Cloning. The entire scientific world laughed at the cloned Dolly sheep. What happened to Dolly the sheep?

On July 5, 1996, Dolly became the world's first superstar sheep. She was the first mammal to be successfully cloned from an adult cell, ushering in an era where anyone could order a clone of their favorite puppy or elite horses.

However, scientists were also concerned that Dolly might have been a cautionary tale: Genetic testing showed that her DNA showed signs of aging by one year, and she was diagnosed with arthritis at age 5. It was unclear whether Dolly's problems were related to her being a clone.
Dolly eventually died in 2003 from contracting the virus, having lived for 6 years - half the typical lifespan of a sheep of her species.
As it turns out, Dolly may have just been unlucky. Indeed, recently researchers from the University of Nottingham announced that four clones obtained from Dolly’s cells have been alive and well for nine years.

Meet cloned sheep Debbie, Denis, Dianna and Daisy.

The four Nottingham Dollys are the only survivors of a group of 10 Dolly clones born in 2007.
They were created along with nine other non-Dolly clones so that their metabolic, cardiovascular and musculoskeletal health could be compared. Despite Dolly's seemingly premature aging of her joints, only one of the four clones, Debbie, developed mild arthritis. “Their metabolic and cardiovascular systems are indistinguishable from other sheep of this age,” says veterinarian Sandra Corr. “We found that most sheep are in very good health considering their age.”

Their appearance is incredibly calming.

The sheep were cloned using the same method that created Dolly - somatic cell nuclear transfer.
During this process, scientists extract DNA (which is found in the nucleus of the cell) from the cell of the original animal (in this case, the mammary gland of the original sheep) and then transfer it to the nucleus of the egg. Next, they give this new egg a small boost - in the case of surviving Dollys, caffeine - which starts the process of division until a viable embryo is formed.
After the cells mature, they differentiate, for example, a skin cell is different from a lung cell. Dolly's successful birth was made possible because scientists were able to "reset" these differentiated cells back to an undifferentiated state so they could grow into a brand new lamb.
The good health of Nottingham Dollys is excellent evidence that clones can live long and healthy lives.
“If cloning accelerated aging, we would have seen it in this group,” the scientists say.

Simonova Karina

A message on a topical and interesting topic for students: “cloning”

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Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation.

Trudilovskaya

municipal secondary school

Smolensk district, Smolensk region.

Message "Cloning Dolly the Sheep"

10th grade students

Simonova

Karina Sergeevna

Teacher-consultant

Severinova O.A.

2008-09 academic year year

Cloning Dolly the sheep.

Cloning (English cloning from the Greek κλων - “twig, shoot, offspring”) - in the most general sense - the exact reproduction of an object any required number of times. Objects obtained as a result of cloning are called clones. And both each individually and the entire series.

Human cloning is an ethical and scientific problem of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, consisting in the technical ability to begin the formation and cultivation of fundamentally new human beings, accurately reproducing not only externally, but also at the genetic level of a particular individual, currently existing or previously existing - together with the complete ethical unpreparedness of society for this.

The famous sheep Dolly has been diagnosed - rheumatoid arthritis. According to scientists, joint disease is a direct consequence of cloning, reportsBBC .

When cloning from an animalGene disorders could occur, which now led to the disease. Professor Ian Wimouth of EdinburghRoslin Institute stated that the condition of the cloned animal could worsen further. Animal welfare societies considered this news additional evidence that cloning experiments are harmful, and once again demanded that experiments on Dolly be stopped.

Professor Wilmut is convinced that the cause of the disease in a cloned animal cannot be known for sure. However, biologists admit that cases of rheumatism in five-year-old sheep are extremely rare.

Meanwhile, companies that are engaged in research in the field of cloning claim that their “wards” are completely healthy. But, as the BBC notes, there are no independent reports on how cloning affects the condition of animals after several years of life.

The Roslin Institute reports that the death of the sheep was pronounced when a veterinary commission discovered that it had a progressive lung disease.

