Brian Hopkins
South University Online
BIO1020
Unveiled to the world’s press by Ian Wilmut and colleagues at the Roslin Institute in Midlothian, Scotland on February 22, 1997, Dolly the sheep was the first mammal to be successfully cloned from an adult cell. She was actually born a few months earlier on July 5, 1996.
The world was certainly awed when the first superstar sheep Dolly was introduced. It was that date in history when the world first heard about successful cloning. Dolly was a cloned sheep, the first cloned mammal. If Dolly is placed beside a naturally conceived sheep, no obvious differences will be noticed. As a matter of fact, if you really want to know the difference between the two, you would need to go back to the time when they were conceived. Dolly was developed and conceived without a sperm. It all began with the cell of another sheep, fused with the donor egg via electricity. Dolly was made solely from a single sheep and no other.
Indeed, the story of Dolly the sheep is a great leap and breakthrough of science. It was an accomplishment that made everyone wonder who and what will be cloned next by the scientists. Other animals have been cloned since then such as cats, monkeys, cows, pigs and rats. It was believed by the FDA that meat and milk products from cloned animals are safe to consume.
Cloning animals seems to be a benign issue, but is certainly a sensitive topic when it comes to cloning of humans. This concern was addressed by the former US President, Bill Clinton. He signed a moratorium that effectively suspends federal funding of human cloning experiments for five years. Five years is just a short period. Soon enough, many scientists have claimed to have performed various experiments in human cloning.A controversial doctor has claimed to have cloned human embryos and transferred them to four women prepared to give birth to the first cloned babies….None of the embryo transfers led to a pregnancy but
References: Human Cloning Foundation Home Page www.humancloning.org/ Human Cloning Laws www.ncsl.org/issues-research/health/human-cloning-laws.aspx Human Cloning | The Center for Bioethics & Human Dignity cbhd.org/content/human-cloning Embryo cloning, adult DNA cloning and therapeutic cloning www.religioustolerance.org/cloning.htm