Cloning

They used the method of nuclear transplantation to clone a frog and the result was several tadpoles ("Early" 1). Until 1996 scientists thought that mature organisms were to specialized to be cloned. The issue of cloning lay dormant until 1996 when an actual sheep was cloned. This cloning came after many mishaps of cloned sheep that died or were born deformed; almost 300 attempts were made before success came. The way that scientists cloned Dolly, the sheep, was by a process called somatic cell nuclear transfer cloning (McCuen 11). In 1997 a calf was cloned using a more efficient way of cloning. The way it was done was a nuclear transplantation was done twice which made the success rate higher, only 15 attempts were required. "Since the introduction of Dolly, the cloned sheep, the world has not been quite the same. Some scholars see her as the most profound challenge to Christianity since Galileo's observation that Earth was not the center of the universe. Dolly has engaged scientists and theologians from all traditions, says Steve Berg (McCuen 35)." Dolly was a normal sheep that eventually went on to mate and have babies like any other normal sheep. This showed enormous promise but there was much more to come. There has not been anything of this caliber since God took a rib of Adam and formed Eve. Many scientists before Wilmut, the scientist who created Dolly, had tried to clone an amphibian cell since they have the regenerative trait but to no avail all their tadpoles "croaked". Another step toward human cloning was made in 1997 and in early 1998 when about 20 mice were cloned. The makeup of mice is more closely related to that of humans. Nuclear transplantation was used but a few things were done differently, the cell was never starved in a solution and instead of fusing the cell with electrical impulses, it was injected into the enucleated cell by a needle ("Dolly" 1).