A Brief History
On July 5, 1996, a sheep named Dolly was born, the product of a cloning experiment making her the first ever mammal to be cloned. Using an adult somatic cell from one sheep, an egg cell from another sheep, and the resulting embryo implanted in the womb of a third sheep saw baby Dolly carried to term.
Digging Deeper
This experiment proved that taking DNA from any cell in a mammal’s body other than a gamete could be used to form a clone of that mammal, the implied meaning that any mammal could be cloned, including humans.
Dolly lived for seven years, developing a common sheep form of cancer not related to being a clone. She bore six lambs of her own through conventional means. Further experiments with pigs, cats, dogs, horses, and cattle were successful, leading to the fear that humans would be the next clones.
So far, humans have not been cloned, though they could be. Should they?
Question for students (and subscribers): Do you know anyone who has had a pet cloned? If so, how did it work out? Please let us know in the comments section below this article.
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Historical Evidence
For more information, please see…
Baqi, Rafat Abdul. Ethics of Human Cloning Enquiry. Sahitya Nilayam Book Services, 2023.
Morgan, Sally. From Sea Urchins to Dolly the Sheep: Discovering Cloning. Heinemann, 2006.
The featured image in this article, a photograph by dun_deagh at the National Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh, is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.
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