Dolly the Sheep

Perhaps you have heard of Dolly the Scottish Sheep? Well, Dolly was no ordinary sheep. Bred through the mating of an ewe and a ram, she was a clone, an identical replica of her "mother,"a six-year-old female sheep. Now, you may ask how Dolly was created. Dolly was created by Ian Wilmut of the Roslin Institute in Edinburgh, Scotland, and his colleagues in July 1996. This image may help you understand how she was produced:

Essentially, the researchers used a cell taken from the udder (mammary gland) of a six-year-old sheep in the final stage of her pregnancy. The researchers fused the adult udder with an oocyte that was ready to be fertilized from another sheep. Prior to the fusion, the scientists had removed the nucleus from the oocyte and used an electrical current to combine it with the udder. The key to creating Dolly was keeping the nucleus "silent" so that it stopped behaving like an udder cell and could be reprogrammed to become an embryo. After all this was done, Dolly was born!

Wilmut and his collaborators created Dolly because they were trying to find ways to produce livestock that carried specific genetic traits. Two biotechnology companies funded the research. One, called PPL Therapeutics, was trying to find ways to produce animals that carried certain proteins in their milk. Their theory was that if researchers could develop animals with certain desirable characteristics, they could then clone those animals to produce entire herds that possess the same traits. 

Although Dolly was euthanized due to progressive lung disease and severe arthritis in February 2012, she remains an international phenomenon and legacy. After the success of Dolly, many other large mammals were cloned, including horses and bulls. 

The question that now arises is: how was Wilmut initially permitted to experiment on Dolly, and broadened to a larger perspective, how can experimenters be allowed to experiment on humans? Well, question no longer! The APA (American Psychological Association) has established a set of laws and guidelines that serve to maintain protect human and animal rights in research. 

If wanting to experiment on humans, the experimenter must do the following: 1) obtain informed consent from all participants 2) protect all participants from harm 3) maintain confidentially 4) debrief all the participants after the experiments about what was done, so they are completely informed of what they were involved in. This is especially necessary if deception was used in the experiment.

If wanting to experiment on animals, such as Dolly, there are a set of less stringent, yet still mandatory guidelines that must be followed. An experimenter must protect the animal from harm and the laboratory used must meet certain standards, and is constantly inspected. 

At universities, Institutional Review Boards screen research proposals for experimentation. These guidelines help maintain the ethics in research needed to experiment. 

P.S. If anyone feels compelled to read more about Dolly, please feel free to read this super swell, very informative article:

http://science.education.nih.gov/home2.nsf/Educational+ResourcesTopicsGenetics/BC5086E34E4DBA0085256CCD006F01CB