Opinion - Editorials

The death of dolly

WHAT KILLED DOLLY? It is known that the world's first cloned mammal, which had attained an iconic status during her six-year lifetime, succumbed to progressive lung disease. But the question that scientists need to determine is whether her premature death — well short of the normal dozen-year life span for sheep — was directly related to her cloning. Brought to life from a cell of her mother, Dolly's creation was attended by hopes of medical miracles, on the one hand, and fears about the possible abnormalities in cloned animals. Hundreds of animals have been cloned since Dolly's `birth', a list that includes cows, goats, pigs and rabbits. The result of such experiments has been mixed and over the years public attention has been drawn to a host of problems, including unexplained deaths, excessive obesity, abnormal immune systems and premature ageing.

Dolly herself had her share of problems. She suffered from arthritis, which was unusual for a sheep of her age. She was also obese. But easily her most perplexing trait was the genetic signals of premature ageing that were reflected in structures at the end of chromosomes believed to play an important role in the very process of ageing. However, she reproduced normally, giving birth to four lambs and disproving suggestions that cloned mammals would be unable to breed. The virus-induced lung cancer that finally persuaded scientists to put her down was caught from other sheep housed with her. There is no firm evidence it was connected to Dolly's status as a clone and knee-jerk conclusions in this regard must be resisted. If the results of her post-mortem even hint at the possibility of such a link, her death is likely to be regarded as evidence of the inherent dangers of reproductive cloning.

Even otherwise, for those ethically opposed to cloning, Dolly's health when alive and her premature death will be regarded as a warning against `rewriting' the laws of biology. It will be used particularly to discourage the application of the technology to cloning human beings, a prospect that generates widespread unease and is fraught with great moral complexity. A couple of fringe organisations have already claimed that they have produced cloned human babies. For instance, a few weeks ago, a group called Clonaid claimed to have produced the first such baby girl, whom they nicknamed Eve. However, no proper evidence was furnished to support the claim, leading to scepticism about it within the scientific community. Nevertheless, there is little doubt that scientists are closer to cloning humans than ever before. What Dolly's death has done is to serve as a stark reminder that we do not know everything we need to about cloning and its impact on health and ageing. And that in the face of such ignorance, it would be foolish to extend the technology to produce human beings.

Given that most Governments are opposed to human reproductive cloning, it seems unlikely that it would be a part of officially sanctioned science's near future. A Bill to ban it lies before the U.S. Senate and many other countries have sworn not to permit it. However, a distinction needs to be made between human reproductive cloning and cloning for the purposes of stem cell research, which is for medical purposes and holds out tremendous promise. Many scientists believe it is only a matter of time before organs and tissues grown from stem cells may be used to fight a range of diseases, from diabetes to cancer. Ethical questions have been raised about stem cell research too but the ones that pertain to the creation of entire new human beings are much more basic and unsettling. Dolly's birth in a research compound of a scientific institute in 1996 signalled the promise that such technology held. The death of the world's most famous sheep in 2003 signals the dangers of extending it into areas such as human cloning, particularly at a time when it is pretty clear that man has far from mastered it.

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