What Happened to Cloning: Why Scientists Are Still Copying Animals (And Why You Don't Hear About It)

You might wonder what happened to cloning after it dominated headlines in the 1990s. Dolly the sheep became the first animal cloned from an adult cell on July 5, 1996, sparking widespread fascination and ethical debates. It took 277 tries to bring Dolly to the world. Dolly was euthanized in 2003. Animal cloning never stopped, though. Scientists continue cloning pets, with companies charging $50,000 for dogs and $35,000 for cats. They're also cloning endangered species and livestock for research. This piece examines the events surrounding Dolly the sheep, why cloning fell out of public view, and the current pros and cons of animal cloning.

The Dolly Effect: When Cloning Became a Household Name

"We may be seeing a scientific explosion comparable to the atom bomb or the moon rocket or DNA itself." — Ned Potter, *ABC News science correspondent*.

What happened to Dolly the sheep

Scientists at Scotland's Roslin Institute achieved what many thought impossible. They cloned a sheep from an adult mammary gland cell. The process, called somatic cell nuclear transfer, involved taking the nucleus from one sheep's cell and fusing it into an egg cell from another sheep, which was then implanted into a surrogate mother. Dolly was conceived on July 5, 1996, but her existence remained a carefully guarded secret for months.

The team couldn't discuss their breakthrough with anyone. Research funding depended on publication in prestigious journals like Nature, which required absolute silence before the official announcement. News broke on February 22, 1997, and Dolly became an instant celebrity. The sheep lived a normal life at Roslin. She mated with a Welsh Mountain ram named David and produced six healthy lambs: Bonny in 1998, twins Sally and Rosie in 1999, and triplets Lucy, Darcy, and Cotton the following year.

Her health declined in 2001. She developed arthritis, which raised concerns about premature aging in cloned animals. Animal care workers noticed Dolly coughing on February 10, 2003. A CT scan four days later revealed tumors growing in her chest. She was euthanized on February 14, 2003, at age six, from sheep pulmonary adenomatosis, a common lung disease. Sheep live 11 to 12 years, but no evidence linked her death to cloning.

The media frenzy and public expectations

The announcement triggered a worldwide sensation. Researchers at Roslin received 100 calls per hour from media outlets worldwide. Every phone in the building rang as journalists scrambled for interviews. Ian Wilmut and his team had to explain, with some embarrassment, that they named their historic creation after Dolly Parton because the clone came from a mammary cell.

Most Americans, Canadians, and Europeans heard about cloning through this media coverage, but they understood little about the science. People expressed opinions about animal cloning and shared first impressions rather than informed positions. Interviews with opinion leaders confirmed that reactions were driven by emotion, with participants weighing whether cloning was good or bad rather than understanding the process itself. Few people had any specific idea how cloning worked.

Why everyone thought human cloning was next

The leap from cloned sheep to cloned humans seemed inevitable to many observers. News media found the progression from farm animals to people irresistible, despite scientists never entertaining the idea. Politicians took notice. Wilmut testified before the U.S. Congress and stated his opposition to anyone using the technology for human cloning. President Bill Clinton instructed Congress to pass a human cloning ban in June 1997.

Some commentators suggested human clones could eradicate genetic diseases or eliminate congenital disabilities, though French scientists found in 1999 that cloning might increase congenital disability risks. A comprehensive prohibition was enacted by the U.S. Congress on human cloning in February 2003, covering both reproductive and therapeutic purposes. There are more than 40 nations, like the UK, France, Germany, and Japan, that have banned human cloning over the last several years following Dolly's announcement. Polling data showed that 81% of American adults considered cloning a human being morally unacceptable.

Image by Mahesh Patel from Pixabay

Why Cloning Disappeared from Headlines

The harsh reality: cloning is still very difficult

Cloning disappeared from headlines for a simple reason: it remains very inefficient. Dolly was the only success among 277 cloning attempts. This pattern persists across species. Scientists created cloned embryos, but only 14% developed into embryos suitable for transfer. Of those, a mere 2% resulted in live births. Success rates vary by animal, but cloning cattle and sheep yields just 5–15% live offspring from transferred embryos.

The animals that do survive face serious health problems. About 30% of clones are born with oversized organs that cause breathing difficulties and circulation problems. This condition, called large offspring syndrome, affects surrogate mothers as well. One cattle cloning project saw 3 out of 12 surrogate mothers die during pregnancy. Cloned animals exhibit higher rates of abnormality in vital organs such as the brain, heart, and liver.

Premature aging presents another concern. Chromosomes have protective caps called telomeres that shorten with each cell division. Clones created from adult cells may start life with already shortened telomeres. Dolly's telomeres were shorter than those of other sheep her age and matched the length expected in a six-year-old sheep when she was born. Scientists still struggle to understand why clones develop these problems, but faulty gene reprogramming appears to be the main cause.

