Editorial: After the hype: what Dolly the sheep really did for us

"STUPENDOUS" and "mind-boggling" were just two reactions to the birth of Dolly, the first mammal cloned from an adult cell, 10 years ago this week. Suddenly, the idea of herds of identical prize bulls, or sheep producing medicines for humans in their milk, seemed wholly plausible. Then there was therapeutic cloning, which would provide genetically matched human tissue to patch up even the most seriously ill patient.

A decade on, much of that excitement has vanished and cloning is in the doldrums. Creating genetic replicas of animals has proved so difficult that it is only used when large profits beckon, and therapeutic cloning has not got off the starting blocks. So is that it? Were those high hopes just an illusion?

The field has obviously not been helped by the controversy it stirred up. Thoughts of cloned humans and discarded embryos generated moral, religious and political outrage. In the US, restrictions on federal funding for stem-cell research have stunted development. Then, last year, the exposure of South Korean researcher Woo Suk Hwang as a fraud set the field back several...