You love your dog. But would you spend $50,000 to clone it? If the answer is yes, then a Texas company is standing by and ready to help.
The veterinarians at Viagen Pets use a proprietary process for genetically preserving your pet’s DNA, then safely maintain it at its cryo-storage facility. Using a donor egg, the company’s technicians join it and your pet’s previously frozen cells (which are easily taken by any veterinarian from a skin sample — even if your dog is sick or late in life) to produce an embryo. The embryo is then implanted into a surrogate animal. The result is an identical genetic twin that’s delivered after a normal gestation period. The entire process takes about six-to-seven months.
“People have a hard time wrapping their brain around that it is a real technology,” Melain Rodriguez, a manager at the company, said in a report on television station website KDKA.com. “It is not science fiction.” Viagen’s been doing this for more than 15 years and has successfully cloned thousands of animals, including cattle, horses, pigs, sheep and — yes — dogs and cats.
The process isn’t cheap. A cloned dog costs $50,000, but cats are done for half the price.
