I'm Walking on Sunshine (Whoooa Oh)

Woman clones dog

Bernann McKinney says her beloved pit bull "Booger" saved her life when another dog attacked her, then learned to push her wheelchair while she recovered from a severe hand injury and nerve damage.

He died in 2006, but now he's back — at least in clone form, after the birth last week of puppies replicated by a South Korean company.

The five clones were created by Seoul-based RNL Bio in cooperation with a team of Seoul National University scientists who in 2005 created the world's first cloned dog, a male Afghan hound named Snuppy.

It is headed by Lee Byeong-chun, a former colleague of disgraced scientist Hwang Woo-suk, whose purported breakthroughs in stem cell research were revealed as fake. Independent tests, however, proved the team's dog cloning was genuine.

Lee's team has since cloned some 30 dogs and five wolves, but claims Booger's clones, for which McKinney paid $50,000, are the first successful commercial cloning of a canine. -- The Associated Press

Okay, there are a lot of different things to consider here: moral and ethical issues, animal welfare, the fact that this woman paid a staggering $50,000 for what is -- for all intents and purposes -- a brand new dog with little association to her old beloved dog other than a smeared DNA sample on a petri dish, etc., etc. But for the moment, all of that is inconsequential, because the very first thing that came to mind when I heard about this story is that great episode of Futurama, "Jurassic Bark."

It's the one where Fry finds the fossilized remains of his dog, Seymour. The last time Fry saw him was in 1999, just before he was cryogenically frozen, so he asks Professor Farnsworth if he can clone him. Just before they go through with the procedure, Fry has an epiphany: through the cloning machine's carbon dating, he learns that Seymour was 15 when he died, living 12 long years after Fry was frozen. He realizes that Seymour must've lived a long and productive life after he was gone, so it would be unfair to bring him back to an owner he probably wouldn't even remember. What he doesn't know, however, is that Seymour patiently waited for him in front of that pizzeria, waited everyday for him to come home.

That kills me every time.

Hmm, on second thought, I guess I can't blame that woman too much. And I guess I can't blame that grief-stricken Pet Semetary guy who buried his dead son and wife on that Indian burial ground in hopes of resurrecting them, even though they came back all evil and twisted. I think many of us would go to the same lengths to get back a loved one.

And there's been a lot of animals in the news lately, huh? Some scientists recently stumbled upon 125,000 gorillas that were previously unaccounted for. They were all within the forests of the Republic of Congo, just hanging out. That's pretty cool.