Dr Griffin says: "The normal lifespan of a sheep is 11-12 years, and lung infections are more common in older sheep, particularly those living indoors." “A full autopsy will be done and the commission will report any significant deviations or changes.”

Dolly was cloned from the breast of a 6-year-old adult sheep and was born on July 5, 1996 at the Roslin Institute.

Her birth was not announced until 7 months later, and the news was immediately hailed as one of the most significant scientific breakthroughs of the decade.

Now she's dead. And her death, regardless of any autopsy results, is unlikely to become a positive argument when the topic of cloning comes up again. Quite the opposite.

It is worth noting that in general, biological achievements in such frontier and revolutionary areas as cloning and genetic modification, so far, instead of the expected panacea for all ills and universal happiness, only cause acute wariness and conflicts on moral, ethical and religious grounds. Although this may just be a pessimistic view of what is happening. But what a reason, such a look.

The life and death of Dolly the sheep.

This, or almost this, would be the message about Dolly’s death if she were human. But Dolly is just a sheep who got very lucky. The lucky thing is not that it is the most famous sheep in the world, with the possible exception of the lamb that “Mary had,” but that Dolly is the first surviving clone of a large mammal in the history of biotechnology. Before her birth, scientists from the Roslin Institute and PPL Therapeutics made about 300 unsuccessful cloning attempts. As they say, most of the cloned embryos died before even reaching the womb of the surrogate mother, and those that reached birth did not at all resemble successful experiments. And sometimes on sheep too.

The birth of Dolly had the effect of a bomb exploding. The authoritative magazine Nature in February 1997 put the heroine on the cover and dedicated a large article to her, and many simpler publications became a platform for skeptics and a rumor factory. There were many rumors. So, from the very appearance of Dolly, they said that the sheep ages at an alarming rate. As evidence, data was cited on Dolly's diseases, which, it was argued, were either not characteristic of sheep at all, or did not appear in sheep of her age. During the foot-and-mouth epidemic, it was reported that Dolly would be slaughtered - along with the rest of the British sheep population. In addition, some wild evidence appeared about Dolly's unusual aggressiveness - apparently, the authors of these versions believed that a berserker sheep as a reason for a newspaper headline was more interesting than the result of a unique scientific experiment.

The press repeatedly reported that Dolly had died (the last time this happened two weeks before her actual death). Some news agencies, commenting on the death of her technological sister Matilda, cloned by Australian scientists, stated that Matilda may have died from the same misfortune as Dolly. From rapid aging.

Adding fuel to the fire is the fact that scientists involved in cloning are, as a rule, quite closed and in no hurry to reveal their own secrets. Everyone intuitively understands what enormous money this technology promises if it is put into production. About Dolly, who was born in 1996, became known only six months after her birth. And Matilda - if you believe the official version - was not even subjected to an autopsy and was immediately cremated. The grounds for cremation are ridiculous. Rob Lewis, chief executive of the South Australian Institute of Scientific Research, said the sheep "stank".
Another reason to remain silent regarding the lambs was given by Dolly's creator Ian Wilmut - many researchers do not want to publish preliminary research results because they know how ambivalent the public is about cloning and do not want to once again escalate the tension.
As for the reporters who rushed to bury Dolly, they almost got it right. By the time of Matilda's death, Dolly was already seriously ill. Unlike the suddenly cremated Matilda, the world's first clone will serve science even after death. The Roslin Institute promised that the sheep would be exhumed and the results of the post-mortem examination would be published.

Was Dolly doomed?

