Dolly's Legacy: Human Nuclear Transplantation And Better Medicines for Our Children
Abstract
Essay Dollyâs Legacy: Human Nuclear Transplantation and Better Medicines for Our Children KEVIN EGGAN T DOLLY was an event whose implications continue to reverberate through science and society today. For society, a cloned animal produced from an adult cell immediately suggested the possibility of human reproductive cloning. The majority of people today are opposed to reproductive cloning and because of the medical complications that are sure to arise, responsible scientists stand against it (Jaenisch and Wilmut, 2001). Scientifically, Dolly fundamentally altered our perceptions of the permanence of the cellular differentiation that occurs during development. Ten years after the birth of Dolly, a veritable Noahâs Ark of mammalian species has been cloned and it seems that through somatic cell nuclear transfer, (SCNT), there are few limits on the ability to transmute one cell-type into another. As predicted (Gurdon and Colman, 1999), SCNT has allowed the propagation and expansion of gametes from prized livestock, sophisticated transgenic modification of large animals, and the resuscitation of extinct species. However, one of the greatest promises of SCNT technology (Gurdon and Colman, 1999), the generation of genetically tailored human embryonic stem (hES) cell lines, has yet to be realized. The almost simultaneous production of