Goodbye, Dolly

News from the world of science and medicine that Dolly the cloned sheep has died.

LONDON - Dolly, the world's first mammal cloned from an adult, has been euthanized, scientists said Friday.

A veterinary exam confirmed the six-year-old sheep had a progressive lung disease. Her cells had started to show signs of aging faster than a typical animal.

Yikes. That's not good. Sheep normally live to be 11- or 12- years old. Dolly also had arthritis in her hip and knee. Not a great ad for cloning technology, if that was indeed a factor in the advanced aging conditions of her lungs and joints.

And check out this bit of info from the same article:

Scientists have found problems with cloned animals. Most attempts end in failure because the fetuses have oversized organs in the womb or are born stillborn. Other cloned animals have been born twice as large as normal.

Images of sci-fi horror flicks anyone? Giant spiders, giant lobsters, giant kittens eating automobiles. No thank you, Mr. Egghead Scientist! Keep your town-gobbling mutant death-sheep out of my world!