We have to admit that the skeptics were right to some extent and their statements about Dolly’s rapid aging, based on the assumption that the cells of a six-year-old donor remained six years old after the transplant, look more plausible today. Researchers from the Roslin Institute have never directly confirmed such suspicions, often ignoring them, however, judging by the statements, they admit the possibility that the donor cells were unable to remodel and the biological age of the cells of the newborn sheep exceeded six years.
Let's start with the fact that Dolly died very early. Sheep usually live 11–12 years (maximum - up to sixteen), so if we assume that Dolly was born six years old, then her death can easily be explained by banal old age. The Roslin Institute acknowledges that the lung disease that caused the death is usually found in older sheep and is rare in six-year-old sheep. Since 2001, Dolly is known to have suffered from arthritis, another condition that is rare in sheep in their "prime of life."
Commenting on attempts at human cloning, Harry Griffin from the Roslin Institute said that he opposes such research at the current stage of scientific development. According to him, human clones are unlikely to turn out healthy, therefore, it would be better to stop experiments on their creation for now. Moreover, Griffin believes that "clones have a huge number of physical abnormalities, and even if they appear healthy, this does not mean anything." And even more specifically (and almost in unison with the skeptics): “Try to convince the forty thousand genes contained in a cell that this cell belongs to an embryo, and not an adult. We don't know how to reprogram genes, and failures are possible here. We have already encountered this problem when cloning animals, and where is the guarantee that the same problems will not arise when cloning people?

Human cloning legislation

In some countries, the use of these technologies in relation to humans is officially prohibited - USA, France, Germany, Japan. These prohibitions, however, do not mean the intention of legislators of these states to refrain from using human cloning in the future, after a detailed study of the molecular mechanisms of interaction between the cytoplasm of the recipient oocyte and the nucleus of the somatic donor cell, as well as improving the cloning technique itself.

On February 19, 2005, the United Nations called on UN member states to pass legislation banning all forms of cloning as they are “contrary to human dignity” and are against the “protection of human life.” The UN Declaration on Human Cloning, adopted by General Assembly resolution 59/280 on 8 March 2005, calls on Member States to prohibit all forms of human cloning to the extent that they are incompatible with human dignity and the protection of human life. At the same time, efforts to adopt a universal international agreement to ban cloning within the UN have not yet been successful.

The only international act to date that establishes a ban on human cloning is the Additional Protocol to the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Human Dignity in Connection with Biology and Medicine, relating to the prohibition of the cloning of human beings, which was signed on January 12, 1998 by 24 countries out of 43 countries. members of the Council of Europe (the Convention itself was adopted by the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe on November 19, 1996). On March 1, 2001, after ratification by 5 countries, this Protocol entered into force.

Although Russia does not participate in the above-mentioned Convention and Protocol, it has not remained aloof from global trends, having responded to the challenge of the time by adopting the Federal Law “On a temporary ban on human cloning” dated May 20, 2002 N 54-FZ.

As stated in its preamble, the law introduces a temporary (for a period of five years) ban on human cloning, based on the principles of respect for people, recognition of the value of the individual, the need to protect human rights and freedoms, and taking into account the insufficiently studied biological and social consequences of human cloning. Taking into account the prospects for using existing and developing technologies for cloning organisms, it is possible to extend the ban on human cloning or lift it as scientific knowledge in this area accumulates and moral, social and ethical standards are determined when using human cloning technologies.

The Law defines human cloning as “the creation of a human being genetically identical to another living or deceased human being by transferring the nucleus of a human somatic cell into a denucleated female reproductive cell,” i.e. We are talking only about reproductive cloning, not therapeutic cloning.

According to Art. 4 of the Law, persons guilty of violating it are liable in accordance with the legislation of the Russian Federation.

Currently, the process of criminalization of human cloning is actively unfolding in the world. In particular, such compounds are included in the new criminal codes of Spain 1995, El Salvador 1997, Colombia 2000, Estonia 2001, Mexico (Federal District) 2002, Moldova 2002, Romania 2004). In Slovenia, a corresponding amendment to the Criminal Code was made in 2002, in Slovakia – in 2003.

In France, amendments to the Criminal Code providing for liability for cloning were made in accordance with the Bioethics Law of August 6, 2004.

