TWO LEGS GOOD
(according to Dolly the sheep)

"DOLLY THE FIRST EVER CLONED SHEEP HAS DIED", blared headlines across the world this week [February 2003]. I tried to ignore the coverage as much as I could because I find the constant bleating about her origins, pardon the pun, an insult to human intelligence. In other words, I don't believe she was cloned. I think the pictures they've been showing all these years are of a normal sheep conceived in the normal way. It has always amazed me that people believe she's cloned just because they've been TOLD she's cloned. No proof has ever been offered. In my opinion the scientists and the powers-that-be are pulling the sheep-wool over our eyes when they say they created Dolly by "taking the nucleus out of a cell from the mammary gland of an anonymous ewe and fusing it with another egg cell."

In the obitual articles we're told that Dolly spent much of her time in the company of humans and used to rear up on her hind legs to greet them. This reminded me of Orwell's Animal Farm where the pigs broke the cardinal rule of Animalism by getting up on their hind legs and walking. Read the following news article and the excerpt from Animal Farm and see for yourself the laughable similarities. Once again, Orwell saw it coming. ~ Jackie Jura

Symbol of cloning put to death at age six
Developed lung cancer: There will never be another ewe like Dolly
National Post, with files from news services
Saturday, February 15, 2003

Dolly the sheep, the biotechnology wonder of the ovine world and the international poster child for cloning, has died. She was euthanized by lethal injection in Scotland yesterday by the scientists who created her, to spare her further suffering from lung disease. The world's most famous sheep was just six, well short of the typical sheep lifespan of between 11 and 16 years, and her untimely death may renew the debate in scientific circles about the safety and merits of cloning. She was born amid tight security at the Roslin Institute in Edinburgh in July, 1996, the first animal to be cloned from an adult cell. Dolly's birth was kept secret until February 1997, when her picture appeared in newspapers and on television shows around the world. She became a celebrity overnight.

Her death yesterday was mourned by cloning enthusiasts who saw her as a powerful symbol of this new technological innovation: "Obviously, it is very sad news. We were all hoping Dolly would live to a ripe old age," said Dr. Robert Lanza of Advanced Cell Technology, a Massachusetts cloning company. "She's a symbol of all the research that we are doing." The sheep who through science was simultaneously Dolly's mother and her twin died years before Dolly was born. Dolly's creator, Dr. Ian Wilmut, made the cloned sheep by taking the nucleus out of a cell from the mammary gland of the anonymous ewe and fusing it with another egg cell. She was named Dolly after the country singer Dolly Parton, another female who was famous due to her mammaries. Dr. Wilmut and his team had tried to clone 276 sheep embryos, but the only lamb ever produced in the experiment was Dolly. She was a sheep of the Finn Dorset breed, with a white face and cream-coloured curly wool.

Compared to her hardy, naturally-bred cousins, Dolly led a sheltered life, spending most of the past six years indoors, seeking out the attention of her many human visitors. She was hand-fed from birth, and often reared up on her hind legs to nuzzle visitors to the institute where she had lived since birth. Dolly did breed normally on two well-documented occasions. Her liaisons with David, a Welsh mountain ram, led to the birth of Bonnie, in 1998, and three more lambs in 1999.

It was in 1999 that scientists first began to notice that Dolly's cells were showing signs of wear usually associated with much older animals. This year, the Roslin Institute announced Dolly had developed arthritis, an affliction in sheep, as in humans, that typically affects those much older. "Her condition is being treated effectively with anti-inflammatory drugs and is being closely monitored by institute vets," said the news note from the Scottish science centre. "In all other ways, Dolly is in good health." She was later diagnosed with progressive lung disease, which is also common in older sheep. Dolly's veterinarians concluded it would be more merciful to put her to death than to continue with the treatment, Dr. Wilmut said.

Scientists will conduct a full post-mortem on Dolly's body to try to determine whether cloning contributed to her death. Dolly, a sheep who in her short life attained the status of cultural icon, has been promised to the National Museum of Scotland. Her body will eventually be put on display in Edinburgh. [end of article]

Now, with that in mind, read excerpts from Animal Farm: ~ jj

...Then Snowball (for it was Snowball who was best at writing) took a brush between the two knuckles of his trotter, painted out MANOR FARM from the top bar of the gate and in its place painted ANIMAL FARM. This was to be the name of the farm from now onwards. After this they went back to the farm buildings, where Snowball and Napoleon sent for a ladder which they caused to be set against the end wall of the big barn. They explained that by their studies of the past three months the pigs had succeeded in reducing the principles of Animalism to Seven Commandments. These Seven Commandments would now be inscribed on the wall; they would form an unalterable law by which all the animals on Animal Farm must live for ever after. With some difficulty (for it is not easy for a pig to balance himself on a ladder) Snowball climbed up and set to work, with Squealer a few rungs below him holding the paint-pot. The Commandments were written on the tarred wall in great white letters that could be read thirty yards away. They ran thus:

THE SEVEN COMMANDMENTS

Whatever goes upon two legs is an enemy.
Whatever goes upon four legs, or has wings, is a friend.
No animal shall wear clothes.
No animal shall sleep in a bed.
No animal shall drink alcohol.
No animal shall kill any other animal.
All animals are equal.

It was very neatly written, and except that ‘friend’ was written ‘freind’ and one of the ‘S's’ was the wrong way round, the spelling was correct all the way through. Snowball read it aloud for the benefit of the others. All the animals nodded in complete agreement, and the cleverer ones at once began to learn the Commandments by heart.

