On January 31 last year, three cloned puppies were birthed by a surrogate.

Eight weeks later, the Vangemerts welcomed “BJ” (for “Buhner Junior”) and “Ditto” into their home. The third was adopted by a ViaGen employee.

They were cloned from Amy Vangemert’s dog, Buhner, a poodle that she decided she could not live without.

So when Buhner turned 12, Amy dropped $50 000 (around R600 000) for the process, reports The Daily Beast:

In the fall of 2016, Buhner’s veterinarian took a tissue sample from the dog’s abdomen while he was under anesthesia for a dental cleaning, then sent it to Texas-based animal cloning firm ViaGen in a biopsy kit provided by the company.

Unethical and frivolous? Or completely acceptable? Depends on which side of the debate you’re on, I guess.

But no matter how heated you get about the amount of dogs needing a home, the demand for pet cloning does indeed appear to be on the rise:

In June of 2017, ViaGen had successfully cloned several dozen cats and dogs. By January of 2018, that figure had spiked to “over a hundred,” according to Melain Rodriguez, client service manager at ViaGen Pets, who also said that ViaGen is storing “thousands” of cell lines from which clients could clone their pets in the future.

Weird. Let’s take a look at how it works:

After clients pay $1,600 for genetic preservation, a veterinarian takes a skin punch biopsy from the pet’s abdomen and sends the tissue sample to ViaGen’s subculture lab in Cedar Park, Texas.

Utilizing [sic] the same technology used to clone Dolly the sheep, and more recently, a pair of macaques in China (potentially paving the way for human cloning)—“somatic cell nuclear transfer”—ViaGen employees remove the nucleus from a harvested egg (oocyte) and replace it with one from the pet to be cloned.

So far, ViaGen has cloned eight different species: cows, pigs, horses, goats, sheep, deer, dogs, and cats:

Once cultured, a portion of the millions of cells stays at the Texas facility, while others are transported to a livestock cloning facility in Iowa owned by ViaGen’s parent company, Trans Ova Genetics, to protect eradication of a cell line in the event of a natural disaster.

The cryopreserved cells are stored in liquid nitrogen tanks so that owners can decide to clone from them for up to 50 years or more, according to Rodriguez.

Once the pet owner is ready for a clone, they pay a 50% deposit (the total fee is $50 000 for dogs and $25 000 for cats), and the remainder of the fee is due on delivery:

Vangemert said she felt an instant bond with the puppies, who look remarkably similar to Buhner—they even have matching lazy eyes. She’s so pleased by the results, in fact, that she plans to clone Buhner “again and again.”

“It really is worth every penny. And especially if you get two,” she said, before adding, “Once this gets around, the waiting list [for ViaGen clones] is going to get long.”

Honestly, I don’t see the point – and there’s nothing wrong with replacing your dog with another and just giving them the same name.

Every time. Over and over again. On Repeat.

[source: thedailybeast]