Finally, We’re Just Like Dolly It took 17 years and a scandal involving scientific fraud and embezzlement, but stem cell scientists have finally accomplished with human cells what a scientist long ago did with a ewe – cloning. Using human skin cells, Shoukhrat Mitalipov, a professor at Oregon Health & Science University, applied the same process, known as nuclear transfer, that produced Dolly the sheep in 1996, the first cloned mammal. A previous attempt by South Korean researchers turned out to be fraud when it was revealed the team used embryos generated by IVF instead of nuclear transfer to generate its so-called human clones. Mitalipov’s goal wasn’t to generate mini-mes, however. Instead, he successfully inserted a fully developed skin cell into a hollowed out human egg, and chemically and electrically stimulated the egg to start dividing to produce embryonic stem cells. (The procedure went no further than that—no walking, talking clone.) Stem cells serve as the cellular foundation