Science History Made February 22, 1997

Dolly (July 5, 1996 to February 14, 2003)

On this day in 1997 scientists from the Roslin Institute in Edinburgh, Scotland announced they had successfully cloned a sheep. Ian Wilmut and Keith Campbell cloned the sheep from a mammory gland cell, so of course she had to named after Dolly Parton. Dolly was the first ewe cloned from an adult somatic cell using nuclear transfer. Wilmut and Campbell proved that one cell could produce a whole living being. Other animals have since been cloned including horses and bulls. A controversy surrounds cloning, some find it unethical while others see the vast medical possibilities available. To think it all started with a little sheep named Dolly.