Most pet lovers have gone through the complex moment of saying goodbye. For this reason, there is an option that is emerging, which in the near future could help extend the bond of more pets. It is about cloning, which until now can be done in dogs, cats and horses.
While South Korea is at the forefront of these processes, since it made the first cloned pet 17 years ago, ViaGen is in the United States, the first and only company in America to offer the service since 2015.
Melain Rodríguez, customer service manager of the company, said that, despite not having an official publication of its services, the number of clonings made has been increasing over the years.
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One of the points in favor and success of this type of process is that the genetic material of the pet that is going to replicate can be stored indefinitely. This situation is only determined by the human family and the health status of the dogs that are going to lend their wombs to house the puppies.
However, there is a cost to cloning pets that not everyone is able or willing to pay. The price for having a twin for your puppy is $50,000, $30,000 for a cat and $85,000 for someone who wants to clone a horse.
The truth is that despite taking samples from the animals that are going to be cloned to duplicate their DNA, the new pets could have variations in spots, fur and eyes, among other characteristics.
When John Mendola‘s pet was diagnosed with terminal cancer, he decided to clone it to produce two genetically identical replicas. In 2018, Barbra Streisand revealed she had used ViaGen to clone two puppies from her former pet Samantha. That same year, The Sun reported that Simon Cowell was “100% cloning” his three Yorkshire terriers.