In some countries (Brazil, Germany, Great Britain, Japan) criminal liability for cloning is established by special laws. For example, the German Federal Embryo Protection Act of 1990 makes it a crime to create an embryo that is genetically identical to another embryo derived from a living or dead person.

In the UK, the relevant criminal provisions are contained in the Human Reproductive Cloning Act 2001, which provides for a sanction of 10 years' imprisonment. However, therapeutic human cloning is permitted.

In the United States, a ban on cloning was first introduced back in 1980. In 2003, the US House of Representatives passed a law (Human Cloning Prohibition Act of 2003), according to which cloning aimed at both reproduction and medical research and treatment is considered as a felony with a possible 10-year prison sentence and a $1 million fine.

Finally, in Japan, on November 30, 2000, the Diet passed the “Law Regulating the Use of Human Cloning Technology and Other Similar Technologies,” containing the necessary criminal sanctions.

Doubtful "paternity" of Dolly the sheep

Jan Wilmut and Dolly the Sheep

Since an article about the cloning of Dolly the sheep was published in Nature magazine in 1997, scandals have not subsided around her. The scientific purity of the experiment, its value, and the ethical side of cloning were questioned. Even after the first artificially created mammal died and its stuffed animal was exhibited at the National Museum of Scotland, Dolly and her creators continue to remain under the radar of journalists.

The word “clone” appeared long before geneticists produced the first artificial animals. Translated from Greek, it means “descendant.” If we omit the details, the essence of cloning technology is this: the nucleus is removed from the egg, and in its place the nucleus of another cell is introduced - a somatic one, and after some time an embryo is formed from it. In germ cells, as is known, the set of chromosomes is half. By replacing it with a complete set from the somatic cell of a donor animal, it is possible to grow its exact copy. At least it seemed so until recently. But perhaps scientists were too hasty in announcing a new achievement...

Dolly was born on July 5, 1996. Its “prototype” was a Scottish Blackface sheep named Finn Dorset - it was from its udder that the cage that became the basis of the first clone was taken. And the “surrogate mother” was a sheep of the same breed, Bleifex. It should be noted: Dolly was not the world's first clone. The first successful experiments in cloning animals were carried out in the mid-1970s by the English embryologist J. Gordon. Nor was she the first clone of a mammal: scientists from the Rosslyn Institute (Scotland) debuted two lambs born by replacing the nuclei of eggs with the nuclei of embryonic cells. Dolly's championship lies elsewhere: a group of scientists led by Jan (Ian) Wilmut was the first to succeed in cloning a mammal using a somatic cell from an adult animal. After a complex operation was performed to replace the nucleus of the egg, it began to divide. And six days later the embryo was transferred into Blackface's uterus. The result was the birth of an absolutely exact copy of Finn Dorset - at least that's what scientists said. However, they were in no hurry to publish the result of the experiment - first they had to make sure that the clone was developing normally and did not have any deviations. After all, until that time, geneticists had only been able to create clones of frogs, but they lived only to the tadpole stage. In addition, scientists were apparently afraid of public outcry - after all, until now the creation of a new life was shrouded in secrecy, and interference in this process was seen as sacrilege.

The fears turned out to be not in vain. As soon as the result of the experiment was made public, it became a real sensation not only in the scientific world, but also in popular publications. And following a wave of articles about the biotechnology revolution, fierce debate began about the ethical side of cloning. The main reason for these disputes was that birth in all religions was considered an act of divine creation. Cloning a mammal (no one doubted that Dolly the sheep would be followed by other animals, and later by people) could seriously affect faith, causing thousands of people to doubt the truth of religion. However, the real scandal broke out only after scientists announced their desire to clone human cells. The Pope unequivocally spoke out in favor of a ban on such experiments. He was supported by many public figures. Despite the benefits that cloning promises (growing new organs from the patient’s own tissues, increasing life expectancy, etc.), it can create huge psychological and ethical problems. In fact: if it is possible to clone a person, who will his clones be considered? Full-fledged people? But then they cannot be “disassembled” for donor organs. An artificially grown set of cells? But clones are an exact copy of their “donors” and differ from them only in the lack of life experience. This is not a complete list of questions that the birth of Dolly the sheep posed to humanity. However, soon the believers breathed a sigh of relief: it turned out that man was still far from reaching the Creator.