Ethical concerns shut down human cloning research

Human cloning research hit a wall of ethical opposition. The same low success rates and health problems observed in animals made human attempts unconscionable. Trials in animal cloning indicate that 95% to 99% of embryos produced by cloning will die. Most that survive until late pregnancy are stillborn or die shortly after birth.

Despite some claims that received a lot of publicity, no solid scientific evidence exists that anyone has cloned human embryos. Clonaid claimed in 2002 to have created the first cloned human, a girl named Eve, but never provided evidence. About 46 countries banned human reproductive cloning, including France, which made it punishable by 30 years in prison. Public opinion reflected these concerns: 81% of American adults said cloning a human being is morally unacceptable.

Stem cell breakthroughs offered better alternatives

Therapeutic cloning was initially promised to provide genetically matched stem cells for treating diseases. But this approach required destroying embryos and faced its own obstacles. Scientists needed about 280 human eggs to derive one patient-specific stem cell line due to low efficiency. Furthermore, the procedure also carries risks of tumor creation and requires immense egg donations from women.

Scientists moved on to replacement procedures that didn't require cloning embryos. Induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) emerged as a game-changer, enabling researchers to reprogram adult cells into pluripotent stem cells without destroying eggs or embryos. Adult stem cell research proved more practical, yielding therapies that treat cartilage defects, restore vision to patients who are legally blind, and relieve symptoms of multiple sclerosis.

The high cost and low success rates

Economic reality also pushed cloning out of public view. Pet cloning costs $50,000 for dogs and cats, paid in two equal installments. Horse cloning runs $85,000. Cloning remains expensive, so food products from cloned animals still haven't appeared in supermarkets years after FDA approval. The combination of technical difficulty, ethical concerns, and prohibitive costs explains why cloning is a topic people discuss.

What Scientists Are Actually Cloning Today

Cloning pets: the quiet commercial industry

Animal cloning became a commercial service as public attention faded. ViaGen Pets and Equine, founded in 2002, started by cloning livestock and horses before adding dogs and cats in 2015. The company now faces a 5- to 7-month waitlist and clones roughly 200 pets annually. More than 1500 dogs have been cloned, representing about 20% of the American Kennel Club's recognized breeds.

The first canine was cloned in 2005. Dogs became the 15th animal species to be cloned. Tom Brady revealed his pit bull mix was cloned, bringing renewed attention to the industry. Companies like Sinogene in China and Ovoclone in Spain offer services similar to ViaGen's globally. The technology extends beyond pets. ViaGen partnered with the San Diego Zoo and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) to apply cloning for conservation purposes.

Agricultural cloning in livestock

Researchers have been cloning livestock since 1996. The FDA concluded in January 2008 that milk, meat from cloned cattle, and meat from cloned goats are as safe as food from bred animals after years of study. This decision allows researchers to clone Animals that possess desirable agricultural traits, including those with high milk production or lean meat.

The largest use is producing breeding stock rather than food products. Chinese scientists cloned three cows capable of producing 18 tons of milk annually in 2023, about 1.7 times the amount an average U.S. cow produced in 2021. Farmers can duplicate advantageous traits, including disease resistance and meat production efficiency, through cloning.

Endangered species conservation efforts

Scientists produced the first clone of an endangered species in 2001: an Asian ox called a guar. The baby died within days, but researchers continued refining the technique. Another endangered ox, the Banteng, was cloned in 2003. Three African wildcats were cloned using frozen embryos soon after.

Successes prove more promising now. Scientists produced Elizabeth Ann in 2021 using tissue from Willa, a black-footed ferret who died in 1988. Another clone, Antonia, gave birth to two healthy kits in 2024 and may increase genetic diversity in North American black-footed ferret populations. ViaGen also cloned two Przewalski's horses, named Kurt and Holly, for the San Diego Zoo using DNA stored for over 40 years.

Medical research and drug testing uses

Cloned animals offer the most important advantages for testing new drugs because they're genetically identical and produce uniform responses rather than variable results. Scottish researchers who cloned Dolly later cloned sheep genetically modified to produce milk containing human blood-clotting proteins. Transgenic sheep named Polly and Molly were modified to produce human coagulation factor IX in their milk.

Chinese scientists cloned two cynomolgus monkeys, Zhong Zhong and Hua Hua, in 2018. They cloned a rhesus monkey named Retro in 2020. Proponents argue that cloned primates could accelerate biomedical research since humans share more similarities with primates than laboratory mice.

