Why was Dolly cloned?
To see if cloning technologies could work. If they did, it would then be possible not just to make identical copies of animals (in itself relatively pointless) but to create animals genetically modified so that their internal organs could be transplanted to sick humans. Are animal to human transplants now more or less likely? It is difficult to say. PPL Therapeutics, the firm that helped to clone Dolly, this week announced it had cloned five piglets lacking an alpha gal gene. This, the company said, would be the first step towards creating “knock out pigs” that had their internal organs’ natural resistance to be being put into humans made inactive. But if Dolly was born with genetic defects leading to premature aging, the future of cloning becomes less certain. Its critics point out that many cloned animals die before birth or shortly after, often with genetic mutations. Putting a cloned animal organ that is genetically defective into a human being may not be as effective as it was onc
