THE AGE OF CLONING

A LINE HAS BEEN CROSSED, AND REPRODUCTIVE BIOLOGY WILL NEVER BE THE SAME FOR PEOPLE OR FOR SHEEP

Even now, a week after news of the achievement first flew around the globe, traces of astonishment linger in the air like a contrail. The landmark paper published late last week in the journal Nature confirmed what the headlines had been screaming for days: researchers at the Roslin Institute near Edinburgh, Scotland, had indeed pulled off what many experts thought might be a scientific impossibility. From a cell in an adult ewe's mammary gland, embryologist Ian Wilmut and his colleagues managed to create a frisky lamb named Dolly (with apologies to Ms. Parton), scoring an advance in reproductive technology as unsettling...

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