Cloning of Dolly The Sheep

About Dolly

Dolly, a Finn Dorset sheep, was born on July 5th, 1996, at the Roslin Institute in Edinburgh, Scotland. Her birth, not revealed to the public until February 3rd, 1997, sparked controversy instantly, because Dolly was the world's first mammal to be cloned from an adult cell. Considered one of the most significant scientific breakthroughs ever, Dolly's birth and subsequent survival proved that adult cells can reprogram themselves into a new being. The team that created her, led by Scotsman Ian Wilmut, hoped to create an animal whose cells were genetically young again, rather than prematurely adult; however, when Dolly was reported to have been euthanased on February 14th, 2003, nearly six years after her birth, concern was raised that her progressive lung disease was caused because her cells were already old; she also had premature arthritis. Sheep can normally live to 11 or 12 years of age, and lung disease is not common in younger sheep. There was some speculation as to whether she caught it or not from the other sheep that she was housed with, but that claim has been neither confirmed nor denied.

Dolly, named after singer Dolly Parton, bred normally on two occasions, with a Welsh mountain ram named David, and over the course of her life gave birth to four lambs; proving thus that clones can reproduce. Francis Crick and James Watson are widely recognized as some of the first pioneers in cloning technology. Their discovery of the double-helix structure  of DNA in 1953, and later, their work on moecular heredity, helped to propel the science of biotechnology into the public view. This in turn led to an increase in scientific research that focused on learning the intricacies of the human genetic code and, subsequently, the discovery that cloning is possible and within reach of scientists today. Cloning as it exists today would probably not exist but for the research of these two men, who in 1962 received a Nobel prize for their work. Another important name in cloning history is John Gurdon, who in 1962 announced that he had used the nucleus of fully differentiated adult intestinal cells to clone South African frogs. Gurdon’s experiment was widely talked about, although it was never proven that the frogs were true clones.
In 1984, Steen Willadsun cloned a sheep from embryo cells, which were the predecessor to Dolly’s method of cloning. His work was the first verified incidence of cloning using nuclear transfer, which was remarkable at the time considering that only a few months earlier it had been said that it was biologically impossible.
The major debate over Dolly was the issue of subsequent human cloning. The ethics that need to be considered over this issue are enormous, and there is no one right answer.  Since Dolly, human cloning advocates have lobbied to legalize cloning; but so far this has not happened. Some people are of the opinion that cloning is essentially "playing God" and is abominable to say the least; they cite cloning experiments that have gone awry, with such results as deformed fetuses with oversized organs, and birthed animals that were twice the normal size and died soon after. Overall, the Dolly debate still continues internationally, and has never really died away. Whatever the future of cloning may be, Dolly existed, and that in itself is a momentous event in human history.