On February 24, 1997, the scientists at the Roslin Institute in Edinburg, Scotland announced their success in cloning an adult mammal for the first time. The cloned sheep was named Dolly. She was the first animal cloned from a cell taken from an adult. It was an accomplishment than science had declared impossible. In June, 1997, the National Bioethics Advisory Commission issued its recommendation that a ban be placed on all efforts to create a child through cloning or "somatic cell nuclear transfer." They urged that the current moratorium on federal funding of human cloning research be continued, and requested private agencies also restrain from such work. At the same time they recommended that this issue be reevaluated after a 3-5 year period of study and reflection.
            
             Dolly was a clone of the sheep (her genetic mother) who provided the udder cell. The package of genes in the nucleus of that udder cell contained exactly the same repertoire of genes as all the rest of her mother's cells and so Dolly's genetic makeup was identical to her mother's. What was novel about Dolly was that she was the first unequivocal mammalian clone. Lower vertebrates had been cloned in the early 1960s when it was shown that a nucleus taken from an adult frog cell transplanted to a frog egg whose own nucleus had been destroyed was able to direct the development of that egg into a swimming tadpole. It was this experiment that first indicated that the genetic content of all our cells, despite the differences between a skin cell and kidney cell, must be more or less the same and retain all the genetic information necessary for an egg to develop into a whole organism.
            
             The cloning of Dolly brought up the possibility of cloning humans. It is illegal in England and Norway. With opinion polls showing overwhelming opposition to cloning human, President Clinton ordered a ban on all federal support for human cloning research and charged the ...