Dog Cloning Goes Commercial

21 Feb 08

If you’re a regular reader of these Newshound pages, you’ll know that two-leggeds have for a number of years had success in cloning canines – take Bono and Snuppy as the model examples. But now dog cloning is going commercial. A California dog-lover will pay $150,000 US dollars to have her dead pit bull cloned.

Bernann McKunney had a special connection to her dog Booger, who once fought off another dog to save her life. When Booger died, the California woman froze part of its ear in hopes of replicating it. Now she is prepared to pay huge sums to have a team of scientists clone the dog.

What may amaze you is that this isn’t the first time that a pet owner has reached into their pocket to recreate a beloved pet. In 2004 a Texas woman paid $50,000 to a California biotech company to have her pet cat cloned.

RNL Bio, a South Korean company, is already working on the order placed by the woman to clone the pit bull. Cho Seong-Ryul, the marketing director for RNL, said that the success rate for producing dogs by cloning was about 75%. “This will mark the first time that a dog is being cloned in a commercial contract,” said Cho.

The experts are hopeful that the cost for cloning a dog may come down to less than $50,000 as cloning is becoming an industry.

The scientists will extract cells from the ear tissue of the dog and use them to impregnate surrogate mother dogs until they are successful. This is not the first time that these scientists have attempted to clone a dog. Most popularly, they were successful in the creating the very first dog clone, and Afghan hound named “Snuppy”.

Though this may successfully create a pup that is genetically similar to Booger, I don’t think that this means he will act the same.

It’s likely that many factors go into what makes a personality. So cloning is a dubious goal, and may prove to those who dole out large sums to be ultimately disappointing.

Awoof! Archie