Dog Owner So Upset At Loss Of Pet That She Had Him Cloned...FIVE Times
(Update at end of article.)
As a lover of animals, I am shocked and disgusted at this news:
Five pit bull terrier puppies have been born in the world’s first cloning of a pet dog for a paying customer.They are the genetic doubles of Booger, a pit bull whose death from cancer two years ago left his owner Bernann McKinney so bereft that she sold her house to raise the £25,000 [$48,000] needed to – in her eyes – bring him back to life.
A little backstory...this woman adopted from an agency a pit bull that she named Booger. Some years later, she was attacked by a mastiff and Booger intervened in the attack, helping fight off the dog and probably saving her life. As a result of the attack, Bernann was left in a wheelchair after reconstructive surgery, so Booger learned how to become a service dog. He would do things like open doors, take laundry out of the dryer, and getting things out of the fridge. So obviously it seems that the relationship between the two was a loving one, as most relationships between pets and their owners are, and especially between a person and their service animal.
Tragically, Booger developed cancer, and distraught at the thought of losing her friend forever, Bernann had some skin cells taken from his ear and frozen. Failing to produce a duplicate of Booger in the US, she turned to a lab in South Korea, and they were able to produce five identical-looking Booger clones:
The 57-year-old Californian scriptwriter has named the puppies Booger McKinney, Booger Lee, Booger Ra, Booger Hong and Booger Park, after herself and the South Korean scientists behind their birth.RNL Bio, the Seoul cloning company, said the process was so straightforward it could clone 300 dogs a year for bereaved pet owners around the world. [...]
The technology, the same as that used to create Dolly the Sheep, brings with it high risk of miscarriage and still birth - and for those creatures that do survive, ill health and premature death.
Bernann, for her part, defends her decision to have the cloning done:
'Booger was my partner and my friend. They are perfectly the same as their daddy. I am in heaven here. I am a happy person.’'I had to make sacrifices and I dream of the day, some day, when everyone can afford to clone their pet because losing a pet is a terrible, terrible loss to anyone.' [...]
'I wanted my friend back,' she said. 'Booger taught me I could do anything I could do before the accident. I just had to figure out a different way to do it.' [...]
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