The Biotech Century

The grand, tumultuous pageant of human history is, in a large part, propelled by technology. Metalworking and improved agriculture carried civilization out of the Stone Age. In the 19th century, the Industrial Revolution gave rise to mighty machines and sprawling cities. In the 20th century, physics became king. Physicists split the atom, explored the bizarre worlds of relativity and quantum theory, and harnessed the power of tiny chips of silicon. Along the way, they transformed the world with the atom bomb, the transistor, the laser, and the microchip. But now, many experts believe, humankind is poised to ride a new wave of scientific knowledge in the headlong rush to the future. "This was the century of physics and chemistry," proclaims 1996 Nobel prize-winning chemist Robert F. Curl of Rice University. "But it is clear that the next century will be the century of biology."

On Feb. 22, that century was suddenly upon us--arriving years sooner than anyone expected, not like a lion but in the guise of a lamb. A previously obscure 52-year-old Scottish embryologist, Ian Wilmut, stunned the world by announcing that he and his team at the Roslin Institute outside Edinburgh had created an exact copy--a clone--of an adult Dorset sheep. The historic lamb, created from DNA extracted from the sheep's mammary gland, was named Dolly. "We couldn't think of anyone with a more impressive set of mammary glands than Dolly Parton," says Wilmut.