Dolly, You're History

By making dozens of copies of a mouse, scientists take cloning one step closer to the assembly line

In the year and a half since Scottish embryologist Ian Wilmut presented Dolly, the cloned sheep, to an astonished world, ethicists and policymakers have been struggling with the unsettling implications of his research. Could scientists use Wilmut's method to clone not just sheep but also billionaires, basketball players and bodies grown for spare parts? Should medical entrepreneurs be allowed to pursue cloning wherever it leads? Or should the government step in now and outlaw it before it starts?

For reproductive biologists, these issues pale in the face of two more immediate and practical questions: Is Dolly really a clone--and if...

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