Respond to prefers-color-scheme dark in app web views

Follow section front redirects in Spectrum

Enable NLP source in PCS for load testing

Switch off the News Alerts Survey Widget when we have enough responses

Poll to determine if new LUF updates are available

Allows the winning A/B test variant to be turned on without Spectrum deployment

Show infinite scrolling sections in Assembler MultiView

Show option for NLP article summaries in Action Bar

Show NLP summaries collection recirc on article pages

A general feature flag for Recipe Features that aren't yet released

Feature flag for media team features that aren't yet released

Use new Orca video player for preroll plugin in Spectrum

Show the snow tracker (instead of the heat tracker) on Spectrum

‘Bunker mentality’ at Columbia lit protest spark that spread nationwide

A mystery illness stole their kids’ personalities. These moms fought for answers.

The greatness — yes, greatness — of the Planet of the Apes

Carolyn Hax: Keep scrolling seven hours per day, or give therapy a try?

Ask Amy: Mother isn’t accepting of her gay son

Ask Amy: What do I say about my former walking buddy who yelled at me?

An unexpected sight to behold: Ted Cruz working bipartisan deals

Narrative of Trump snoozing in court takes hold — much to his annoyance

Manafort will no longer take on Republican convention role

I used to dismiss my mom’s advice. Then I found a note she wrote before she died.  

Photos of his mom at lunch are a balm people didn’t know they needed

Dog hit by car loses leg, is adopted by firefighter who helped her

Eighth-inning decision burns the Nats in a 4-2 loss to the Red Sox

Nats win opener at Fenway behind Patrick Corbin and a lockdown bullpen

Commanders rookie DT Johnny Newton needs a second foot surgery

Bishop vanished. His species can still be saved.

VCU grads walk out during Gov. Youngkin’s speech

Northern lights glow worldwide

5 big travel lessons from an accomplished conservationist

Cruise ship drags dead whale into New York, prompting investigation

The case for eating at Italian gas stations

Kristi Noem’s dog killing is pure Southern gothic

Claire Messud turns her family’s history into a masterpiece

Joseph Epstein, conservative provocateur, tells his life story in full

Tens of thousands in Georgia protest Russian-style ‘foreign agents’ law

Israeli operations in north and south Gaza force displaced to flee again

‘Nothing left’: At least 300 dead as flash floods devastate Afghanistan

The urgent air defense lessons of April 16 

Are smartphones destroying childhood? It’s complicated.

In the campaign against Donald Trump, do the ends justify the means?

Fooled by AI? These firms sell deepfake detection that’s ‘REAL 100%.’ 

Apple apologizes for iPad ad after blowback 

Google’s new ‘Find My’ device network is useful but a stalking risk

Courtroom photo ban adds to hurdles for Trump trial journalists

Israel’s shameful ban on Al Jazeera

Checks, not sex, and other takeaways from Trump’s New York hush money trial

US-POLITICS-BIDEN

Chai’s death came unexpectedly — a freak accident of sorts after she swallowed a piece of a wrapper that got lodged in her intestines.

When the beloved 5-year-old cat died in 2017, there was nothing her owner, Kelly Anderson, could do — or so she thought.

Chai’s body had not yet turned cold when Anderson remembered a conversation with her roommate about the Texas-based ViaGen Pets, one of just a few companies worldwide that clones pets. The next morning, she called them.

Some $25,000 and five years later, Anderson — a 32-year-old dog trainer from Austin — has a 6-month-old carbon copy of Chai curled up in her lap. Belle is nearly identical to Chai, down to her deep-blue eyes and fluffy white coat. The two cats share a couple of quirks, like sleeping with their bodies stretched out against Anderson’s back. But that’s where the similarities end, Anderson said.

Although clones carry the same genetic material, they are not the same animal — after all, they do not carry the same memories and experiences that turned the original creatures into adored pets. It’s a bit like resetting a phone: While the model and technology are one and the same, all the data has been wiped out.

