Two Cups of Tea at Hope’s Cafe
JR Tolkien authored those famous words, a reminder to us that exploration and discovery are valuable, essential even. The accolades have poured in over the last week for Dolly Parton, celebrated singer, Country Music legend, astute business person, actor, author but most of all a downhome, authentic person, always curious and open, a generous soul who exited this world recently, leaving the world to mourn her passing.
But the memory of another “Dolly” has been obscured over the years, one whose life also exhibited the importance of discovery. A sheep named Dolly (after Dolly Parton because said sheep was cloned from a mammary gland) broke into our awareness in February 1997 when it was announced by the Rosin Institute in Scotland that Dolly had been successfully cloned! Cloned! How astounding! She was not the first sheep to be cloned. However, she was the first to be cloned from an adult cell.
Up to that time, scientists believed that it could be impossible to clone mammals in this way. Researchers thought specialized adult cells — such as skin cells or liver cells — held only the information to do that specific job, according to the Roslin Institute as reported in an article by Charlotte Phillipp in People magazine. Researchers began the cloning process by taking cells from the udder of a six-year-old ewe and culturing them in a lab using microscopic needles — a method that had first been used in human fertility treatments in the 1970s, according to the Institute.
The researchers were rather puzzled by the attention they got from the announcement of the cloning, not fully aware of all that this discovery portended. Dolly’s birth heralded a major milestone in genetic research and inspired global conversations about cloning ethics and advanced stem cell rearch. Dolly’s cloning technique is still used today, influencing biotech innovations and therapeutic cloning advancements.
What we learn builds on those before us and we have the sacred trust to make the most of that learning that those after us can continue to build.
As Henry Ward Beecher wrote and the (human) Dolly exhibited: “ We should live and labor in our time that what came to us as a seed may go to the next generation as blossom, and what came to us as blossom, may go to them as fruit. This is what we mean by progress.”
The invitation is open to share two cups of tea anytime at Hope’s Café or anywhere you share companionship and conversation.
May we be bearers of hope, the “wait staff” at Hope’s Café, for each other and all those we encounter. Shalom, Kate
Hope's Cafe 