Cloning Dolly marked the beginning of a whole series of experiments. Both serious scientists and wealthy amateurs entered into an unspoken competition to see who would surprise the world the most. There were numerous reports that scientists had successfully cloned a variety of animals: piglets, pigs, dogs. However, upon careful examination, it turned out that in most cases it was not about cloning at all.

Experts were alarmed by one detail: almost all (except for the stallion Prometheus, which appeared in the Italian city of Cremona) of the cloned animals were for some reason female. This gave rise to suspicion. The fact is that biologists know a method for obtaining genetic copies that has nothing to do with cloning itself. We are talking about parthenogenesis. It is somewhat simpler to carry out than cloning: with the help of chemicals, scientists stimulate the division of the egg and the formation of an embryo without fertilization (in nature, this phenomenon is observed in daphnia, aphids and bees). True, only females can be born this way. Maybe most clones are the result of parthenogenesis?

Questions were raised not only by the gender of the newly created clones, but also by a huge number of dubious experiments. Thus, American scientists announced that they were able to clone three piglets from the ear of an adult boar. But independent experts were never allowed to approach them, and the photographs published in the magazine could have depicted any twin piglets, so they cannot be considered evidence. An even stranger incident occurred with the Soru Cat company, which announced a new service to pet lovers. They set about cloning pets. But the kitten shown on TV differed in color and pattern from its “original”, which gave rise to doubts about the purity of the experiment. True, geneticists explained the discrepancies by saying that “the genotype does not affect color.”

During the checks, the scientists' attention also came to Dolly. And several details emerged that made us think seriously about the future of cloning. It turned out that the famous sheep Dolly was still different from the “original”, and not for the better. This information reached the Russian-speaking scientific world thanks to scientist German Malinichev, who declared a year after the sensation: “The sheep Dolly, cloned last year by English scientists, is becoming a monster.” The scientist, citing Scottish sources, said that Dolly the sheep became aggressive, bit the employees who looked after her several times, and almost crippled the young sheep left with her in the pen. True, at that moment Dolly was pregnant, and they tried to explain her behavior precisely by this. Although many experts openly stated that such aggression cannot in any way be explained by the “interesting situation” of the sheep. By the way, Dolly quite successfully coped with the birth of lambs, whose father (this time - the real one) was the Welsh mountain ram David. Bonnie was born in April 1998, followed by three more lambs the following year. But after their birth, Dolly's health began to deteriorate.

In 2002, scientists were surprised to discover that Dolly was showing signs of arthritis, a condition common in older sheep. The average lifespan of sheep is 11–12 years, so Dolly was in her prime. Analyzes showed that the cloned sheep began the process of premature cell aging. And in 2003, Dolly was diagnosed with a serious lung disease. After this, they decided to euthanize the sheep. She died on February 14, 2003, having lived less than seven years.

The experimenters were immediately bombarded with questions: was Dolly’s premature aging related to her “artificial” origin? Jan Wilmut, one of the creators of the clone, initially strongly rejected this assumption: “It is unlikely that Dolly’s illness has anything to do with the cloning technology itself. A much more obvious explanation is that in the animal world, just like in the human world, there are very unpleasant and serious diseases. It is quite possible that the infection entered her body naturally.” But data obtained by other experimenters soon confirmed a sad fact: cloned animals, despite almost complete genetic identity, are much more susceptible to various pathologies than their naturally born counterparts. The most striking evidence was the cloning of monkeys. It turned out that the nuclei of embryonic cells are formed incorrectly: the number of chromosomes in them differs from the norm. As a result, already on the sixth or seventh day, the embryos begin to look abnormal. The monkey supposedly successfully cloned by the Americans - a rhesus macaque named Tetra - turned out to be an ordinary macaque, and the embryo obtained after 724 attempts was so seriously different from the usual ones that the experiment was stopped.

