Another 50 years needed to reap full benefits of cloning

Ian Wilmut (L), the scientist who created Dolly the sheep (R), the world's first cloned mammal, ten years ago on July 5, 1996. AFP file photo

Speaking on the 10th anniversary of the birth of Dolly, the first mammal to be cloned from an adult cell, Ian Wilmut also said Britain had failed to exploit the landmark work, letting the United States and Japan take the lead on animal cloning.

"If you look back and consider any new development, whether it is IVF or anything which is introduced for the first time, it does take quite a long time to bring it through to its full maturity," the embryologist said.

"To the full maturity of this technology, I think we are talking 50 years," he told BBC News in an interview at Edinburgh's Roslin Institute, where Dolly was born on July 5, 1996.

Dolly triggered a storm of medical dreams, dread and ethical polemic that has never abated.

She unleashed huge investments in cloning research in the quest for cures for cancer, heart degeneration, Alzheimer's and other crippling disease. But critics say advances have been few and overblown claims have been many.

Wilmut argued encouraging developments were happening in therapeutic research, including cows whose milk makes human antibodies.

"It was always going to be a long-term project," he said. "We shouldn't be too disappointed just yet."

The scientist lamented the lack of research into animal cloning in Britain, despite it being the birthplace of Dolly, who was put down in February 2003 after developing a lung infection and arthritis.

"It is disappointing that in the general area of the bio-medical research it wasn't continued in Britain," said Wilmut.

"I think that it is very difficult for a small country like this to develop fully something which does have international value because once that is recognised the science will move elsewhere and in a sense that is a compliment to the science," he said.

"The technology was very important and is now being exploited commercially in Japan, the United States, all sorts of different countries."

The technique that led to Dolly is called somatic cell nuclear transfer and has remained essentially unchanged over the last decade.

After Wilmut's breakthrough, other cloned species swiftly followed: horses, bulls, pigs, mice, rats, rabbits, cats and dogs and others.

But the miscarriage rate of transplanted eggs is extremely high, and of those embryos that make it to term, many have deformities or (as happened with Dolly) die prematurely, raising concerns about the practice.