goodbye, dolly

What becomes a legend most? How about getting stuffed and placed in a museum? Dolly, the poster-sheep of cloning, has found a final resting place at the Royal Museum in Edinburgh, Scotland. Dolly, the most famous sheep since Mary’s little lamb, was the first mammal cloned from an adult cell. When her existence was revealed in 1997, it made headlines all over the world. She was euthanized in February, at the age of 6, when it was discovered that she had a progressive lung disease. Her body was donated to the museum by the Roslin Institute, the Edinburgh research center that created her. Ian Wilmut, who led the cloning team, told BBC News that his pride at seeing her on display was tinged with sadness: “It’s not so many weeks since she was alive and in the barn, but we’re very proud that she’s in here.”

This news brief appeared in the Random Data column of the Boston Globe’s Health/Science section on 4/15/2003.