Talk:Ian Wilmut

The article seems to be a record of the press that Wilmut is getting rather than the fact of the matter concerning the scientific breakthrough that made cloning possible. Whatever is reported in the last 5 minutes does not alter what wilmut said in court about his "non-trivial" but supervisory role in cloning.

Surely "abandon" is the wrong word to use in discussing Wilmut's relationship to cloning? "Abandon" does have the meaning of having something and then making a decision to let it go. It is not the same as never having done something in the first place. According to the Daily Telegraph report of March 2006 he never did, or played a scientific role in, cloning.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/03/08/ndolly08.xml

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/science/article3285475.ece

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/dolly-scientist-should-be-stripped-of-his-knighthood-colleagues-tell-queen-776746.html

http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=26&storycode=400407&c=1

http://blogs.independent.co.uk/openhouse/2008/02/arise-sir-keith.html

Steen Willadsen, at Cambridge, England, was the first to clone a mammal from differentiated cells, from sheep embryos, in 1984.

http://library.thinkquest.org/24355/data/details/1984.html

http://www.publish.csiro.au/?act=view_file&file_id=RDv17n2_PA.pdf

I know that the article needs a "clean-up" but sometimes there are inconvenient truths and it won't all fit into a glass slipper. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 209.77.137.57 (talk) 22:32, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

There is the issue of Roger Highfield's compromised reporting. He has written a book with Wilmut and is the reporter in reference 5 who has not read what his own newspaper has written in reference 4.

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1783810 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 209.77.137.57 (talk) 19:36, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

Living people do dishonest things. There's no way around that. Are we only to report on the lives of saints? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 209.77.137.57 (talk) 21:36, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

The sources are well known British newspapers. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.239.239.57 (talk) 03:50, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

Bill Ritchie one of the technicians who did most of the work is reoprted to have said; "He [Wilmut] is saying he did a third and Keith did two-thirds. But I don't think I appear in there at all, to be honest" http://education.guardian.co.uk/higher/news/story/0,,1728628,00.html

One source (http://library.thinkquest.org/24355/data/light/details/1995.html) claims that the sheep Megan and Morag were cloned in July 1995, not "early 1996" as it is stated in the article. Anyone know what is correct?

ToK 17:07, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

I removed this as it is point of view: I couldn't see how to rewrite it so it wasn't so I took it out.

"It seems odd that Wilmut thinks that writing books, which received less publicity than the original "Dollymania", 10 years after the event, is rightful compensation for his claiming credit, which Wilmut himself has now said (under oath), belongs primarily to somebody else. "

I moved the photo of him and Woo-Suk Hwang to the relevant section. It seems unfair to have this as the top photo.

On the revert, text copied from here --nixie 11:50, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)

The Korean's name in the photo with Wilmut is Woo-Suk Hwang.

This article seems very biased, however true these accusations may be. The photo of him with Woo-Suk Hwang also seems unreasonably designed to taint him by association.

The picture with Woo-suk Hwang was on the site before the news of Hwang's fraud broke and while the latter was still famous. Therefore I do not see how the photo was designed to taint anybody.

NPOV editing

I have tried to make this article in line with Wikipedia policy, but it seems that one editor in particular (209.77.137.57) is dedicated to have her way. I think the controversy paragraph is (at best) to long and not very neutral. But I'm not entering an 'edit war', and the invitations to discuss the subject on the talk pages has not been fruitful so far. Any second opinions about this?

ToK

Somebody really hates this guy. It hardly does any justice to someone on the web looking to learn about Ian Wilmut, the details of his experiment, early life, work, inspirations, academic credentials. God. Looks like a pro-Life Stem Cell person wrote this. --பராசக்தி 05:49, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

Why does the science have to be related to geo-politics?

One of the main sources for the information is the The Center for Genetics and Society. "A nonprofit information and public affairs organization working to encourage responsible uses and effective societal governance of the new human genetic and reproductive technologies". It is aligned with liberal/left of the U.S. Democratic party, hardly a pro-Life group.

http://www.genetics-and-society.org/

BBC profile

Editors can take information from this BBC article. Ekantik ^talk 22:45, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

George Orwell's 1984 was written from his experience working at the BBC.

The BBC article lacks any references at all. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 153.96.84.2 (talk) 13:29, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Stray section moved here

This section of text does not have any place in the article, but enough information can be gleaned from the references to include more information. So I am removing the text from the article and placing it here until such time as proper editing of this text can take place:

==The idea that made cloning possible==

"The idea of freezing cells for use in cloning had been devised by Dr Campbell and the vital experiments had been carried out by a fellow scientist, Bill Ritchie."

"Some scientists, who spoke to the Guardian under condition of anonymity, believe the group would still be trying to clone an animal were it not for Prof Campbell, who worked out that each egg and cell used in a cloning attempt had to be carefully coordinated for the embryo to have any chance of surviving."

"Idea of freezing" (i.e. freezing in the cycle, not freezing cold as you might think, and "each egg and cell used in a cloning attempt had to be carefully coordinated for the embryo to have any chance of surviving" are referring to the same thing.

The disturbing thing is that most people are continuing to act as if nothing happened, oblivious to the uniform requirements for authorship submitted to biomedical journals:

http://www.icmje.org/

Please see: section II Authorship and Contributorship A.1. Byline authors.

"Acquisition of funding, collection of data, or general supervision of the research group, alone, does not justify authorship."

A supervisory role does NOT merit authorship.

Most scientists would say that the work consists of having a testable hypothesis and then testing it. Wilmut, it seems, did not contribute to either part.

The question is: what is Wilmut's scientific contribution?

Ekantik ^talk 23:55, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

Father's blindness

I see that a citation has been requested in repect of Leonard Wilmut's diabetes and blindness. I don't see how this can be provided from any published or online source since it's very unlikely it has ever been mentioned there. If it's any good, I can personally vouch for the accuracy of this - Leonard Wilmut was my uncle, I knew him personally and indeed he contracted diabetes in the 1930s and went blind around the 1960s as a direct result. He had been a Maths teacher and after going blind became a computer programmer (in the days when that meant punched cards). I haven't amended the article: I leave that to others to decide whether this is sufficient authority. RFWilmut (talk) 12:00, 2 January 2008 (UTC)