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Allison Royal
Cluster 7
Dr. LeFebvre
27 July 2009
The History of Cloning Humans and Animal
Abstract
In this paper an overview of the history of animal and human cloning is given, starting as
early as the year 1885 and ending with events that have occurred within the last decade.
The cloning of Dolly the sheep, being respectively the most famous cloning event, is a
significant portion of the paper. The less publicized clones that eventually lead to Dolly
are briefly reviewed to show the long path to Dolly’s birth. Human cloning, having only a
few serious but still not reliable cases reported within the last decade, is also one of the
main topics of this paper.
Cloning has long been thought of as a science only used to create an interesting plot in
science fiction novels; however, in recent decades cloning has become a reality, maybe not quite
yet in humans but it has been successful in animals and human cloning may not lie too far in the
future. Major advances were made in cloning starting in the 1970s and cloning has become a
more practical science. The cloning of the first mammal, Dolly the sheep, in 1997 was the event
that made the world aware of this new science. However, many people probably do not know
that the first instance of cloning dates back to over a hundred years ago in 1885 with the cloning
of a sea urchin. Today, many different types of animals are being cloned and some scientists
propose cloning as a type of immortality (Read). Ideas such as the use of cloning as a means of
immortality are modern ideas and cloning as a whole is fairly modern compared to other
sciences, but in its short time it has developed a rich history. “Science in truth is a deeply
historical, inescapably collective pursuit that has unfolded throughout human history” (Wilmut,
Campbell, and Tudge 77).
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Cloning before the 1990s was a science not well known among the public because major
successes in this field involved non-mammalian animals; although these successes were far from
the public interest of human cloning, they are still crucial to the development of mammalian
cloning. The first successful cloning was that of a sea urchin by Hans Adolf Edward Dreisch in
1885. The method of cloning used by Dreisch is embryo twinning, a cloning which occurs
naturally when a mammal gives birth to twins. He separated the two-celled sea urchin embryo by
shaking it until it split into two separate cells which then each grew into an independent
organism. The scientist Hans Spemann, director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Biology in
Berlin, also used embryo twinning to clone a salamander in 1902. This time the organism was
more complex (it had a backbone) and the cells of the embryo were much harder to split; the
cells could not be separated by shaking them. Spemann was able to split the cells by creating a
noose out of a strand of baby hair. The cloning was successful in this early stage of the embryo
but when tried in a more advanced embryo the cloning was not successful (The University of
Utah).
Although Dolly is the first mammal to be cloned using the process of nuclear transfer,
there were any animals cloned before her using the same process. In 1952, the scientists Robert
Briggs and Thomas King successfully cloned a common American frog. They did this through
nuclear transfer; they removed the nucleus from a tadpole embryo and placed it in a recipient
frog egg cell that had had its nucleus removed, a process called enucleation (The University of
Utah). Out of 197 reconstructed embryos, 104 began development, 35 became embryos, and 27
grew into tadpoles (Wilmut, Campbell, and Tudge 92). In 1958, scientist John Gurdon cloned the
African clawed frog using nuclei from tadpole intestinal cells, meaning using cells that were
differentiated and past the embryo stage of life (94). Derek Bromhall then applied the process of
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nuclear transfer to the rabbit, a mammalian organism whose cells are smaller and more complex
than those of a salamander or frog, in 1975. He was able to develop an advanced embryo after a
few days but not yet an entire organism (The University of Utah). In the scientific journal Nature
on March 1985 Steen Willadsen announced his successful cloning of sheep by nuclear transfer;
this only differs from the Dolly cloning in the age of the nucleus used (Wilmut, Campbell, and
Tudge 151). Nuclear transfer was then used in a larger mammal, the cow, by scientists Neal
First, Randal Prather, and Willard Eyestone (The University of Utah). These calves, named
Fusion and Copy, were cloned still using only embryonic nuclei. In 1996, shortly before the birth
of Dolly, the same scientists that cloned Dolly, Wilmut and Campbell, cloned sheep from
cultured mammalian cells instead of using donor cells from a developing embryo (The
University of Utah).
The most famous cloning event in history may be the cloning of the first mammal, Dolly
the sheep; this cloning was much more complicated than that done by Hans Spemann and it
helped launch the modern cloning age. Dolly was born in 1996 after having been successfully
cloned at the Roslin Institute in Scotland by the scientists Keith Campbell and Ian Wilmut (The
University of Utah). Her existence was not announced to the world until March 1997 in the
science journal Nature (Wilmut, Capmbell, and Tudge 1). Ian Wilmut stresses that Dolly was
more important than other clones at that time because “she was the first animal of any kind ever
to be created from cultured, differentiated cells taken from an adult” (232). Many, somewhat
skeptical of the success of the cloning, made dire predictions about Dolly; some thought she
would be sterile and one American newspaper announced that Dolly was a carnivore that ate her
flock-mates (1). In reality, Dolly turned out to be an ordinary sheep. The only problem that could
take away from this success was in 1999 when structures at the end of her chromosomes known
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as telomeres, which become shorter with age, were more typical of a much older animal (2).