More than 25 years after the controversial <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/we-know-dolly-the-sheep-was-cloned-20-years-ago-but-how-old-was-she-at-birth/2017/03/03/8cd8eaf6-f945-11e6-be05-1a3817ac21a5_story.html" target=_blank>Dolly the sheep case</a>, Anderson is part of a growing group of people paying a small fortune to clone their pets. But while scientific advancement has allowed the practice to become more commercial, the procedure itself raises ethical dilemmas, experts say.

Kelly Anderson

The process of cloning is relatively simple, said CheMyong “Jay” Ko, a professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign’s comparative biosciences department.

It starts with a couple of cells from the pet’s tissue, usually from the ear or belly. In a lab, the cells are then placed into a concoction of enzymes to pluck out the DNA. Next, scientists retrieve an unfertilized egg from another donor animal. Then, the egg’s nucleus is removed with a “teeny, tiny needle,” Ko said, and swapped with the nucleus of the pet’s cells. The new egg, which carries the pet’s DNA, is placed in a mixture with the nutrients usually found in a uterus, culturing them until they can become embryos to be implanted into a surrogate.

If everything turns out right, the surrogate will carry the pregnancy to term — and boom, a clone is born.

The problem is that cloning does not have a 100 percent success rate. Not all pregnancies will be fruitful, and not all embryos will be viable, which means several surrogate and egg donor animals may be used in the process.

Because cloning is not a natural process, there can be abnormalities in the embryos that lead to miscarriages or death just after birth, Ko said.

“People think, ‘Oh, I’ll just press a button and out will come Fido,’ but that’s just not the case,” said Robert Klitzman, director of the masters of bioethics program at Columbia University. “So you may love Fido, but do you really want several animals to die and suffer in order to have the one healthy Fido?”

Another concern, Klitzman said, is the “naive notion that the clone will be the same and that you’ll have the same emotional relationship.”

“I can either pay thousands of dollars to create a new pet that’s actually going to have a different history and personality,” he said. “Or maybe I could adopt an animal that would otherwise be killed in a shelter. Those are things that ethically need to be considered.”

Losing a pet can be devastating, but cloning “may not allow one to process the grief and to then develop a relationship with another being,” Klitzman said. And thinking of the clone as a sort of substitution places an unfair expectation on the new animal, he added.

But Anderson said she never expected Belle to be a Chai 2.0.

“I’ve always told people that I cloned not because I wanted to bring my cat back to life, but because I wanted to carry on a piece of her, and I think it’s definitely really comforting to have that in Belle,” Anderson said. “Even though they’re different cats, there’s still a piece of Chai in her. So it’s comforting in a way that I don’t really know how to explain.”

In a way, Belle is enjoying the life Chai never knew. Because of a long list of illnesses she had when she was young, Chai never got to experience the joy of her kittenhood, Anderson said. Instead of socializing and playing, the first five months of her life were spent under treatment — maybe contributing to her “very reserved and standoffish” personality, she said.

The fact that her relatively difficult life was cut short — plus, tests showing that none of her illnesses were genetic — was what prompted Anderson to clone her.

“It’s a bit about giving her a second chance,” she said.

Another reason, Anderson said, was the deep attachment she had to Chai — a cat that served as beloved companion and source of hope when she was struggling with depression.

That same love has prompted others, including <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/animalia/wp/2018/03/07/what-a-dog-cloning-expert-would-have-told-barbra-streisand-nooooooo/" target="_blank">singer Barbra Streisand</a>, to clone their pets. But with the hefty price tag, some have resorted to extraordinary means to pay for the procedure — such as <a href="https://nypost.com/2022/03/01/i-traded-in-my-car-and-paid-40k-to-clone-my-dog-and-it-was-worth-it/" target="_blank">trading in vehicles or selling rare artwork</a>.

