The lab

The innocents from the Roslin Institute near Edinburgh, who announced on 7th March that they had produced two identical Welsh mountain sheep, should not have been surprised that they triggered off yet another bout of agitation about research in genetics and embryology. Most anxiety in this field has recently centred on the use of pigs’ hearts as transplants for human patients. It is a long time since there was a fuss about what is called “cloning,” or the artificial production of individuals which are carbon copies of each other. As the seasons come and go, cloning was no doubt due…