In late February, 1997, a white-nosed lamb swept into the public eye: 7-month-old Dolly, the first animals cloned from an adult cell. She excited both the research community and the general public because although animals had been cloned before, creating sheep from a cell of a 6-year-old ewe was a stunning technological feat that many had thought impossible.

Cloning can be used to quickly create herds of identical animals that churn out medically useful proteins but the implications of cloning technology go much further. They open up new avenues of research in cancer, development, and aging, creating operating "dummies" that can be experimented on. Of course, Dolly forces new thinking of what it means to grow old, for although she is just 18 months old, her DNA, taken from another sheep may be almost 8 years old.

According to common knowledge, adult cells cannot give rise to new, mature organisms. So, after Dolly's appearance, researchers tried to understand how she was created. Scientific groups made their own meetings to discuss both the ethical implications while the companies specializing in transgenic animals saw their stock value jump overnight.

On the outside, Dolly is cute and a scientific miracle but many believe she along with cloning will steal humankind's individuality and autonomy. This cloning event had sparked calls for a ban on human cloning in the United States, Switzerland, China, and other nations. Cloning has even spurred the thought of raising "cookie-cutter" clones grown for spare parts and experimenting. Whether welcomed or feared, cloning has forced scientists to rethink their basic ideas about life and to confront the implications of our ability to change life's blueprint.