Dolly herself showed no signs of premature aging and in 1998 gave birth to her first lamb
Bonnie, putting the sterility rumors to rest (2).
In a science as controversial as cloning there is sure to be much legal action taken to
create bounds so that this science does not develop into something that people fear. In 1995, with
cloning technologies improving and the possibility of human cloning growing, President Bill
Clinton formed the National Bioethics Advisory Council (NBAC). The NBAC consisted of
scientific experts and non-scientists that evaluated the ethical, legal, and religious issues
concerning human research subjects (The University of Utah). Shortly after the Roslin Institute
announced that they had cloned an animal, in February 1997, President Bill Clinton made an
executive order that banned any federal funding of cloning research; but this did not prohibit
privately funded research (Center for Genetics and Society). A year later, Democratic Senators
Feinstein (CA) and Kennedy (MA) introduced a bill that would ban human reproductive cloning.
Rebublican Senators Bond (MO), Frist (TN), and Lott (MI) competed with their own bill which
banned both human reproductive cloning and the creation of clonal embryos (Center for Genetics
and Society). Both bills failed to pass.
Although human cloning is the subject of many science fiction novels and movies and is
claimed to have been done, there is no credible record of it ever having been successfully
executed. One of the most widely known reports of human cloning is that of Clonaid and its
supposed clone Eve born in 2002 (Onstad). Besides Eve, Clonaid is claimed to have cloned 12
other people (National Genome Research Institute). These cases are not credible though since
Clonaid would not agree to a DNA test between mother and child. Clonaid was established by a
religious group called the Raelians in February 1997 (Clonaid). They believe that aliens landed
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on Earth 25,000 years ago and started the human race through cloning (Onstad). The founder of
the religious group, Claude Vorilhon or “Rael”, claims that the Raelian movement and Clonaid
are “very different”; he cannot support any claims that Clonaid has made (Onstad). Clonaid call
themselves “pioneers in human cloning” and they claim their success rate in cloning is the same
as other reproductive assisted techniques (Clonaid).
Clonaid may feel that cloning will become very important in the future, and it may be, or
the negative dogma surrounding cloning may end it forever; maybe Dolly was the climax. We
live in a world now where we are starting to return to natural things since our extravagant,
unnatural living is costing us our lives and the lives of our posterity; this new “green” society
may not accept artificial cloning. It is unlikely that cloning will disappear forever though; many
scientists have put too much time and commitment into it for that to happen. It definitely seems
as though Clonaid is not ready to give up any time soon. There are sure to be many more years of
cloning history to come. We can almost be certain that this science that is a part of our past and
present will stick around for our future.
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Works Cited
McKinnell, Robert Gilmore. Cloning: A Biologist Reports. Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 1979. Print.
Wilmut, Ian, Keith Campbell, and Colin Tudge. The Second Creation: The age of biological
control by the scientists who cloned Dolly. London: Headline Book
Publishing, 2000.
Print.
“Human Cloning”. American Medical Association. Web. 25 July 2009. <http://www.amaassn.org/ama/pub/physician-resources/medicalscience/genetics-molecularmedicine/related-policy-topics/stem-cellresearch/human-cloning.shtml>
“The Clone Zone.” Learn.Genetics. 12 Dec. 2008. The University of Utah. Web. 24 July 2009.
<http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/tech/cloning/clonezone/>
Read, Catherine Y., Robert C. Green, and Michael A. Symer. “Aging, Biotechnology,
Future.” JAMA. 1 July 2009. American Medical Association. Web. 21
July 2009. <
http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/
search?&fulltext=cloning&sortspecbrief=date&sortspec=date>
and the
Onstad, Eric. “World’s Second Cloned Baby is Born, Raelians Say.” Religion News
Web. 4 Jan. 2003. <http://www.religionnewsblog.com/00001792>
Blog.
“Why the legal and ethical issues surrounding cloning will be limited.”
CNN.com/Lawcenter.
Web. 26 July 2009.
<http://archives.cnn.com/2002/LAW/12/31/findlaw.analysis.hilden.cloning/index. html>
“Cloning.” National Genome Research Institute. 12 March 2009. Web. 26 July 2009.
<http://www.genome.gov/25020028#8>
Clonaid: Pioneers in Human Cloning. 2006. Web. 25 July 2009.
<http://www.clonaid.com/page.php?18>
“Failure to Pass Federal Cloning Legislation, 1997-2003.” Center for Genetics and
Society. Web. 25 July 2009. <http://www.geneticsandsociety.org/article.php?id=305>