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2000 Stan. Tech. L. Rev. 1 (2000)

handle is hein.journals/stantlr2000 and id is 1 raw text is: _Stanford Technology Law Review Resuntg the WoollyMammth Science, Law E is, Politics, and Religion Corey A. Salsberg Cite as: 2000 Stan. Tech. L. Rev. 1 I. INTRODUCTION In April 1984, MIT's Tednology Re-dew, the nation's oldest journal of science and technology, reported something extraordinary In an article entitled Retrobreeding the Woolly Mammoth, author Diana ben-Aaron announced to the world that the grand, shaggy icon of the Pleistocene had been brought back to life after ten thousand years of extinction.1 The miraculous feat had been accomplished, according to the article, by a Soviet-American pair (a miracle itself in the midst of the Cold War); Dr. Sverbighooze Nikhiphorovich Yasmilov, head of veterinary research at the University of Irkutsk, and Dr. James Creak of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Yasmilov had apparently recovered viable ova from a young mammoth found frozen in Siberia, and had sent them to Creak for testing who in turn extracted the nuclear DNA, aligned it with similarly-prepared DNA from modem elephant sperm, and concluded that the genetic material was compatible. After several botched attempts, the pair were able to fuse sperm from an Asian elephant bull with eight of the recovered mammoth ova, and using Asian elephant cows as surrogate mothers, created the world's first elephant-mammoth hybrid, subsequently christened E lephas pseudotherias, or mammontelephas.2 News of the mammontelephas spread quickly The story was picked up by the Chicago Tribune and its syndicates, and ultimately appeared in over 350 newspapers across the United States.3 Frantic phone calls from Europe confirmed Elephas pseudotherias' status as an international bio-engineered celebrity to be surpassed only by the Roslin Institute's cloned sheep Dolly some 13 years later.4 It took a letter from the editor in a later edition of Technology Review to explain to the world that Ms. ben-Aaron's piece was a parody, the result of an assignment for an undergraduate writing class, Which was subsequently published in the magazine in celebration of 1 Diana ben-Aaron, Retrobreedingthe WoollyMammoth, TECH. REV., Apr. 1984, at 85. 2 Id. 3 John I. Mattill, Our ShayElephant, TECH. REV., Oct. 1984, at 4. 4 I. Wilmut, A.E. Schnicke, J. McWhir, A.J. Kind & K.H.S. Campbell, Viable Offspring Derivfrom Fetal and Adult Mammalian Cells, 385 NATURE 810 (1997); Elizabeth Farnsworth, Online NesHour: Cloning Mammals- Februany 24, 1997 <http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/science/jan-june97/cloning2-2-24.html>. COPYRIGHT @ 2000 STANFORD TECHNOLOGY LAW REVIEW. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.