Cloning : The lesson from Mickey

As might have been expected, the world's media last week focused on the mouse cloning achievements at the University of Hawaii, reporting on declarations by once skeptical scientists that the research provided proof that cloning could occur and on arguments that this event brings science a step closer to cloning of humans.

The former was already well-accepted in the biotechnology community. The latter is not immediately relevant - while the ability to clone mice will facilitate studies of mammalian embryology, there's no reason that cloning a mouse per se brings us closer to human cloning than does cloning a sheep...