Animals

Clone animals: Happy birthday, Dolly!

20 years ago to clone Dolly the sheep came into the world. The first cloned animal in the world was a Sensation. With the ethical consequences, we are busy today, because Dolly clones followed.

Cloning was and is a controversial process that raises many ethical questions, even after the Well-being of the animal. In 2015, the EU Parliament adopted by a large majority a proposal to ban cloning of farm animals in the EU. Also, the Import of live cloned animals and derived foods, such as
Meat or milk and the use of offspring of cloned animals, as well as of their products, should not be allowed. The act applies to all farm animals.

Since the birth of the house of the sheep Dolly, 20 years ago, technologies have developed to Intervene in the DNA of the Fort, explains Joachim Boldt, a lecturer at the Institute for ethics and history of medicine at the Albert-Ludwigs-University in Freiburg: “today’s genetic technologies are opening up new options, which go far beyond what allows for a relatively simple clone.” About the reading of DNA, the so-called Sequencing, has become faster and cheaper.

Scientists speculate about the possibilities, to not only heal diseases, but “to improve the human immune system so that viruses or bacteria are no longer able to overcome it”.

However, the new technologies would raise more and more ethical questions, Boldt: “we want to be the designer of all of our genetic identity?”