DOLLY THE SHEEP

It is not uncommon for animals to play a part on scientific research, but mist of them
remain anonymous, and non of them have achieved the international fame of Dolly rthe
Sheep. Dolly made scientific history when she was the first animal to be cloned from an
adult cell. Her birthb tookmplace in 5 July 1996 at the Roslin Institute near Edinburgh in
Scotland. When the birth was annopuinced in February b1997, the world’s p[ress could
not get there fast enough Dolly was the most photographed ever.

Dolly’s arrival was not without humour. To start with, there was there fact that shw was
named afterv the large-breasted American country-and-western singer, Dolly Parton,
having been cloned from cells taken from the uder of an adult ewe. This was a source of
amusement to some of the press. Then, there was the fact that some people wondered if
the announcemenrt of her arrival was a hoax.

However, the cloning of Dolly was not a hoax. It had tahen place and it was considered a
very serious event indeed. Not only her cloned birth was ascientific breakthropugh of
tremendous importance, it gave rise to much debate aboute the social and ethical
implications of the event.

Some accusewd the Roslin scientists, headed by Ian Wilmut, of playing God.
Reporoduction ahould be undertaken only by natutal process and any other process was
unthinkable. People seemed to forget that it was a sheep, and not a human, that had been
cloned and thetre was muich debate about whateffect human cloning would have on the
future of mankind.

There was talk about how males would be unnecessary in reproduction and there was
much scaremongering about evel people making several clones of themselves and adding
on to the miseries of the world. One German newspaper raised the possibility of a
regiment of cloned Hitlers bringing destruction to the world. Some parents even took
false hope fromm the news of Dolly theyb might somehow replicate children who were
dying or even children who were dead.

One pf the problems was that people did not understand what had happened or why it had
happened, and people fear the uumknown. To be fair, it was difficult to get one’s head
round the fact that it was possible to create an animal that was the exact copy of, and had
exactly the same genetic make-up of, another animal. Previously, cloniong had been
thought of only in terms of the plant world.

What had actuaslly happened was that the Roslin Institue had taken a cell from the udder
of a six-year-old Finn Dorset ewe, coupled it with an unfertilised egg from a
Blackfaced ewe, an caused an electric current to encouraged the fusion of the two. The
artificially created embryo, which was the result of this fusion, was cultured for seven
days in the lab and thenntransferred to the womb of another sheep, which the became
pregnant.

The aspects of the birth of Dolly whichnmost excited the scientific world was that she
had been created from an adult cell. The Roslin Institute had already cloned two ewes,
known as Megan and Morag, which were born in 1995, but they had been cloned from
cultured embyo celle, not adult cells. The birth of Dolly proved that the cells of our
bodies are much more versdatile than they were previously thought to be. Pre Dolly, it
had been assumed that all the cells in our bodies were rather fixed in their functions. The
creation of Dolly suggested, as one of the scientists involved pointed< that, for example,
bone marrow cells mightr be used to help heal injuries to the heart, muscles and other
parts of the body.