Word: wilmut
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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When Dr. Ian Wilmut published his recent research in a British scientific journal, he gave the world pause. Every forum from the CNN Web page to the late night FOX show, "Politically Incorrect," was buzzing about Dolly the now famous lamb clone that catapulted Wilmut into the spotlight...
...afraid of cloning? Why did President Clinton, after forming a commission to study the matter, unilaterally ban research funding for human cloning this week? And why are European leaders moving to take similar steps? Surely, we are not afraid of Wilmut, a humble scientist in Scotland who just wants to turn animals into milk and drug factories...
...truth is, we are afraid of cloning for very good reasons, but the possibility of human cloning is not really one of them. Wilmut touched a raw nerve in the public consciousness, but not because he threatens to duplicate people anytime in the near future...
...still decades away from the prospect of creating human beings by injecting the DNA of a living person into an unfertilized egg. The challenges overcome by Dr. Wilmut pale in comparison to the obstacles presented by primates and people. Even optimistic scientists concede that creating Albert Einstein II is still a distant prospect (Never mind that Einstein is dead and cloning dead people will be even harder that duplicating their live counterparts...
...Although Wilmut received his doctorate from Darwin College at Cambridge, his contributions to cloning may give a whole new meaning to Darwin's famous phrase, "the survival of the fittest...