The Ethics of Somatic Cell Cloning The idea that humans might someday be cloned - created from a single somatic cell without sexual reproduction - became closer to reality on February 23, 1997. On that date, The Observer broke the news that Ian Wilmut, a Scottish scientist, and his colleagues at the Rosilin Institute were about to announce the successful cloning of a sheep by a new technique which has never been fully successful in mammals. The technique, called somatic cell cloning, involved transplanting the genetic material of an adult sheep into the egg from which the nucleus has been removed. The resulting birth of the sheep, named Dolly, on July 5, 1996,