ViaGen Pets clones dogs for $50,000 and cats for $35,000. (The price was $25,000 when Anderson paid for the cloning five years ago.) For those still undecided, the company also offers to store and preserve pets’ cells for $1,600 — an amount that is included in the total cloning cost.

ViaGen was founded in 2002 as a livestock cloning company, duplicating horses, cows and pigs. They began preserving pet DNA that year but didn’t begin cloning dogs and cats until 2015 — after a South Korean company had successfully done so.

About 10 percent of all ViaGen Pets customers who’ve preserved their pets’ DNA ultimately take the leap, said Melain Rodriguez, the company’s client service manager. But for the other 90 percent who have preserved cells, “there’s no length of time that they have to be used by,” she said.

“We have clients that have stored cells with us for 17 years and are cloning now,” Rodriguez said. “So you’ve got a puppy now that was from a dog that was alive 25 years ago, which is a really incredible thing to think about.”

ViaGen Pets does not disclose how many clones it has created, but Rodriguez said “it’s in the hundreds” — a number that has “grown every year” since 2015.

“I don’t think it’s something that’s ever going to be very commonplace where every dog is cloned, but I think it’s going to definitely increase and become more popular as the years go on,” she said.

Rodriguez acknowledged that pet cloning remains controversial, but said the animals involved are “loved and taken care of” — including the surrogate mothers, who can be adopted after a clone’s birth. ViaGen also warns clients they won’t get replicas of their old pets, Rodriguez said.

“We counsel our clients and make sure they understand what they’re getting into,” she said. “And I think the easiest way that we can put it is that it’s an identical twin — just born at a different time.”

Watching Belle play with her dogs and refuse to stay still for a Zoom interview brings a wave of deja vu for Anderson. It’s bittersweet, she says. Yet at the same time, there’s so much about the new kitten that has her “over the moon.”

“I don’t think that you ever stop missing someone that you love,” she said. “Of course I miss her every day. I think over time that’s dulled down, but that’s just part of grief and how that works.”

FSNE Journalism Contest, second place for news reporting (Spanish language), Florida Society of News Editors, 2020

ICPA Contest, second place for best podcast, Indiana Collegiate Press Association, 2021

R.V. Ley Journalism Award, for outstanding achievement and exceptional promise, John W. Gallivan Program in Journalism, Ethics and Democracy, 2021

University of Notre Dame, BA in political science and economics

María Luisa Paúl is a reporter on The Washington Post's Morning Mix team. She joined The Post as an intern on the General Assignment desk and has previously reported at the Miami Herald and el Nuevo Herald. 


María Luisa Paúl

washpost

People are paying thousands to clone their pets with ViaGen Pets

the-washington-post

name

iptc-media/health

iptc-media/science_and_technology/natural_science/biology/genetics

iptc-media/human_interest/animal

iptc-media/society/values

iptc-media/science_and_technology

iptc-media/health/health_treatment

iptc-media/society

iptc-media/science_and_technology/natural_science/biology

iptc-media/health/diseases_and_conditions

iptc-media/health/diseases_and_conditions/illness

iptc-media/human_interest

iptc-media/science_and_technology/natural_science

iptc-media/health/health_treatment/medicine

client-blocklists/Client List: Becton Dickinson KWs - EXCLUDES ALL

advertising/Client Topic: WebEx

client-blocklists/CLIENT LIST: Nomura KWs 2021 - EXCLUDES ALL

client-blocklists/Client List: Johnson & Johnson KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/P+ The Offer KW List - EXCLUDES ALL

client-blocklists/Bed Bath & Beyond KWs - INCLUDE ANY

client-blocklists/Client List: Exxon Mobil  - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/WaPo: Combined Disaster Keyword List - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Client List: USAA KWs - EXCLUDES ALL

client-blocklists/Client List: T. Rowe Price KWs - EXCLUDES ALL

client-blocklists/Google PG KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/T. Rowe Price KWs - EXCLUDES ALL

