Let’s kidnap Dolly... now which one is it?
SHE was the world’s first clone of an adult animal and her birth made headlines around the globe.
Dolly the sheep became so well known that a group of activists planned to kidnap her as part of a protest against animal cloning.
But when they broke into a sheep shed at the Roslin Institute, Midlothian, in the autumn of 1998, they hit a snag – they could not tell which one was Dolly.
The botched sheepnapping is revealed in a book by one of the conspirators, Mark Lynas, 44, who once led the UK campaign against genetically modified crops and livestock, dubbed ‘frankenfoods’.
In Seeds of Science: Why We Got It So Wrong on GMOs, he details how he and three others ‘decided to steal science’s first cloned farm animal’. Mr Lynas writes: ‘As part of a small and secret group we planned what would have been our most daring action of all, had it come off as intended.’
He tells how he posed as a researcher to access Roslin and find Dolly’s location. When the group later broke in under cover of dark, ‘the sheds were full of sheep. Disaster!’
He adds: ‘All sheep look more or less the same. Cloned sheep, pretty much by definition, look even more the same.
‘After all our elaborate precautions – we never discussed the plan on the phone, for example, in case of police bugs – the Roslin scientists had outfoxed us by hiding Dolly in plain sight. Frustrated and shivering, we crept back to Edinburgh grumpy and empty-handed.’
Dolly was cloned by a team led by Sir Ian Wilmut and Keith Campbell, from an adult cell taken from a sheep’s mammary gland. This inspired them to name her after busty country singer Dolly Parton,
The embryo was transferred to a ‘surrogate mother’ sheep and Dolly was born a ‘normal, vigorous lamb’. She died at the age of six.
Her cloning suggested it might be possible to clone adult animals and humans.
Mr Lynas converted in 2013 to supporting GM crops. At the time, he said: ‘I apologise for having spent several years ripping up GM crops. I am also sorry I assisted in demonising an important technological option which can be used to benefit the environment.’