Animal Cloning Facts

Medical science is a field that keeps evolving itself almost everyday. New discoveries, inventions and medical breakthroughs are a part and parcel of the medical field. It seems the quest to know the ultimate truth supplemented by the human determination, motivates mankind to win over life and death. When in the year 1996, the first cloned mammal sheep named Dolly rocked the world, it was sure that medical scientists were definitely going to delve deeper into the mysteries of life. Animal cloning has since then, become an integral study area of major medical laboratories of the world. When we know about animal cloning, it gives us a realization that the more deeper we go into the miracles of DNA, genes, chromosome and eventually life, the more we're amused about the creation of this phenomenal universe and innumerable species inhabiting it.

Some Important Facts About Cloning Animals
Did you know that the first cloned animal was a tadpole created by Robert Briggs and Thomas J. King in 1952? The celebrity sheep and first cloned mammal, Dolly, created by Scottish scientists at Roslin Institute in Edinburgh, UK, died at the age of 6. Dolly was expected to live at least 11 to 12 years but she suffered from progressive lung diseases, arthritis and so a decision was taken to euthanize her. The original sheep from which Dolly was created had died many years before the creation of Dolly. Dolly's death led to a new wave of controversies surrounding the animal cloning process and its efficacy. However, her death in 2003 wasn't taken as a great setback by scientists and they continued to clone animals.

Wthin weeks after announcement of Dolly's creation, the then President Bill Clinton issued a moratorium to stop all federally funded cloning projects. This was done to avoid the threats of abuse of this medical breakthrough. For many anti-cloning activists, cloning is a great threat to life and peace as it can easily be used by organizations with proven criminal history against humanity. Still, in many countries, the trend to test and experiment on cloning was started and still cloning is being developed to address issues of health. As pros and cons of cloning weren't given much heed by the scientific community all across the globe, the concept of applying results and principles of animal cloning to humans did not remain in oblivion for long. Many nations started testing cloning results on humans and human cloning has been since then hailed to be an alternative to win over diseases. One of the interesting animal & pet cloning facts in 2002, the world's first cloned cat and rabbit were created. Similarly, in 2003, world's first horse (Prometea) and rat (Ralph) were unveiled in France and Italy respectively.

One of the most important and quite surprising fact related to cloning is that in the year 2008, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) of USA informed the public that it is safe to eat meats and dietary products of cloned animals. Since then, there has been increased momentum among the cattle business barons to accelerate growth of their business. But still not many Americans are comfortable in consuming dairy foods sourced from cloned animals. They're demanding more deeper and conclusive studies from the FDA. While many cattle owners are happy that problems in food crisis will be solved all across the globe, there are many who doubt about nutritious value of cloned meats.

In October 2010, the European Union put a temporary ban on the use of animal cloned food products in Europe, and it also stopped the import of food and eatables coming from cloned animals in the US and any other country. The EU said that based on animal welfare principles the ban was a right step. In fact, the EU Health and Consumer Commissioner John Dalli, told reporters in a meeting that, "Food from cloned animals is safe. In fact, the scientific opinion is that it cannot be differentiated in any way from food from normally bred animals. The issue is animal welfare". The US is a major player in the world when it comes to exporting cloned animal food and it is not enjoying great success in marketing cloned foods. The cost parameters are also very high in cloned food, and while an average calf may be sold for USD1000 or even less than that, a cloned calf is sold above USD1500.

So, these are some of the facts related to animal cloning that are in news these days among medical scholars, and there has been a lot of buzz among people about knowing numerous ethical issues of cloning. It seems the world media will soon be rocked by some more heated debates on numerous puzzling animal cloning facts that scientists are trying to solve.