Real Life Pet Sematary

Remember this?

Well, it's back...only there's a lot more science involved...you know, microscopes and such.

Today an American woman received five puppies that were cloned by a South Korean company from her late pitbull, who died of cancer in 2006. She is RNL Bio's first customer to what they claim is the world's first successful "commercial canine cloning service."

This just sounds morbid.

Cells were taken from the woman's dead pitbull (who's name was Booger...how...cute?). The Korean scientists then brought the dog's frozen cells to Seoul in March and nurtured them (whatever that means) before launching formal cloning work in late May, according to RNL Bio. The two surrogate mother's were both Korean mixed-breed dogs.

I know this must be a precious moment from her perspective, but I don't know what is creepier, the fact that they are commercially cloning housepets, the idea that animals have a soul, or the expression on this woman's face (notice puppy screaming with haunts of his past life):

"I know you! You know me, too!" She told the puppies. She said she was attached to her dog, Booger (again...great name) because he saved her life when she was severely attacked by a much larger dog. That's an admirable reason to be attached to a pet, but seriously, cloning him in hopes that his eternal soul is resurrected in not one puppy, but five?

Unfortunately it seems RNL Bio's inaugural customer is not alone in her belief. The company eventually plans to clone about 300 dogs per year and has reported that they are also interested in duplicating camels in the Middle East. Just what we need, an army of cloned camels! This is all sounding very Star Wars, if not a bit scary. You have to stop and wonder what's next. But for the time being, if you're looking for a newer, probably slightly-disturbed, post-mortem copy of Fluffy or Spot, start saving your pennies, because they charge up to $150,000 a pop. If you ask me (which I'm sure you didn't and won't), this is exactly how Cujo was born.