Second Creation: Dolly and the Age of Biological Control

Scottish researchers Wilmut and Campbell are known to the world as the men who cloned sheep, producing in 1997 ""viable offspring derived from fetal and adult mammalian cells."" The world said hello to Dolly with amazement and alarm--would the next step be cures for genetic diseases? Carbon copies of you and me? Unspeakable monsters? Or just tastier mutton? Now Wilmut and Campbell team up with prolific U.K. science writer Tudge (Neanderthals, Bandits and Farmers) to explain their work--and to distinguish facts from theories and myths. Human cloning, they say, ""is merely a diversion--and one we personally regret""; animal cloning's real promise lies instead in the study and application of genetic engineering. Genetically identical cloned animals can help us study the way genes interact with one another and their environment, and can help treat common diseases. After a handy introduction to genes and DNA, the authors explain basic embryology, including mammalian egg cell structures, cell reproduction and ""differentiation"" (how a cluster of fetal cells ""knows"" where to grow an arm, and where a head) as well as their work in ""pharming""-- engineering animals to secrete pharmaceuticals. And they track the growth of knowledge about cloning from fetal animal cells, which produced Dolly's precursors, Megan and Morag. A final chapter looks (reluctantly) at the far-off possibilities of cloned people. Because they're often explaining quite technical processes, Wilmut, Campbell and Tudge can sound dry even though each (the book is told in their separate, if quite similar, voices) writes very clean prose. Nevertheless, this book belongs in the hands of anyone curious about clones: after all, who knows Dolly better than her parents? (June)