The Real Reasons Scientists Keep Cloning Animals

"*Like stuck records, ministers and policy makers continue to enthuse about therapeutic cloning even though the majority of bench scientists no longer think it's possible or practicable to treat patients with cells derived from cloned embryos*." — [New Scientist Editorial*, New Scientist magazine editorial team](https://novaonline.nvcc.edu/eli/evans/his135/events/dolly96/dollyquotes.html)*

Cloning plays an important role in genetic research by maintaining genetic homogeneity. Scientists prefer working with genetically similar organisms as it boosts the reliability and value of their medical studies. cells or organisms and eliminate variation that creates experimental noise. This precision is valuable when studying inherited conditions, particularly autosomal recessive disorders, where isolating disease mechanisms requires controlling for genetic variation.

Chinese researchers cloned two macaque monkeys named Zhong Zhong and Hua Hua for biomedical research in 2018. These primates share similar genetics, so differences in experimental outcomes cannot result from genetic variation. Scientists can study neurological disorders and immune diseases with much greater accuracy than was possible before. They can also test drugs more reliably.

Valuable animal genetics preservation

Cloning provides a controlled means of preserving rare genetic traits when natural mating becomes limited or unavailable. Scientists had cloned a Przewalski's horse foal named Kurt back in 2020 using the cryopreserved cell method, which had been used since 1980, to obtain genetic material no longer present in the current population. A second clone followed in 2023. Conservationists now have two animals carrying historic genetic variants that may broaden the gene pool for this endangered species.

Around 600 cloned animals existed in the United States as of 2008, most of which were used to produce high-quality breeding stock. Breeders clone elite animals with desirable traits, such as growth rate or milk yield, and introduce those traits into herds more quickly.

Disease-resistant livestock creation

Gene editing combined with cloning produces animals resistant to devastating diseases. Scientists at the Roslin Institute created pigs resistant to porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome. They removed a DNA fragment that the virus needs to enter cells. This disease costs Europe €1.5 billion in lost productivity each year.

Researchers also developed gene-edited chickens resistant to avian influenza. Nine out of 10 modified birds showed no signs of infection when exposed to typical virus doses.

Regenerative medicine development support

Cloning provides patient-specific cells that reduce the risk of immune rejection in transplants. Scientists grow sheets of skin cells genetically similar to patients' cells to treat severe burns. These cultured epithelial cells have been used for decades to repair large wounds. They match the patient's genetics, improving wound closure and reducing rejection.

Is Cloning Real: Separating Facts from Fiction

Cloning myths persist despite decades of research. Clones aren't born at the same age as their donors; they develop as embryos and grow like any other animal. A cloned animal isn't a replica that appears as an adult by magic. Clones also don't share identical personalities with their genetic donors. Temperament stems in part from genetics but largely from environment and experiences. Even identical twins, Nature clones, develop different personalities despite sharing DNA.

There's another misconception that claims clones are grown in jars or petri dishes. Cloned embryos spend minimal time in laboratory dishes before transfer to surrogate mothers for normal gestation. Clones aren't robots and don't suffer from health problems across the board. Many cloned swine and goats are born healthy and grow without issues.

Pros and cons of cloning animals

Cloning offers benefits for preserving endangered species genetics and accelerating agricultural improvements. Scientists can clone livestock that are resistant to disease and produce genetically uniform animals for medical testing. However, only 1–3% of cloned embryos survive to become live offspring. Cloned organisms face serious health risks, including organ defects and premature aging. In addition, the cloning procedure limits the mixing of genetic pools, which can prevent any animal species from adapting to ecological changes.

Cloning: Capabilities and Limitations

What cloning does is copy genes, but not identical personalities. You cannot clone a whole organism because cloning duplicates the genotype but not the phenotype. Environmental factors impact physical appearance and behavior; in other words, genetically identical animals still differ. Cloning occurs naturally through asexual reproduction in bacteria and plants. When human twins develop from a single fertilized egg, they are called identical twins.

The difference between cloning and genetic editing

Cloning creates identical copies of an organism without altering its DNA. Genetic engineering modifies DNA by adding or removing specific genes to create novel traits. A cloned animal shares DNA with its donor, whereas a genetically modified animal has deliberately changed its DNA. Scientists can combine both techniques to clone genetically edited animals and obtain the desired modifications.

Closing:

Animal cloning hasn't vanished; it's just faded from public attention. In the background, scientists are still working to use cloning techniques to save endangered species, enhance agricultural practices, and advance medical research. When it comes to human cloning, however, it remains strictly prohibited due to both technical difficulties and ethical concerns.

The copying of genes remains costly and inefficient, but it plays a well-defined role in specific areas: safeguarding genetic diversity, producing livestock resistant to disease, and advancing biomedical research. Don't expect cloned steaks to appear in your local supermarket anytime soon. Instead, cloning has carved out its role in veterinary medicine and conservation biology.

Today, cloning is more about practical uses than science-fiction fantasies. The fears of the 1990s have faded, replaced by a quieter reality — where cloning aids research and conservation without the dystopian fears that once accompanied it.

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