What made scientists commit a forgery? The answer is simple and cynical: money. Today it is estimated that the production of one clone costs three to four million dollars - taking into account the costs of “defects”. After all, not all “operated” cells develop normally. When scientists conducted an experiment to clone Dolly, they transplanted 277 cells, and only 29 embryos managed to live more than six days. One of the main areas of work of research groups is the search for methods that can reduce the cost of clones. And considerable grants are allocated for these searches - millions of dollars. This is a serious temptation for unscrupulous scientists: after all, declaring to the whole world about yet another success, they can rightfully demand continued funding.

After the death of Dolly the sheep, the number of articles about her decreased. But in 2006, this project became the focus of a new scandal, this time related to Jan Wilmut. The scientist appeared in court on a rather serious charge. His former colleague Prim Singh said that Wilmut had illegally appropriated the fruits of collective work. During the trial, words were heard about persecution on racial grounds, which in the modern world is considered a much more serious violation of the law than falsification of experimental results. Wilmut categorically rejected this accusation, but was forced to admit that the Dolly cloning experiment was 66% the work of another specialist. However, this “other” was not the initiator of the trial, Prim Singh, but Keith Campbell. It was this scientist, now working at the University of Nottingham, who first came up with the idea of ​​coordinating the cycles of a denucleated recipient cell and a cell whose genetic material was intended to be cloned.

Scandals related to the authorship of this or that scientific idea, unfortunately, have a long tradition. Even the famous Louis Pasteur, who created the anthrax vaccine, as it recently turned out, took advantage of the fruits of the work of his colleague, Charles Chamberlain. It was his vaccine, the preparation of which differed from Pasteur’s, that helped cure a flock of sheep from anthrax. And Newton, the founder of the doctrine of heredity Mendel, and Sigmund Freud were involved in “combing” the results obtained. Is it possible to stop this practice? Today, unfortunately, there are no reliable methods. And we can only rely on the consciousness of the scientists themselves and corporate ethics. As for Dolly the sheep, in all reference books her “father” is still considered to be Ian Wilmut, and not Kate Campbell...

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We all remember that famous sheep Dolly, after whose birth the world decided: “Perfect cloning is finally available to humanity.” It would seem that 7 years of life of a clone is a sufficient reason to be proud of such an interesting invention and hope that we will all live even after death.

The history of attempts to deceive the mortal nature of all things is very long and interesting, like the history of humanity itself. Cloning is one such protest of humanity against death.

Cloning

It is a process in which a living being is produced from a single cell taken from another living being.

Animal cloning experiments have been going on for a long time. It is enough to remove the nucleus from the egg, implant into it the nucleus of another cell taken from embryonic tissue, and grow it either in a test tube or in the womb of an adoptive mother.

Hello Dolly!

In 1997, a year after the birth of the cloned sheep, the whole world learned about this significant step in the world of science. Researchers at Roslyn University trumpeted the successes, without focusing the public's attention on the dozens of failures that had previously had to be content with. Dolly was not the very first animal clone, but she became the most famous. In Roslyn, they kept their success a secret until they managed to patent the sheep itself and the entire process of its creation. Roslyn University has received exclusive patent rights from the World Intellectual Property Organization to clone all organisms until 2017.

Dolly's success inspired scientists around the world to take new steps in the world of science. Everyone around seemed to go crazy and began to play God. And no one was particularly worried about the negative consequences of such experiments for animals and the environment. So, after a significant discovery, Thai scientists took up a problem that was urgent for their country. They made attempts to revive the white elephant of King Rama III, who died 100 years ago. Of the 50 thousand wild elephants that lived in Thailand in the 60s, only 2000 remain. The Thais want to revive the entire herd. But at the same time, scientists, unfortunately, do not understand that if modern ecological disturbances and destruction of habitats do not stop, then extinction awaits the clones. Therefore, many people believe that cloning is just a pathetic attempt to solve problems, while ignoring the true reasons for their occurrence. Well, now a little more about the phenomenon itself and the subject of conversation...

