Ian Wilmut, a British scientist who headed the team that cloned a mammal, Dolly the Sheep, for the first time, died Sunday. He was 79.
According to The New York Times, Wilmut died after a long battle with Parkinson’s disease. His death was announced by the Roslin Institute, a research center near Edinburgh, Scotland, where Wilmut had worked for decades.
Dolly, born July 5, 1996, was the first mammal worldwide to be cloned from an adult cell, The Guardian reported. She was one of several cloned lambs born as a result of the pioneering embryologist and his team’s work, according to the newspaper.
Breaking News: Ian Wilmut, the British scientist who led a team of scientists in Scotland that first cloned a mammal, Dolly the sheep, is dead at 79. https://t.co/xgXHczBFos pic.twitter.com/s6vmAewFnU
— The New York Times (@nytimes) September 11, 2023
Wilmut and his team announced the birth of Dolly in February 1997, the Times reported. She was born to a surrogate mother at the Roslin Institute, but her birth had been kept secret for seven months.
Dolly was named after singer Dolly Parton, the Times reported. The sheep died on Feb. 14, 2003, at the age of 6 after a brief lung infection, according to the newspaper.
The animal has been on display at the National Museum of Scotland since 2003.
Wilmut and his team used a cell from the mammary gland of a dead adult sheep to create a living animal that was a genetic twin to the donor, the BBC reported.
The team placed DNA from the adult cell into an empty sheep’s egg, according to the news outlet. Researchers then used electricity and added chemicals to stimulate the cell, which was then implanted into a surrogate sheet, the BBC reported.
“She’s been a friendly face of science,” Wilmut said in an interview with the Times after her death. “She was a very friendly animal that was part of a big scientific breakthrough.”
The cloning came with controversy. President Bill Clinton reflected the mood of a wary public when he announced a ban on human cloning experiments, the BBC reported.
“(The technology) has the potential to threaten the sacred family bonds at the very core of our ideals and our society,” Clinton said at the time.
However, Wilmut insisted that cloning humans was never part of his team’s plans, noting in the 2000 book he co-authored, “The Second Creation,” that “We would rather that no one ever attempted it.”
In a second book in 2006, “After Dolly: The Uses and Misuses of Human Cloning,” Wilmut conceded there were ethical dilemmas tied to the idea of human cloning, The Guardian reported.
“Although I am for the use of genetic modification to treat disease and against enhancement, I would be the first to admit that there will be endless arguments over where to draw the line,” Wilmut wrote.
Wilmut was born near Stratford-upon-Avon, England, and became interested in biology at school, according to the Times. He studied animal science at the University of Nottingham and obtained a Ph.D. at the University of Cambridge.
In 2005, Wilmut moved to the University of Edinburgh, from which he retired in 2012. He was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 2008, according to the Roslin Institute.
Wilmut revealed in 2018 that he had Parkinson’s disease.
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