Dolly the Sheep Alive Again

SpeZek writes "Dolly the sheep has been reborn. Four clones have been made by the scientist behind the original research. The quads, which have been nicknamed 'the Dollies,' are exact genetic copies of their predecessor, who was put down seven years ago. The latest experiments were partly carried out to check if improvements to the technique cut the risk of problems in and out of the womb. Named after country and western singer Dolly Parton, Dolly was created from a cell taken from a mammary gland. The rest of the sample of tissue has lain in a freezer since, until it was defrosted to make the Dollies."

Comments

A major "con" of cloning falls apart

[Myji Humoz]

From the article, the original Dolly was put down after about 6 years due to all kinds of medical conditions (infections, arthritis, etc). However, these four sheep are 3.5 years old, and are apparently in perfect health. A major argument against the use of cloned animals in animal husbandry (either cloning particularly tasty animals or using clones to breed) is that cloned animals end up in constant agony due to their origin.

Since these cloned animals appear just as comfortable and pain free as your "run of the mill" farm animal, it seems as if cloned animals can be just as humane to farm as normal animals. In fact, since the meat yield from each animal is much higher (by definition of selective cloning as the pinnacle of selective breeding), I would argue that using more cloned animals would reduce the ecological impact of the meat industry.

Ye average American Joe might not want to eat cloned meat, but clones are already breeding like mad to produce more productive offspring. Perhaps this new longitudinal study will give more insights on the ethics and health impacts of cloned meat.