Life and death

The birth of Dolly was carefully hidden for several months, even the exact date of her birth is still unknown, only one thing we know for sure - she was born in the summer of 1996, and her existence was announced only in February 1997. From that moment on, Dolly became the most famous and popular sheep in the world. It became natural that a bunch of rumors, gossip, myths and legends formed around the poor lamb. The most popular among them was the story of the strange form of rare aggressiveness of the “first cloned mammal.” These false facts were very colorfully illustrated with examples, including very plausible stories about broken cameras and bitten journalists. In fact, Dolly’s character was not much different from her rather phlegmatic relatives grazing in the fresh air in the mountains.

The second rumor was that the cloned sheep aged many times faster than its simple village relatives. These data, as it turned out later, were largely true. According to one explanation for this phenomenally rapid aging, it occurs due to a programmed limit on the number of divisions and lifespan of each cell of higher organisms.

The talk that Dolly cannot have offspring also has no basis in reality, since the lamb was delivered more than once.

But it was not the fact of a successful scientific experiment itself that caused the greatest resonance, but its ethical aspects. Humanity was amazed by the emergence of the possibility of cloning not only animals, but even people, and, most likely, we were all afraid of this possibility. This topic was widely covered in the media. During heated discussions, radically opposing views on this problem were expressed. It even got to the point that some church leaders warned the world about the imminent onset of the apocalypse. While some scientists joyfully heralded the beginning of a new era of genetic medicine. Strictly speaking, if there is a problem, then it consists of only one thing: “Does a person even need to create new organisms, and especially copies of people?” There can be a great many answers to this question, and none of them can be completely ignored. Proponents of gene therapy will talk excitingly about the incredible prospects for medicine using stem cells derived from cloned embryos. Adherents of classical science will note that from the point of view of fundamental science, cloning higher organisms is of no interest.

And, what is most paradoxical, each individual is right. But, unfortunately, it is unlikely that humanity will ever be able to come to a compromise solution to this problem.

"Should human cloning be banned?" In my opinion, it is wildly difficult to ban anything at all, and such a task may become impossible. Especially in science. Science is such a subtle sphere of human life that it would be simply inorganic to put prohibitions in it.

In February 2003, the world learned of the death of Dolly the sheep, the main symbol of scientific achievements of the new millennium.

Dolly was diagnosed with progressive lung disease and had to be euthanized at age 7, officials said.

Plans and prospects for new technology

There is a plan to try to clone a mammoth whose tissues are well preserved in Arctic ice. Shortly after Dolly, Roslyn University gave birth to Polly, a cloned lamb. As in the case of Dolly, the fact that success was preceded by many failures was not particularly advertised. Researchers have encountered many cases of fetal death, postpartum deaths, triple and quadruple rates of umbilical cord problems and severe immunological deficiencies, specific defects of the heart, lungs and other organs leading to perinatal mortality.

Cloned sheep die very often, but scientists stubbornly continue to destroy them in this way in order to obtain the secret of actual immortality.

Why the biologists who were the first to clone a large mammal were not given the Nobel Prize, why one of them unsuccessfully staged suicide, the reason for Dolly’s short life and what the magnificent bust of the American singer has to do with it, the site explains in the “History of Science” section.

On July 5, 1996, in the Scottish city of Midlothian near Edinburgh, a lamb was born, which, by the mere fact of its birth, became a world-class star, and not only a scientific one. The sheep, as the reader remembers even without reminders, was named Dolly, and soon she became the most famous clone. True, Dolly received megastar status only seven months after her birth.

