No, this isn’t a Star Wars Sequel. A California dog-lover will pay $150k 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 the woman’s life. When the pit bull died, the California woman froze part of its ear in hopes of replicating it. She will pay $150,000 to a team of scientists if they can successfully clone the dog.

This is not 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 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. I think that many factors go into what makes a personality, and that this may cause false hope for many people. They dog may grow up to be the meanest pit bull ever, though it is genetically the same as Booger. Maybe we are going to far here, what do you think?

Editor’s note: Article and title updated with new information.

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Entry was posted on Monday, February 18th, 2008 at 12:08 pm under Science and technology.

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