The Second Creation: Dolly and the Age of Biological Control (Hardcover)

by Ian Wilmut (Author), Keith Campbell (Author), Colin Tudge (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
The Second Creation deals with some of the most important issues confronting us today: genetic engineering and cloning, and the control that science has over the process of life. Written by the noted science author Colin Tudge, the book is based on interviews with Ian Wilmut and Keith Campbell, the scientists who cloned Dolly the sheep. Its aim is to explain the story of how and why they came to cloning sheep and the implications for the future, from curing diseases to human cloning. But that's not easy to convey simply, according to Ian Wilmut:

The full story is, however, inescapably complicated. The science and technology of cloning, at least by our method, takes us into some of the most esoteric reaches of biology...

Their subject is complex and requires careful reading, but the reward is worth the effort. Inevitably, the issue of human cloning is looked at in some detail, and all three of the authors find the idea repugnant and do not believe society will accept it:

The pressures for human cloning are powerful; but, although it seems likely that somebody, at some time, will attempt it, we need not assume that it will ever become a common or significant feature of human life.

The book contains a comprehensive glossary to explain the scientific terms and abbreviations. Colin Tudge is the author of several books including The Engineer in the Garden, short-listed for the British Science Book Award. --Carina Trimingham, Amazon.co.uk

From Publishers Weekly
Scottish researchers Wilmut and Campbell are known to the world as the men who cloned sheep, producing in 1997 "viable offspring derived from fetal and adult mammalian cells." The world said hello to Dolly with amazement and alarm--would the next step be cures for genetic diseases? Carbon copies of you and me? Unspeakable monsters? Or just tastier mutton? Now Wilmut and Campbell team up with prolific U.K. science writer Tudge (Neanderthals, Bandits and Farmers) to explain their work--and to distinguish facts from theories and myths. Human cloning, they say, "is merely a diversion--and one we personally regret"; animal cloning's real promise lies instead in the study and application of genetic engineering. Genetically identical cloned animals can help us study the way genes interact with one another and their environment, and can help treat common diseases. After a handy introduction to genes and DNA, the authors explain basic embryology, including mammalian egg cell structures, cell reproduction and "differentiation" (how a cluster of fetal cells "knows" where to grow an arm, and where a head) as well as their work in "pharming"-- engineering animals to secrete pharmaceuticals. And they track the growth of knowledge about cloning from fetal animal cells, which produced Dolly's precursors, Megan and Morag. A final chapter looks (reluctantly) at the far-off possibilities of cloned people. Because they're often explaining quite technical processes, Wilmut, Campbell and Tudge can sound dry even though each (the book is told in their separate, if quite similar, voices) writes very clean prose. Nevertheless, this book belongs in the hands of anyone curious about clones: after all, who knows Dolly better than her parents?
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 333 pages
• Publisher: Farrar Straus Giroux; 1 edition (June 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0374141231
• ISBN-13: 978-0374141233
• Product Dimensions: 9.8 x 6.1 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #2,242,424 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Best Book on Cloning, June 24, 2000

By A Customer

Ian Wilmut and Keith Cambell are the creators of Dolly the cloned sheep. They are also two of the three authors of this book. The book is all about how the historic event of cloning a mammal for the first time in history came about. It is wonderful reading and contains some great scientific insights. The only problem is that these two scientists have not embraced human cloning and all the good that it can do. It seems as if they stepped out of scientific mode and were forced to be against human cloning to keep their funding, placate their religions, and not become pariahs to the religious right. Great book. I highly recommend it for the fascinating story of cloning.

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars silly, patronizing, hardly qualifies as journalism..., July 21, 2000

By A Customer

I was eager to see what Wilmut thought about cloning after reading his excellent essay in the best-selling anthology The Human Cloning Debate. But I was stunned when I read this book. Unlike the other work, this book comes across as silly, even patronizing. The book reads as though Wilmut is attempting to capitalize on Dolly, rather than as a thoughtful reflection on veterinary biology or genetics or human families. It is also very boring, even with the ghostwriter! Save your money; this expensive vehicle is not the best or the most interesting of the crop of cloned cloning books.

5.0 out of 5 stars Fertility, May 17, 2006

By	emma - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Second Creation: Dolly and the Age of Biological Control (Paperback)

Wonderful and interesting. Are scientists able to isolate the cells right before they undergo meiosis and use those cells for somatic nuclear transfer? For example, take a liver cell and perform a somatic nuclear transfer with a precursor cell (of the eggs)--the precursor cell undergoes meiosis to produce the ovum. It would give hope to infertile people and avoid the controversy of cloning.