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- WORLD

Dolly hobbles into old age

By James Meek and Kirsty Scott, London

The shock of the new became the shock of the old yesterday when Dolly, the world's most closely watched sheep, hobbled back into the limelight, aged before her time.

Dolly stunned the world in 1996 when she was revealed as the first animal to be cloned from an adult cell. Her creators at the Roslin Institute in Scotland have always stressed that although her origins were extraordinary, she was in other respects a healthy, normal sheep.

But yesterday, at the age of 5, it was announced she had succumbed to arthritis - a condition extremely rare in normal sheep of that age.

With sheep life expectancy somewhere between 10 and 15 years, Dolly is no spring lamb. But the realisation that she suffers from arthritis brings her close enough to mutton to cast fresh doubts over the controversial field of cloning.

The head of the original cloning team, Professor Ian Wilmut, put a brave face on the sheep's condition. He said he was concerned and called for more research into the implications of cloning. But he insisted the technology was crucial for medical science and denied that he had opened a Pandora's box.

"This is an inefficient procedure," he said. "We were always aware that there was a risk that we would find things like this. We will never know in the case of Dolly whether this condition is because she is cloned or whether it is an unfortunate accident that she developed arthritis."

Dolly seemed alert yesterday as she moved around her pen, but at times her hind legs appeared a little unsteady. Institute vets have put her on anti-inflammatory drugs and prescribed a diet and exercise program.

"Arthritis is not unknown in this age of sheep," Dolly's vet Tim King said. "The strange thing about Dolly is that arthritis normally affects the elbow in sheep. In Dolly, her hip and knee joints are affected."

Jim Clapp, a vet with 20 years' experience of working with sheep, said he would be astonished to come across a normal sheep with arthritis at so young an age. "In the field, it would be ludicrous to have animals getting arthritis when they were five years old," he said.

Animal cloning is already known as an unreliable and risky procedure.

Even though the few clones which make it to adulthood, such as Dolly, may have seemed healthy, there have already been signs that, at the cellular level, they were "pre-aged" from birth. The ewe from whose cell Dolly was cloned was six years old, so some argue that Dolly is, in a sense, 11.

Professor Wilmut said the development of arthritis in Dolly was only one minor new doubt to add to the pile.

"I don't regard this as a major setback," he said. "Alongside all the other things, the inefficiency and the fact that some of the cloned animals die soon after they are born, it's just one more small piece."

Although the idea of human reproductive cloning has caught the public imagination since Dolly was born, Professor Wilmut has been an outspoken opponent of the practice, as have most scientists in the field.

"It would be completely irresponsible to think of producing a person [by cloning]," Professor Wilmut said. "It is a technology of enormous promise, with the potential to provide organs for treatment of human patients, and cells for treatment of diseases like diabetes and Parkinson's disease, but we do need to be a little cautious in the way in which we use the new techniques."

The professor conceded that cloned animal organs which in the future may be transplanted into humans might lead to the premature ageing of the patient, but said: "The alternative for the patient might be that they die, and that might be considered worse."

Opponents to cloning have seized on the news of Dolly's arthritis.

Sarah Kite, of the British Union Against Vivisection, said: "Scientists seem to think they can mix and match animals' genes in a controlled way but actually the control is an illusion.

"No-one yet understands exactly how genes work or what the effects will be on the innocent animals who are subjected to biotechnology.''

The Sun-Herald

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Source: geocities.com/sun_day1080110801