RAISING THE BAAH
Good and bad of messing with nature
ANIMAL CLONING
A huge number of animals have been cloned since Dolly – everything from a brown rat to a coyote and a carp. Replicating animals has become big business with people selling the embryos of pedigree breeds online. Also, so-called ‘frozen zoos’ are now storing the cells of critically endangered species, including the Amur leopard, in cryogenic tanks in the hopes they can be cloned. In February, scientists in Colorado, USA, celebrated a breakthrough when they cloned an endangered, black-footed ferret named Elizabeth Ann from a specimen that had been frozen for 30 years.
HUMAN CLONING
There are real fears one day a human might be cloned. Many countries have banned scientists from pursuing the idea. But the first hybrid human clone was created in the USA in November 1998 when a nucleus was taken from a man’s leg cell and inserted into a cow’s egg then developed into an embryo which was destroyed after 12 days.
FOOD CLONING
China has become a world leader in cloning technology since Dolly’s birth and huge profits are being made. The world’s largest animal cloning facility cost over £20million to build in Tianjin, 100 miles from Beijing. Xu Xiaochun, the chief of Boyalife, said of his factory: “Cloned beef is the tastiest I’ve had.” In the UK, meat and milk from cloned cows are considered “novel foods” and suppliers need special permission to sell them.
STEM CELL RESEARCH
Dolly’s birth helped scientists discover that stem cells, the most basic cells in our bodies, can be reprogrammed to help repair or replace damaged cells or tissue.
This opens up the possibility that we can cure a range of ailments from Parkinson’s to spinal injuries, hair loss and burns.
Top embryologist Alan Trounson, 76, predicts stem cell research could help beat serious diseases like blood and breast cancer in the near future.
PET CLONING
Singer Barbra Streisand and fashion designer Diane von Furstenberg are among those to have paid to have clones made of their pets. The South Korea-based Sooam Biotech firm does it for around £60,000 while Texas-based company, Viagen Pets, clones cats for £15,000 and dogs for £30,000. But experts say it is impossible to create an exact replica and animals end up suffering. It takes multiple dog surrogates and dozens of cloned embryos to achieve a single, healthy puppy as the process is so unreliable.
DINOSAURS
Elon Musk’s pal Max Hodak, who co-founded the Neuralink brain-computer interface company, has claimed we already have technology to bring back dinosaurs. He recently tweeted: “We could probably build Jurassic Park if we wanted to.”
Scientists have published a near-complete genome of the woolly mammoth. But resurrecting extinct species is risky as DNA degrades leaving gaps in genetic information needed for a healthy animal. As Dr Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) warned John Hammond (Sir Richard Attenborough) in the film: “Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.”