The thread on cloning mammoths got me thinking about “Dolly.”
Here’s my question: When they news that “Dolly” had been cloned, they showed a full-grown sheep. Was that the “mother” that gave birth to “Dolly,” or was it “Dolly” herself? If that’s the case, it would mean that the scientists had sat on the cloning for months or longer.
Yes, the adult sheep they showed was Dolly as an adult. They probably wanted to see if she was viable.
If she had died within the first year from some defect, it would’ve been a pain to explain what went wrong to the media. Truth is, there were many false starts until they got Dolly. Most probably died in utero, but there were undoubtedly clone-sisters of Dolly that were born but didn’t live long.
Just like any inventor, they didn’t parade their mistakes, only their sucess.
That’s why you won’t see cloned humans anytime soon. There were hundreds of “pre-Dolly’s”, many grotesquely deformed. These were quietly destroyed, if they didn’t die on their own. If they did the same thing with human infants, they’d find a lynch mob outside their door. And I’d be siding with the mob.
“I had a feeling that in Hell there would be mushrooms.” -The Secret of Monkey Island