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 recent birth of puppies replicated by a South Korean company.
"Yes, I know you! You know me too!" McKinney cried joyfully, hugging the puppy clones as they slept with one of their two surrogate mothers, both Korean mixed breed dogs, in a Seoul laboratory. "It's a miracle."
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.
The team is headed by Lee Byeong-chun. Lee is a former colleague of disgraced scientist Hwang Woo-suk whose purported breakthroughs in stem cell research were revealed as fake. Independent tests proved the team's dog cloning was genuine.
Lee's team has since cloned about 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 procedure is drawing criticism from animal rights groups that oppose cloning pets. They say it can lead to malformed offspring and exploitation of surrogates, as well as unfounded claims that the new animal is an exact copy of the original.
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