Last Sunday, Ian Wilmut, the scientist behind the cloning of Dolly the sheep, died at the age of 79.
I don't remember exactly how I first heard about Dolly. I was 13 in 1997, when the news about her leaked. But I will never forget the Time magazine cover and the furious debate that surrounded the first cloned mammal: It was my first exposure to "promise and peril," the consonant dichotomy underpinning every scientific advance that threatens to remake how humans work.
In First Opinion this week, Gregory E. Kaebnick of the Hastings Center reflects on Wilmut, Dolly, and what happened in 1997. "The conversation that ensued was something of a mess," he writes. "There was wild speculation that anyone with a good high school-level biology lab would soon be able to clone human beings to create less-than-human soldiers, organ donors, and identical replacements for deceased children — intriguing premises for dystopian movies or novels, but not remotely illustrative of how cloning could or would be used. Cloning became a tool to explore values, but cloning itself was not really understood."
So many years after Dolly, it often feels a little silly to remember that heated response.
This week, I read through the Time special report from March 10, 1997, with its introductory think piece from Charles Krauthammer. ("Ban human cloning in America, as in England, and it will develop on some island of Dr. Moreau. The possibilities are as endless as they are ghastly: human hybrids, clone armies, slave hatcheries, 'delta' and 'epsilon' sub-beings out of Aldous Huxley's Brave New World.") The package also included an overview feature, one on human cloning, a look at the business side ("Dormant for years, the biotech bug is once again infesting stocks"), an article on the philosophical questions of cloning from Robert Wright, even a work of short sci-fi from Douglas Coupland ("Clone, Clone on the Range") about an actor who is cloning-curious.
From our perch it might be tempting to scoff a little at those silly 1997 people, with their invocations of a world where men are unnecessary to reproduction, where "Brave New World" is a prophecy. Obviously, none of that has happened. On the 20th anniversary of Dolly's birth, STAT's late, great Sharon Begley asked: "Dude, where's my clone?"
But Kaebnick's piece reminds us that Wilmut's legacy really is twofold: the science that made an impact, even if it wasn't dystopian, and the more productive way to think about bioethics. "Scholars interested in the ethics of emerging technology began to take a step back — to think about how to think about the topic. In science and technology studies, for example, an entire literature arose around "responsible research and innovation," which is a conceptual framework that has implications both for how scientists do science and for how society governs science," he writes.
Also in First Opinion this week: People can't stop talking about Steven Phillips and Michelle A. Williams' thought-provoking argument that long Covid is really just a new name for an old syndrome. Jody Dushay, an endocrinologist, writes about the impossible decisions she has to make because of the Wegovy shortage: "I feel like I am literally weighing one patient against another." Arjun Sharma makes the case for PEPFAR. Rachel King of BIO and Peter L. Saltonstall of the National Organization for Rare Diseases call for changes to the Inflation Reduction Act. We have a look at how to make new prescription one-pagers from the FDA actually useful. And Mical Raz and Naftali Kaminski argue that U.S. physicians could learn a lot about advocacy from their Israeli counterparts.
My recommendation for this week: I've started binge-watching the 10th season of "Married at First Sight: Australia" on Hulu. You might think I should be embarrassed to admit this, but I'm not, largely because one of the 10 married couples includes a young woman with cystic fibrosis. She's spoken so much about Trikafta, the wonder drug she expects will add decades to her lifespan, that some watchers asked whether she was paid to advertise it. Maybe I'm naïve, or maybe I just believe more in the power of Australian regulators not to permit drug sponsorships in a way that the U.S. does not, or both. But her story reminds me that while it's easy to get cynical about biotech and pharma at times, it's remarkable to get to watch a drug completely transform someone's life.
Have thoughts on First Opinion? Ideas for pieces? Memories you'd like to share about Dolly or "Married at First Sight: Australia?" Email me: torie.bosch@statnews.com.
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