Dolly was the first, female sheep to be created through the cloning of a somatic cell by Scottish scientists at Roslin Institute. She was born on July 5th, 1996 and died on February 14th, 2003. However, Dolly is not an exact copy of the original sheep that she was cloned from. The method that was used to clone Dolly is different from the idea of human cloning. Human cloning is creating an exact copy of the human being cloned which brings a whole new meaning to the word twins. On the other hand, Dolly experienced nuclear transfer technology which means Dolly only shares the nuclear DNA of the original sheep with variations in its genes. The creation of Dolly was a remarkable scientific phenomenon because she was formed through an egg that had its DNA removed and then was reconstructed by scientists. Evidence that proved that Dolly was a success include the fact that Dolly was a healthy, normal sheep and she even had six lambs by reproducing the classic way. Despite of that, she was put to death through lethal injection because she was suffering from lung cancer and a really bad case of arthritis at age six.
Other animals have been cloned through nuclear transfer technology throughout the world. Nonetheless, not all cases of animal cloning have been successful and resulted in some animals ending up with strange mutations or illnesses. This is one of the many reasons why human cloning should not be legalized or attempted yet.
Links:
http://www.ornl.gov/sci/techresources/Human_Genome/elsi/cloning.shtml
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolly_(sheep)
