Dolly the sheep

Dolly (5 July 1996 – 14 February 2003), a ewe, was the first mammal to have been successfully cloned from an adult cell. She was cloned at the Roslin Institute in Scotland and lived there until her death at the age of six. Scientists announced her birth on 22 February 1997.

Reasons for Dolly

Dolly was created by agricultural research scientists, who were being funded to make the 'perfect sheep', for the purposes of more efficient agricultural production. In the 1990s the sheep population in Scotland was around nine million, and there was certainly no shortage of lamb or wool. Conventional animal breeding had already developed excellent pedigree breeds of sheep for all the environmental conditions and agricultural systems in the United Kingdom. Critics have suggested that the resources spent on creating Dolly could have been directed to much more practical research, whether agricultural or otherwise. They have argued that Dolly is perhaps the perfect example of scientists focusing on highly specialised areas, to such an extent that they are no longer able to see the wider picture, and the implications of their endeavours.

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