After photographer Monni Must’s 28-year-old daughter Miya committed suicide while in the midst of an abusive relationship, the grieving mother adopted Miya’s spunky black Labrador, Billy Bean. Last year, as the 10th anniversary of her daughter’s death approached, the dog was nearing 13 and becoming increasingly frail. “I knew that I was falling apart,” said Must. “The thought of Billy dying was just more
than I could handle.” So she decided to clone her. She paid more than $50,000 for what is essentially an identical twin of Billy, born at a later date. “I have three other daughters and they thought I had completely lost my mind,” Must said. Cloning animals is hardly new. The first major success was Dolly the sheep, born in 1996 as the first mammal cloned from an adult cell. In 2005, researchers in South Korea cloned the first dog. READ MORE