...None of the other animals on the farm could get further than the letter A. It was also found that the stupider animals, such as the sheep, hens, and ducks, were unable to learn the Seven Commandments by heart. After much thought Snowball declared that the Seven Commandments could in effect be reduced to a single maxim, namely: ‘Four legs good, two legs bad.’ This, he said, contained the essential principle of Animalism. Whoever had thoroughly grasped it would be safe from human influences. The birds at first objected, since it seemed to them that they also had two legs, but Snowball proved to them that this was not so.

‘A bird's wing, comrades,’ he said, ‘is an organ of propulsion and not of manipulation. It should therefore be regarded as a leg. The distinguishing mark of man is the hand, the instrument with which he does all his mischief.’

The birds did not understand Snowball's long words, but they accepted his explanation, and all the humbler animals set to work to learn the new maxim by heart. FOUR LEGS GOOD, TWO LEGS BAD, was inscribed on the end wall of the barn, above the Seven Commandments and in bigger letters When they had once got it by heart, the sheep developed a great liking for this maxim, and often as they lay in the field they would all start bleating ‘Four legs good, two legs bad! Four legs good, two legs bad!’ and keep it up for hours on end, never growing tired of it.

...Years passed. The seasons came and went, the short animal lives fled by. A time came when there was no one who remembered the old days before the Rebellion, except Clover, Benjamin, Moses the raven, and a number of the pigs.

... Somehow it seemed as though the farm had grown richer without making the animals themselves any richer — except, of course, for the pigs and the dogs. Perhaps this was partly because there were so many pigs and so many dogs. It was not that these creatures did not work, after their fashion. There was, as Squealer was never tired of explaining, endless work in the supervision and organisation of the farm. Much of this work was of a kind that the other animals were too ignorant to understand. For example, Squealer told them that the pigs had to expend enormous labours every day upon mysterious things called ‘files,’ ‘reports,’ ‘minutes,’ and ‘memoranda.’ These were large sheets of paper which had to be closely covered with writing, and as soon as they were so covered, they were burnt in the furnace. This was of the highest importance for the welfare of the farm, Squealer said. But still, neither pigs nor dogs produced any food by their own labour; and there were very many of them, and their appetites were always good.

...It was just after the sheep had returned, on a pleasant evening when the animals had finished work and were making their way back to the farm buildings, that the terrified neighing of a horse sounded from the yard. Startled, the animals stopped in their tracks. It was Clover's voice. She neighed again, and all the animals broke into a gallop and rushed into the yard. Then they saw what Clover had seen.

It was a pig walking on his hind legs.

Yes, it was Squealer. A little awkwardly, as though not quite used to supporting his considerable bulk in that position, but with perfect balance, he was strolling across the yard. And a moment later, out from the door of the farmhouse came a long file of pigs, all walking on their hind legs. Some did it better than others, one or two were even a trifle unsteady and looked as though they would have liked the support of a stick, but every one of them made his way right round the yard successfully. And finally there was a tremendous baying of dogs and a shrill crowing from the black cockerel, and out came Napoleon himself, majestically upright, casting haughty glances from side to side, and with his dogs gambolling round him.

He carried a whip in his trotter.

There was a deadly silence. Amazed, terrified, huddling together, the animals watched the long line of pigs march slowly round the yard. It was as though the world had turned upside-down. Then there came a moment when the first shock had worn off and when, in spite of everything — in spite of their terror of the dogs, and of the habit, developed through long years, of never complaining, never criticising, no matter what happened — they might have uttered some word of protest. But just at that moment, as though at a signal, all the sheep burst out into a tremendous bleating of —

‘Four legs good, two legs better! Four legs good, two legs better! Four legs good, two legs better!’

It went on for five minutes without stopping. And by the time the sheep had quieted down, the chance to utter any protest had passed, for the pigs had marched back into the farmhouse.

Benjamin felt a nose nuzzling at his shoulder. He looked round. It was Clover. Her old eyes looked dimmer than ever. Without saying anything, she tugged gently at his mane and led him round to the end of the big barn, where the Seven Commandments were written. For a minute or two they stood gazing at the tatted wall with its white lettering.

‘My sight is failing,’ she said finally. ‘Even when I was young I could not have read what was written there. But it appears to me that that wall looks different. Are the Seven Commandments the same as they used to be, Benjamin?’

For once Benjamin consented to break his rule, and he read out to her what was written on the wall. There was nothing there now except a single Commandment. It ran:

ALL ANIMALS ARE EQUAL
BUT SOME ANIMALS ARE MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS

After that it did not seem strange when next day the pigs who were supervising the work of the farm all carried whips in their trotters. It did not seem strange to learn that the pigs had bought themselves a wireless set, were arranging to install a telephone, and had taken out subscriptions to John Bull, TitBits, and the Daily Mirror. It did not seem strange when Napoleon was seen strolling in the farmhouse garden with a pipe in his mouth — no, not even when the pigs took Mr. Jones's clothes out of the wardrobes and put them on, Napoleon himself appearing in a black coat, ratcatcher breeches, and leather leggings, while his favourite sow appeared in the watered silk dress which Mrs. Jones had been used to wear on Sundays...

Go to OTHER STORIES FROM ANIMAL FARM

RAELIAN BIBLE STORY (first cloned human). Telegraph, Apr 29, 2003

PROCREATION IN BRAVE NEW WORLD

Jackie Jura
~ an independent researcher monitoring local, national and international events ~

email: orwelltoday@gmail.com
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