xii, 320pp. Profound and powerful justification for continuing the advances made in present-day stem-cell and genetic research, presented by its most famous British exponent, Sir Ian Wilmut, who cloned Dolly the sheep, and argues for the potential of cloning techniques to alleviate suffering, whilst maintaining absolute ethical limits for their application. Dark blue cloth boards white lettering, minimal rubbing at jacket edges, no inscriptions, price unclipped
Sir Ian Wilmut, OBE FRS FMedSci FRSE (born 7 July 1944) is a British embryologist and Chair of the Scottish Centre for Regenerative Medicine at the University of Edinburgh. He is best known as the leader of the research group that in 1996 first cloned a mammal from an adult somatic cell, a Finnish Dorset lamb named Dolly. He was appointed OBE in 1999 for services to embryo development and knighted in the 2008 New Year Honours.
When i got this book i was expecting what it said,the uses and misuses of human cloning.What i got was less the uses and missuses of cloning and more the life and times of ian wilmut.Well the book eventually did get to its stated goal for the first 100 or so pages it was just his biography. However once i did get to this part of the book it was interseting i was still bored out of my mind until that point.
The book is written by a scientist, Ian Wilmut, who led a group that created that famous sheep, Dolly. Roger Highfield is a journalist and a science editor of the Daily Telegraph, so he helped the scientist to make the book readable. The book tells how the Dolly was cloned and discusses the technical and ethical problems of today genetics engineering and cloning of mammals, human embryos and humans. It is addressed to a general audience and no special education is required.
I learned from this book that unfortunately, even if I had all the money and power in the world, I would currently be unable to make another baby with a woman without risking it being fucked up in many ways for many reasons.
Technically possible through chimera nuclear transfer, but realistically impractical.
I'm still holding out hope for stem cell sperm though.