Everyone has that one pet of their life that they fall in love with at first sight – or at first scratch.
For Wyatt Boumedine of San Francisco, it was Zine, his white cat with a raccoon tail that continually growled at its owner, scratched him – and possibly cursed him if he could speak. But Boumedine loved him. When Zine died of cancer in 2016, he was devastated.
But shortly before his death, Boumedine discovered Texas-based ViaGen Pets, the one U.S.-based company offering business cloning of dogs and cats. For $25,000—the value the corporate was charging for cat cloning in 2016—Boumedine could have a replica of his beloved pet.
The French-born cat knew his bond with Zine couldn't be replicated with one other cat – not even one which was genetically similar. But if there was a strategy to keep a component of Zine alive, then perhaps cloning was value a try.
A yr later, Boumedine managed to acquire not one but two zine clones through ViaGen. He appropriately named them Zine Jr. and Zinou—the latter is a mixture of Zine's name and a French word for affection.
“Every time I see her I'm very happy,” he said. “I have absolutely no regrets about doing this.”
Boumedine joins a growing variety of pet owners within the United States who’re profiting from a Twenty first-century scientific marvel: pet cloning, the creation of a precise genetic copy of one other organism. But there may be also a backlash from those that consider the practice morally reprehensible.
Animal cloning was once considered a science fiction fantasy, but then got here Dolly the sheep in 1996 – the primary mammal cloned from an adult cell – and suddenly the concept became a viable and profitable reality. After cloning Dolly, scientists began to expand their range to incorporate mice, cows and horses. But it was cats and dogs, the preferred pets within the United States, that caught the general public's attention.
Celebrities like Barbra Streisand and Paris Hilton began having their dogs cloned – spending around $50,000 to achieve this. As the industry became more popular and cloning technology became more accessible, atypical pet owners like Boumedine considered paying the value.
ViaGen, which offers dog and cat cloning for $50,000, says the variety of pet cloning requests has increased recently, especially because the COVID-19 pandemic. “The time spent at home during COVID provided more opportunities for our customers to continue to build unique and special bonds with their beloved pets,” said spokeswoman Lauren Aston.
But public opinion on animal cloning has not modified within the last 20 years. According to a 2023 Gallup poll 61% of Americans imagine that animal cloning is morally reprehensible, down just 2% from 2001. Their opposition stems from aspects reminiscent of the exploitation of animals in the course of the cloning process (a surrogate animal is used to provide birth to the clone) and the moral concerns related to artificially making a living being.
The cloning process is easy – roughly. First, tissue samples, reminiscent of pieces of skin or muscle, are taken from a cat or dog. Scientists separate the tissue to extract the cells that contain the pet's genetic material. The DNA is then cryopreserved before being injected into an egg, which creates the embryo. From there, the embryo – or several of them, also containing the DNA – are implanted right into a surrogate animal. About nine weeks later, the typical length of a pregnancy in dogs and cats, the clone is born.
Typically, just one and even two embryos are carried to term, greater than that is taken into account rare – similar to in real life, says Ron Gillespie, owner of PerPetuate. Massachusetts-based PerPetuate is one in every of the world's first pet genetic preservation corporations and helped prepare Zine's cells for cloning.
“It's about Mother Nature and the surrogate,” Gillespie said. “Wyatt was lucky; most clients are guaranteed a cloned puppy or kitten.”
While cloned animals could have the identical genetic material as the unique, their environment also plays a crucial role in the event of their personality, in line with the National Human Genome Research Institute.
Boumedine said the twins are “95 percent similar” to Zine in behavior, but are more sociable because he has other cats the 2 can continually play with, including their surrogate mother, whom he adopted from ViaGen, and three other cats he adopted from a Redwood City shelter.
The difference serves as a reminder that the twins can't really replace Zine, who’s ceaselessly immortalized in a painting that sits on Boumedine's mantelpiece for all the opposite cats to see.
“It's healthy to have small differences,” he said. “It's a good reminder that they are clones and not my original cat.”
Although Boumedine was determined to clone Zine, others are hesitant to take that step. Julia Pedroza of San Francisco loved her two rescue dogs, Layla and Finnegan. When they each died of cancer several years ago, Pedroza and her husband sent their tissues to PerPetuate to extract and preserve the genetic material. They pay a storage fee of $120 a yr to maintain the DNA in the corporate's labs.
Pedroza said she’s going to not clone her dogs because she has ethical concerns in regards to the procedure, but just knowing that their DNA will probably be stored and that this feature is out there gives her peace of mind.
“I find it devastating to lose a pet, suddenly or slowly,” she said. “Knowing that we could have another version of Layla and Finnegan in the future is a certain comfort.”
There was once a time when Bay Area residents didn't should resort to out-of-state corporations for a cloned pet. In the early 2000s, Mill Valley-based BioArts International offered pet cloning services and partnered with a South Korean lab to do the actual cloning. In 2008, BioArts offered to clone dogs to the five highest bidders in a series of online auctions. The starting bid was $100,000. Although all the chosen bidders received their clones, the corporate closed its doors a yr later. Several reasons were cited, including a small market of individuals curious about cloning and concerns about animal welfare.
While some people consider cloning their pets or preserving their DNA, others, like Alisa Corstorphine, are strictly against the concept.
The Alamo resident said she couldn't understand why people would need to clone their pets when local animal shelters were overflowing with animals in need.
“Bringing more animals into the world when we can't care for the ones we have just seems offensive and disgusting,” she said.
Corstorphine volunteers with the Feral Cat Foundation – a nonprofit that rescues cats in Alameda and Contra Costa counties – and runs a hotline where people can report stray kittens and cats. The calls have turn into quite a few and heartbreaking in recent times, she said. Some cats have been abandoned in parking lots, pet stores and on the side of the road, battling infections or diseases. “It's always going on,” she said.
Today, local animal shelters are overcrowded with animals; the variety of animal shelters within the United States increased by nearly 1 / 4 of 1,000,000 in 2023. in line with a national databaseThere are several aspects at play: the overbreeding of animals, people returning to work and now not with the ability to take care of their pets, the rising cost of living and costs for veterinary care.
At Cherry Chase Pet Hospital in Sunnyvale, where she works, Kate encounters clients who need to undergo the cloning process. They ask Kate to assist them collect tissue samples from their pets in order that they can send the samples to corporations that engage in pet cloning. Kate doesn’t openly discuss cloning together with her clients, nor does she turn away clients who ask for the samples.
“If people have money and technology allows it,” she said, “why not?”
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