and genetic experimentation

on animals, but not when it comes to humans. These two discussions

were at one point closely connected. You remember Dolly the sheep? That was 30 years ago when the

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