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Dolly, the famous ewe caused a sensation when it was born on July 5, 1996. Even though not quite a product of a sensational virgin birth, this domestic sheep was dubbed the world's most famous sheep by Scientific American and why not, Ian Wilmut, Keith Campbell and colleagues at Roslin Institute in Edinburgh, Scotland had played God by using the cell from a mammary gland to make this sheep the first mammal to be cloned from an adult somatic cell, thus proving that a cell taken from a specific part of the body could recreate a whole individual. I remember around this time, I had attended a talk by the late Rev. Abhinyana who had said that according to Buddhism, the conception of a baby is the result of not just the fertilisation of an ovum by a sperm but there must be a third entity involved, something like the soul factor. Of course, soul is not the exact word he used since Buddhism, I am very sure, does not recognise the existence of soul but to cut a long story short, the Reverend said something along this line, that the birth of Dolly had dented both the traditional scientific and Buddhist concept that both the sperm and ovum need to be present for conception. A somatic cell like the cell from a mammary gland never comes so near like a sperm and ovum but frankly, I think if you were to go all the way to the beginning, you can see that a somatic cell comes from a sperm and an ovum. Perhaps, the third entity can come later and if one knows how to invoke the third factor into activity, there will still be life...
Dolly, the famous ewe caused a sensation when it was born on July 5, 1996. Even though not quite a product of a sensational virgin birth, this domestic sheep was dubbed the world's most famous sheep by Scientific American and why not, Ian Wilmut, Keith Campbell and colleagues at Roslin Institute in Edinburgh, Scotland had played God by using the cell from a mammary gland to make this sheep the first mammal to be cloned from an adult somatic cell, thus proving that a cell taken from a specific part of the body could recreate a whole individual. I remember around this time, I had attended a talk by the late Rev. Abhinyana who had said that according to Buddhism, the conception of a baby is the result of not just the fertilisation of an ovum by a sperm but there must be a third entity involved, something like the soul factor. Of course, soul is not the exact word he used since Buddhism, I am very sure, does not recognise the existence of soul but to cut a long story short, the Reverend said something along this line, that the birth of Dolly had dented both the traditional scientific and Buddhist concept that both the sperm and ovum need to be present for conception. A somatic cell like the cell from a mammary gland never comes so near like a sperm and ovum but frankly, I think if you were to go all the way to the beginning, you can see that a somatic cell comes from a sperm and an ovum. Perhaps, the third entity can come later and if one knows how to invoke the third factor into activity, there will still be life...
Comments
One is birth from the egg, other is from the womb.