Poor Dolly, a genetic copy of her mother, named after Dolly Parton, was "put to sleep on Valentine's Day" after suffering from early aging and progressive lung cancer. She took her last breath on the same Scottish farm where she was created and lived, for about half the life expectancy for her breed. And I'd bet that when she "hit the ground" there six years ago, those huddling around her were all singing "Well, Hello Dolly."

But she didn't die in vain. For as the leader of the research team that created her said, "she made biologists think differently about the way cells develop for all of the different tissues; and that the experiments that led to her birth offers hope to millions of people with incurable diseases."

Now, I knew nothing about that complex subject until I saw that 1978 movie"The Boys from Brazil," starring Gregory Peck, who played the role of the infamous Josef Mengele, the Nazi doctor known as "the Angel of Death" for the cruel and painful pseudoscientific experiments he performed on inmates at the Auschwitz concentration camp. As I vaguely recall the plot, before fleeing to Brazil after WW 2, he'd cloned 84 Hitlers from a piece of tissue the Fuehrer gave him; and was trying to track 'em down to see if they had developed into Hitler look-alikes and inherited his traits. He found one all right, but it backfired on him, when the teenage Hitler clone had his ferocious Dobermans rip him to shreds. What a perfect ending I thought to that wild fantasy about cloning people.

And speaking of fantasies, a UFO cult, called the Raelians, who believe life on Earth was created by aliens, claimed recently they'd made the first human clone. They named her Eve, apparently to show their contempt for religious beliefs, which they view as "outmoded bunkum." To date, they haven't let anyone see her, or the two other cloned babies they said were created since then. They're obviously as spaced-out as that Heavenly Gate cult, led by a man called "Do," who along with 38 others members "done doed it" by committing suicide in 1997, hoping to rendezvous with a UFO hiding behind some comet. Talk about "having bats in the belfry."

In boning-up on the subject, I learned that human cloning wasn't some wild pipe dream of a few mad scientists, but was feasible; and that it's not a problem of technology that keeps it from happening, but it's the principle that's the roadblock. And it's also an established fact that researchers are able to produce embryonic stem cells that can develop into any of the 200-odd tissues found in the human body; and that this technique has been used successfully in animals to repair nerves, hearts and kidneys, and could hold the key to treatments for Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's disease, and crippling spinal-cord injuries, like Christopher "Superman" Reeve suffers from.

But I find it unconscionable that, in this enlightened age, there's such strong opposition against therapeutic cloning for research that could cure diseases, and alleviate a lifetime of pain and suffering for so many. For as George Eliot said, "what do we live for, if it's not to make life less difficult for each other?" Nor do I think the Almighty would frown on it, or consider it as encroaching on his domain. Not the all-loving God I believe in.

We'll soon know what the government's official position will be, since the House has passed a bill, with the president's blessing, banning therapeutic cloning, as well as the cloning of embryos to produce babies. Hopefully, cooler heads in the Senate will vote to limit the bill to cloning babies, as they did last year. Its outcome will reveal whether or not we are truly the compassionate nation we proclaim we are to the rest of the world.

Incidentally, Dolly will be put on display at the national Museum of Scotland. If I ever go there, I'll stop by and pay my respects for her nobel sacrifice.