SEOUL (Reuters) - The loss of Booger the pit bull terrier was almost more than Bernann McKinney could bear.

Now she is happy, minus $50,000 and her house, and owner of five cloned Booger puppies.

"It is a miracle for me because I was able to smile again, laugh again and just feel alive again," McKinney told a news conference in the South Korea capital to show off the week-old black puppies -- all of whose names include the word Booger.

They are the work of the biotech firm RNL Bio, affiliated with the South Korean lab which produced the world's first cloned dog and is staffed with former associates of disgraced scientist Hwang Woo-suk.

She sold her house in the United States to raise the $50,000 for RNL scientists to turn skin cells taken from Booger before he died two years ago into embryos carried by two surrogate dogs for two months until giving birth to the puppies last week.

"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."

After rescuing him from a shelter 12 years ago, Booger had become an indispensable part of her life, said the 57-year-old Californian.

The lab said it hoped to make its technology more commercial along with its program to clone sniffer dogs for the Korean customs service.

"As of today, we are at the stage of receiving orders from anywhere in the world," RNL CEO Ra Jeongchan said.

RNL has said it expected to clone about 100 dogs next year and for the price to drop as technology improves.

Hwang has been on trial for more than two years on charges of breaking the law on research ethics and for misusing state funds and private donations.

RNL's research staff is made up of scientists who stayed behind when Hwang left the prestigious Seoul National University after his research results were found to be fraudulent.

Dogs are considered one of the more difficult mammals to clone because their reproductive cycle includes difficult-to-predict ovulations.

(Reporting by Reuters TV; Writing by Jack Kim; Editing by Jonathan Thatcher and David Fox)
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Now my family and I really enjoyed having our Chinese Shar-pei, Scottish Terrier, Doberman, and Blk Lab.....but I know they would never fork over our house and 50,000 grand in order to have cloned copies of them. Im a big dog person, but isnt this taking things a little too far??

8/5/2008 6:01:39 PM

i'm not going to read that but i'm going to go ahead and say "no"

8/5/2008 6:02:32 PM

8/5/2008 6:02:51 PM

^Nice

8/5/2008 6:03:54 PM

It is not really the house + $50,000 because the $50,000 came from the house,

but,

[NO]

8/5/2008 6:03:57 PM

a person or an animal is not woth lossing a roof over my head. unless they provde that for me

8/5/2008 6:04:24 PM

It's Korea... they eat dogs yo

8/5/2008 6:05:41 PM

^^what a man... losing your kids for a house.

[Edited on August 5, 2008 at 6:05 PM. Reason : ^]

8/5/2008 6:05:49 PM

Quote :

"^^what a man... losing your kids for a house"

okay i didnt word that the best way.

8/5/2008 6:07:56 PM

it's her house and if she can do whatever she wants with it

8/5/2008 6:11:40 PM

ha, i wonder if the dogs really are clones, or they just took her money and found puppies that looked pretty similar

8/5/2008 6:13:30 PM

hahah, I would.

8/5/2008 6:14:45 PM

if you cant afford to have 5 dogs, you shouldnt have them in the first place. yes it is her house

8/5/2008 6:14:58 PM

waste of money, but it was her money/house, so whatever.

8/5/2008 6:25:14 PM

Quote :

"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.""

The dog is as much a product of its environment as its genetics. That said, none of these Booger clones will be anything like Booger #1 because they will be raised differently. The end result is that she will be a sad panda one day.

8/5/2008 6:32:00 PM

they should clone pandas....

8/5/2008 6:33:09 PM

^^ pretty much

Quote :

""Yes, I know you! You know me, too!" McKinney said joyfully, hugging the puppies, which were sleeping with one of their two surrogate mothers, both Korean mixed breed dogs."

to be this vested in it, she really has no idea how cloning works

8/5/2008 6:35:33 PM

Perhaps if I were a Cary bitch, then yes.

8/5/2008 6:37:20 PM

^^yep, genetics is only half of who someone is; the rest is environment, how they are raised, etc.

[Edited on August 5, 2008 at 6:38 PM. Reason : ^]

8/5/2008 6:37:51 PM

Quote :

"Perhaps if I were a Cary bitch, then yes."

what part of cary? ths sluts here are not that bad. and well i live on the boarder of cary raleigh

8/5/2008 6:39:06 PM

keep your house and buy a new fucking dog you cunt

8/5/2008 6:39:49 PM

^^ The Preston bitches are the worst. I'm actually over by Cary High, but in my experience, they all suck...everybody.

8/5/2008 6:41:10 PM

I grew up in Apex so I agree that everyone from Cary sucks!

As for the dog thing, I love my dog more than anything but she is stupid to think that the new dog is going to be exactly like Booger. Also... think of how many homeless puppies and dogs she could have helped with that 50K.. SELFISH!

8/5/2008 6:49:58 PM

yes, she should've sold her house to adopt every fucking shelter dog in raleigh

seriously?

8/5/2008 6:55:30 PM

cary bitches are like two face. All mushy mushy in public, but when it comes to putting the dog down, they are cold as fuck. And they always lie to their kids that "buddy" ran away...

8/5/2008 6:57:43 PM

^^

She could have adopted one and donated some money to the shelters.

It that such a crazy idea?

8/5/2008 7:08:25 PM

I really don't think the 50k is that big of a deal as the idiocy of trying to cheat death.

The dog is very likely going to be as different as going to the pound and getting a dog that LOOKS the same and just training it the same.

8/5/2008 7:19:40 PM

not a chance

8/5/2008 7:22:05 PM

KILL IT WITH FIRE!!!!

8/5/2008 7:22:10 PM

i'd do anything for my dog if he were sick and needed treatment. but simply cloning isn't doing the dog a favor. the dog is dead, and the only treatment received is the woman for having a dog that looks like her previous one.

i personally wouldn't want a clone of a former dog of mine. i'd keep wanting the dog to have the same personality, soul, and behavior. it simply wouldn't be the same, and it would really bother me.

8/5/2008 7:24:06 PM

fuck that. It could've been worse though. could've been a cat.

8/5/2008 7:25:49 PM

^ cloned cats don't look like their originals, because a cat's specific fur color isn't determined in the genes (it's general pattern is though). I don't think they are certain what controls it, but my guess is some factor in the womb. There's a fish that has its gender determined by ambient water temperature during the incubation period, not genetics, as well.

8/5/2008 7:29:24 PM

sounds like she is doing all this for herself, not for a dog

8/5/2008 7:51:14 PM

words
but I did see "Hwang Woo-suk" and that made me lol

8/5/2008 7:53:27 PM

me too

8/5/2008 7:55:04 PM

i love my cats, but hellfuckno



when they die, they die--no zombie cats

8/5/2008 7:58:28 PM

http://www.cnn.com/2008/CRIME/08/10/cloned.dogs.ap/index.html


hahaha

8/10/2008 9:40:27 PM

^Thanks...I was gonna post 'how the fuck are you gonna post about this, and not mention how crazy this broad is in the first place'

8/10/2008 9:43:28 PM

fuck that

8/10/2008 10:04:02 PM