Her creators, Roslyn University professors Ian Wilmut and Keith Campbell, after many unsuccessful attempts, decided not to pull fate by the tail and remained silent until they were finally convinced that Dolly was not only born, but also a full-fledged healthy individual. They say that this delay was required by scientists in order to obtain a patent. So it was only on February 22, 1997 that both the sheep and its creators woke up famous.

In fact, Dolly was not the first at all. The same Wilmut and Campbell in 1996, through the journal Nature, announced the birth of sheep Megan and Morag. This was not so much a successful attempt at cloning an animal as it was an intermediate step towards a true clone, since both of these sheep were derived from embryonic cells, meaning they had both a dad and a mom. Dolly was a copy of her mother, a Finn Dorset sheep, who was long dead by the time her genetic copy was born. The most important difference between Dolly and Megan and Morag was that she came from the somatic cells of an adult animal, and her genome was almost exactly the same as her mother's. We’ll talk about this “almost” a little later.

During the experiment to create Dolly, biologists transferred the cell nuclei of a donor sheep into 277 eggs, from which their own nuclei with genetic material had previously been removed. All these nuclei were kept frozen before the experiment, and only a tenth of them, after thawing, were able to develop into an embryo. Of the 29 embryos, only one survived - the one taken from the udder of the prototype sheep. In particular, they claim that this is why she received the name Dolly. The fact is that one of the veterinarians who helped the scientists suggested naming the sheep after Dolly (Doll) in honor of the American country singer Dolly Parton, who became famous not only for her songs, but also for her bust, the splendor of which she invariably emphasized. So it was not her talent that immortalized the name Dolly Parton.

American singer Dolly Parton

Fred Prouser/Reuters

By the way, Louis Armstrong’s famous hit Hello, Dolly has nothing to do with Dolly Parton; the legendary Satchmo performed it for the musical based on Thornton Wilder’s story “The Matchmaker,” the heroine of which was the singer’s namesake.

One success for 276 failures - this ratio would cool anyone, but not Wilmut and Campbell, since this chance, small as it was, promised the researchers a Nobel Prize, which, however, they never received. Keith Campbell did not wait for the prize, dying an anecdotal death (being drunk, he decided to shock his family with a fake suicide by hanging, but miscalculated and hanged himself seriously), and the still alive Jan Wilmut had also not yet received news from Sweden.

Dolly the Sheep

Jeff J Mitchell UK/Reuters

Some scientists compare this achievement to the splitting of the nucleus, while others compare it to the discovery of the structure of DNA by Watson and Crick. However, not all scientists agreed to consider Dolly a clone of a single mother, which is perhaps why the prize has not yet been given. The fact is that Dolly has three mothers, because the unfertilized eggs from which the nuclei were extracted were taken from one sheep, the nuclei from another, and Dolly was carried by the third - the surrogate - mother. Thus, Dolly the sheep, without having a single father, managed to become the daughter of three mothers at once.

However, the lack of a Nobel million did not prevent researchers around the world from starting the production of cloned animals according to the recipe of Wilmut and Campbell. This recipe, scientifically called “nuclear transfer,” has been improved over time, and today cloning an animal using it does not require hundreds of frozen DNA, of which only one will work.

Immediately after the information appeared that it was possible to clone warm-blooded animals, a real boom began all over the world. Using Scottish technology, scientists in many countries began cloning a wide variety of animals, including horses, bulls, cats, dogs, camels, etc. Also, using the same technology, attempts were made to genetically reconstruct extinct animals, whose bodies continued to be stored in frozen form. In the future, scientists say, it is even possible to reconstruct long-extinct animals, such as a mammoth or a dinosaur.

The only warm-blooded animal that many countries decided to leave alone and not clone is humans. That is, it is clear that such cloning is also technically feasible, although in this case many questions arise, affecting both ethics and religion. However, this prohibition is constantly violated by one researcher or another, each of whom eventually turned out to be a charlatan. Today, in many countries, including Russia, human cloning is prohibited by law.