Seoul’s cloning lab promises Fido forever

At $100 000 a head, the puppies frolicking around the fenced lawn in western Seoul don’t come cheap — but at least their owners know exactly what they are getting.

The lawn belongs to the Sooam Biotech Research Foundation, a world leader in pet cloning that has run a thriving commercial business over the past decade catering to dog owners who want to live with their pets forever.

Wi t h a c l i e n t list including princes, celebrities and billionaires, the foundation offers owners protection against loss and grief with a cloning service that promises the perfect replacement for a beloved pet.

Since 2006, the facility has cloned about 800 dogs, commissioned by owners or state agencies seeking to replicate their dogs.

“These people have a very strong bond with their pets ... and cloning provides a psychological alternative to the traditional method of just letting the pet go and keeping their memory,” said Wang Jae-Woong, a researcher and spokesman for Sooam.

“With cloning, you have a chance to bring back the pets,” he said in the facility’s “care room” where each cloned puppy is kept in a glass-fronted, temperature-controlled pen and monitored around the clock.

Ever since the milestone birth of Dolly the sheep in 1996, the rights and wrongs of cloning have been a topic of heated debate and Sooam Biotech has been regarded with particular suspicion because of its founder, Hwang Woo-Suk.

In two articles published i n the j ournal Science in 2004 and 2005, Hwang claimed to have derived stem-cell lines from cloned human embryos, a world first.

He was lauded as a hero i n South Korea before it emerged that his research was fraudulent and riddled with ethical lapses. Science retracted the papers.

Hwang was given a two-year suspended prison sentence in 2009, after being convicted of embezzlement and bioethical violations.

Sooam Biotech clones many animals, including cattle and pigs for medical research and breed preservation, but is best known for its commercial dog service.

The process involves harvesting a mature cell from the dog to be copied and transferring its DNA to a donor egg cell that has had its own genetic material removed.

The cell and the egg are “fused” with an electrical jolt, and the resulting embryo is implanted in a surrogate mother dog, which will give birth about two months later.

Despite the $100 000 price tag, requests for the service have poured in from around the world, Wang said — about half from North America.

Some have sought clones of other pets like cats, snakes and even chinchillas, but Wang said the demand for such animals was too small to justify the cost.

Walls around the five-storey biotech centre are adorned with photos of cloned dogs and their smiling owners — tagged with their national flags including Mexico, Dubai, Russia, Japan, China and Germany.

“[The clients] understand that a clone is an identical twin of the original pet, but also has a lot of genetic predispositions and the potential to develop as the original pet,” Wang said.

One well-publicised cloning was of Trakr, a former police dog hailed as a hero after discovering the last survivor of the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Centre.

Sooam produced five clones after Trakr’s owner won a contest for the world’s most “clone-worthy” dog.

As for those who cough up the fee to be “reunited” with their pet?

“They look like they found a child that had been missing,” said head researcher Jeong Yeon-Woo.

“The moment of pure joy like that ... makes me realise again why I’m doing this.” — AFP