LONDON: British scientist Ian Wilmut, whose research was central to the creation of the cloned animal, Dolly the Sheep, has died at the age of 79, the University of Edinburgh said on Monday .
Wilmut, along with Keith Campbell from the animal sciences research institute in Scotland, generated news headlines and heated ethical debates in 1996 when they created Dolly, the first mammal to be cloned from an adult cell. Dolly, named after country singer Dolly Parton, was the first mammal to be cloned from an adult cell, using a process called somatic cell nuclear transfer .
Dolly’s creation triggered fears of human reproductive cloning, or producing genetic copies of living or dead people, but mainstream scientists have ruled this out as far too dangerous.