DR. IAN WILMUT...AND DOLLY

By J. MADELEINE NASH

In his mystic forays into the nature of creation, the poet William Blake questioned both the lamb and the tiger about their origins, asking the tiger who it was who could have possibly crafted its "fearful symmetry." "Did he smile his work to see? Did he who made the Lamb make thee?" This year, out of a research institute in Scotland, a lamb named Dolly came roaring similarly existential questions. For Dolly was a clone, and her doubling had a fearful symmetry of a different kind: If sheep could be cloned, could humans be far behind?

Dolly is a carbon copy of her mother, grown from a cell taken from an adult ewe's mammary gland. The father, in a sense, is embryologist Ian Wilmut, who as a boy wanted to be a farmer but, after a summer of laboratory work, became enchanted by the magical progression of embryos from amorphous balls of cells into living entities of exquisite complexity. In the pursuit of the advancement of animal husbandry (and, by extension, human nutrition and health), he began experimenting with cloning at Scotland's Roslin Institute. His vision was the creation of genetically engineered farm animals that would manufacture therapeutic proteins in their milk. At the time, says Wilmut, he was only thinking of cloning embryos. "Dolly was a bonus," he says, adding, "sometimes when scientists work hard, they also get lucky, and that's what happened."

The same trick that enabled scientists to clone Dolly could one day be used to clone a human being, a possibility Wilmut finds dismaying. The father of three argues that it is every child's birthright to be regarded as unique, not a counterfeit version of someone whose strengths and shortcomings have been revealed. The President of the U.S. and the Pontiff in Rome sounded alarms. Laws were debated; ethical questions raised; scientists were hauled before legislative panels and warned not to trespass on human territory. But how can one un-know science? The issue is one posed by Blake long ago: "What the hand dare seize the fire?"

--By J. Madeleine Nash