California Company plans to make 5 clones of dogs

A California company is planning a string of online auctions next month to clone five dogs, with the bidding to start at $100,000. As it is, scientists consider dogs among the most difficult animals to clone because they have an unusual reproductive biolog. Even more so than humans. But the company behind the auctions, BioArts International, says that the technology is ready, and it is calling the dog cloning project Best Friends Again. It has scheduled the auctions for June 18. BioArts says it has licensed patents issued in the 1990s after researchers in Scotland cloned Dolly the sheep.

Mr. Hawthorne, owner of BioArts, told The Times the bidding would start at $100,000. He said that was a starting price, not a minimum, and could drop.He said that the opening and closing times for the auctions would be staggered, to reach potential customers in different time zones, and that the starting bids for the later auctions would be higher “to steer people to participate in the earlier auctions if they can, and avoid a phenomenon of everyone waiting to see how they go.”