Dolly The Sheep didn't wind up being quite the cottage (or farm) industry as many expected. The stunning breakthrough in genetic sequencing allowed British scientists to create the first mammal to be cloned from an adult somatic cell, using the process of nuclear transfer. Since then they did the same with pigs, deer, horses and bulls. It never got used for anything though, really. At least, not in the Western world. There were reports this year that cloning in China was at an industrial scale, with one plant applying similar techniques that the Dolly crew used into producing an astonishing 500 cloned pigs a year. That's a lot of pigs you guys. Sooam Biotech took it even further into the commercial sector ie not just for farmers this year by offering cloned versions of dear family pets, beginning with dogs. Surely it can't be all that long until we're cloning loved ones, making sure they live forever? Or else cloning cows on an industrial scale to feed into our Foodinis...
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