client-blocklists/Client List: Microsoft KWs 2 - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/HBO KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Ford/Lincoln KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Client List: Discover Card KWs – INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Capital One (One Tech) KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Client List: AT&T KWs 2021 - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Louis Vuitton KW List - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Client List: Navy Federal Credit Union NFCU KWs 2 - INCLUDES ANY - 12.23.20

client-blocklists/Client List: Diageo - Johnnie Walker KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/ Client List: Mercedes EQS KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/United Airlines KW List - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/FlexForm KW List - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Boeing KWs 2021- INCLUDE ANY

client-blocklists/Client List: Morgan Stanley KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Hulu KW List - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Client List: Verizon KWs - EXCLUDES ALL

client-blocklists/Client List: Organon KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Client List: Optum KWs - EXCLUDES ALL

client-blocklists/Synchrony Financial KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Client List: Ukraine-Russia (Apple News) KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Client List: Showtime KWs - EXCLUDES ALL

client-blocklists/Client List: Apple TV+ KW – INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Client List: Ronald McDonald House KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Client Neg KW List: Omega KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/P+ Halo KW List - EXCLUDES ALL

client-blocklists/PMI KWs 2021 - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Marcus Goldman Sachs Neg KW List - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/GEICO KWs - INCLUDES ANY_4.26.21

client-blocklists/Client List: Eli Lily KWs - INCLUDES ANY

advertising/B2_Data Center Buyer_legacyaux_80A

client-blocklists/Client List: Citibank KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/SAP KW List - EXCLUDES ALL

client-blocklists/Citibank KWs 2021 - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Client List: Purina KWs - INCLUDES ANY

advertising/Qualcomm Custom KW - 5G

advertising/Citrix Mindfulness

client-blocklists/Client List: Fidelity Investments KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Client List: Turbo Tax KWs - EXCLUDES ALL

client-blocklists/CME KW List 2022 - EXCLUDES ALL 

client-blocklists/Bank of America KWs - EXCLUDES ALL

client-blocklists/BP KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/National Instruments KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Client List: Intel KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Client List: AT&T Digital Divide  - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/ExxonMobil 03312021 KWs - INCLUDES ALL

client-blocklists/Samsung 2021 KWs - INCLUDE ANY

advertising/B2_Pets_legacyaux_3hv

client-blocklists/Google PG Competitor KWs - EXCLUDES ALL 

advertising/B2_Positive News_legacyaux_hlt

advertising/B2_Transportation, Logistics, and Industry_legacyaux_kre

client-blocklists/Client List: GEICO KWs

client-blocklists/Client List: KPMG KWs - EXCLUDES ALL

client-blocklists/Client List: Novo Nordisk KWs - EXCLUDES ALL

client-blocklists/Client List: Siemens KWs - EXCLUDES ALL

client-blocklists/Client List: Cisco KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Client List: AT&T ALT KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Mercedes KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/FX Excludes All Disney

client-blocklists/Client List: Inpixon KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Client List: Boeing KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Client List: Aetna KWs - EXCLUDES ALL

client-blocklists/Client List: Google KWs - INCLUDES ALL

client-blocklists/Philip Morris KWs - INCLUDES ANY 

client-blocklists/Capital One KWs 2 - INCLUDES ANY - 1.4.21

client-blocklists/Bank of America Merrill Lynch KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Client List: Office Depot KWs - EXCLUDES ALL

client-blocklists/Chase KWs - EXCLUDES ALL

client-blocklists/Amazon KWs - EXCLUDE ALL 

client-blocklists/Client List: ETrade KWs - EXCLUDES ALL

prism://prism.query/site,/national/morning-mix?limit=20

Morning Mix

The Washington Post's Morning Mix blog covers stories from all over the nation and world.

prism://prism.query/site-articles-only,/national&limit=20

National

The Washington Post's national news coverage. Get the latest national news, featuring national security, science and the courts. Read breaking national news headlines from across the U.S.