A booming biotech business in South Korea has new customers in America, because everyone wants to clone their dog.
NPR interviews a couple who paid a lot of money to clone their beloved mutt Melvin, who they bought for $50. Melvin is now gone, but his DNA lives on. This is so creepy.
![Ken and Henry "are so much like Melvin, it's unreal," says Phillip Dupont. [NPR]](https://i0.wp.com/boingboing.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/dog-cloning-8_custom-bbb06494b77595b8e12eac326f931ca3b7b579f4-s800-c85.jpg?resize=800%2C532)
Ken and Henry “are so much like Melvin, it’s unreal,” says Phillip Dupont. [NPR]
They sent some of Melvin’s skin cells off to the Korean lab, which is the only one in the world currently cloning dogs for pet owners (as opposed to cloning animals for research).
Their first cloned puppy died early on, from distemper. The lab tried again. They got two healthy clones.
From the NPR story transcript:
Ken and Henry are genetically identical, though not exact replicas. They’re clones of the Duponts’ last dog, Melvin — created when scientists injected one of Melvin’s skin cells, which contained all of his DNA, into a donor egg that had been emptied of its original DNA.
Ken and Henry are two of only about 600 dogs that have been cloned since scientists at Sooam Biotech, a suburban company near Seoul, South Korea, developed the technology to create cloned canines.
The Duponts sat down with Shots to explain why they decided to clone Melvin.
![Two years ago, Paula and Phillip Dupont paid $100,000 to have their mutt Melvin cloned by a laboratory in South Korea. They are so pleased with the results they may do it again. [NPR]](https://i0.wp.com/boingboing.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/dog-cloning-7_custom-5bab74b5a7317030191cd7bef439449298781a77-s800-c85.jpg?resize=800%2C533)
Two years ago, Paula and Phillip Dupont paid $100,000 to have their mutt Melvin cloned by a laboratory in South Korea. They are so pleased with the results they may do it again. [NPR]
More: Listen to the NPR segment here.