Cloned Cow, Plans to Preserve Dolly the Sheep Are Unveiled

Scientists in Munich, seeking to capture some of the publicity surrounding the birth of Dolly the cloned sheep two years ago, unveiled Uschi the cloned cow to the media Friday.

The brown and white calf, born just before Christmas, was a bit camera-shy and unsteady on her feet as she emerged from a trailer for presentation to film crews.

Germany’s first cloned cow is in perfectly good health, said the project’s leader, professor Eckhard Wolf of Munich’s Ludwig-Maximilian University.

Uschi--short for Ursula--was born using a technique similar to that deployed by the Scottish creators of Dolly, who last year gave birth to a healthy lamb.

Wolf’s team removed udder cells from a slaughtered cow and implanted their nuclei into unfertilized eggs that had had their genetic material removed.

Four eggs were planted into two surrogate mother cows, with one becoming pregnant. Uschi was born Dec. 23, weighing 88 pounds.

“The main practical benefit could be a new genetic transfer process, which . . . could be used to create important medicines for treating people,” Wolf said.

Uschi’s arrival follows the birth last year in the U.S. of a calf named Mr. Jefferson, which also used the technique developed by Dolly’s creators. Marguerite, France’s first cloned calf, died last year at less than 2 months old after an accident in her pen.

Animal rights campaigners attacked the creation of Uschi as a dangerous development.

“Animals aren’t machines that can be made on a production line, and we oppose such cloning,” said Thomas Schroeder of the Tierschutzbund animal protection group in Bonn.

“I share these concerns if these methods create animals which suffer,” Wolf said. “But as you see with Uschi, this is not the case. The animal is fit as a fiddle.”

Meanwhile, scientists in Edinburgh, Scotland, believe that they have found the best way to pay tribute to Dolly the sheep, the world’s first cloned mammal.

After her death, they’re going to stuff her.

The Roslin Institute, which cloned Dolly from an adult sheep in 1996 using groundbreaking technology, announced Friday that it has made a deal with the National Museums of Scotland to preserve Dolly for future generations.

However, the museums will have to wait a bit to put her on display: Scientists say Dolly could live another 15 years.