The Second Creation: Dolly and the Age of Biological Control - Hardcover

Wilmut, Ian; Campbell, Keith; Tudge, Colin

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0374141231 ISBN 13: 9780374141233

Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux, 2000

Synopsis

Human cloning has grabbed people's imagination, but that is merely a diversion--and one we personally regret and find distasteful. We did not make Dolly for that ... Our work completes the biotechnological trio: genetic engineering, genomics, cloning. It also provides an extraordinarily powerful scientific model for studying the interactions of the genes and their surroundings--interactions that account for so much of development and disease. Taken together, the new biotechnologies and the pending scientific insights will be immensely powerful. Truly they will take humanity into the age of biological control.

The cloning of Dolly in 1996 from the cell of an adult sheep was a pivotal moment in history. For the first time, a team of scientists, Led by Ian Wilmut and Keith Campbell at the Roslin Institute near Edinburgh, was able to clone a whole mammal using a single cultured adult body cell, a breakthrough that revolutionized three technologies and brought science ever closer to the possibility of human cloning.

In this definitive account, the scientists who accomplished this stunning feat explain their hypotheses and experiments, their conclusions, and the implications of their work. Researchers have already incorporated into sheep the gene for human factor IX, a blood-clotting protein used to treat hemophilia. In the future, cultures of mammary cells may prove to be valuable donor material, and genetically modified animal organs may be transplanted into humans. Normal pig organs, for example, are rapidly destroyed by the human immune system, but if altered genetically, they could alleviate the serious shortage of available organs. Genetically engineered sheep are also expected to be valuable as models for genetic defects that mimic human disorders such as cystic fibrosis, and for cell-based therapies for diseases--such as Parkinson's, diabetes, and muscular dystrophy--that lack universally dependable treatments.

But what are the ethical issues raised by this pioneering research, and how are we to reconcile them with the enormous possibilities? Written with award-winning science writer Colin Tudge, The Second Creation is a Landmark work that details the most exciting and challenging scientific discovery of the twentieth century--with the furthest-reaching ramifications for the twenty-first.

About this title

Review:

The Second Creation deals with some of the most important issues confronting us today: genetic engineering and cloning, and the control that science has over the process of life. Written by the noted science author Colin Tudge, the book is based on interviews with Ian Wilmut and Keith Campbell, the scientists who cloned Dolly the sheep. Its aim is to explain the story of how and why they came to cloning sheep and the implications for the future, from curing diseases to human cloning. But that's not easy to convey simply, according to Ian Wilmut:

The full story is, however, inescapably complicated. The science and technology of cloning, at least by our method, takes us into some of the most esoteric reaches of biology...

Their subject is complex and requires careful reading, but the reward is worth the effort. Inevitably, the issue of human cloning is looked at in some detail, and all three of the authors find the idea repugnant and do not believe society will accept it:

The pressures for human cloning are powerful; but, although it seems likely that somebody, at some time, will attempt it, we need not assume that it will ever become a common or significant feature of human life.

The book contains a comprehensive glossary to explain the scientific terms and abbreviations. Colin Tudge is the author of several books including The Engineer in the Garden, short-listed for the British Science Book Award. --Carina Trimingham, Amazon.co.uk

About the Author:

IAN WILMUT studied embryology at Nottingham University and received his doctoral degree at Cambridge University before joining the Animal Breeding Research Station, an independent research institution that eventually became the Roslin Institute. He was the Leader of the team that cloned Dolly.

KEITH CAMPBELL studied microbiology at Queen Elizabeth College, London, and obtained a D.Phil. from the University of Sussex. A cell biologist and embryologist now working at the University of Nottingham, he joined the Roslin Institute in 1991 to work on the project that resulted in Dolly.

COLIN TUDGE was educated at Cambridge University, where he majored in zoology. A writer and broadcaster, he is also a Research Fellow at the Centre for Philosophy at the London School of Economics. Tudge is the author of more than a dozen books, including, most recently, The Variety of Life: A Survey and a Celebration of All the Creatures That Have Ever Lived, published by Oxford University Press.

About this edition

• Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0374141231
• ISBN 13: 9780374141233
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 333