Actually, that article doesn't say anything of the sort.
It does state that the sheep died of a "progressive lung disease" and later that "lung infections are common in older sheep, particularly those like her which are kept indoors." A better diagnosis should be available after the autopsy.
The indications of premature aging are interesting, but should await a much larger sample size to see if this is often a factor.
With regard to cloning I don't really see what the fuss is about. For producing animals it is a remarkably inefficient way of making new organisms. I do see a few good points, such as having truly identical lab samples for experiments so variability due to genetic differences is eliminated.
Alot of the issues around human cloning come from the acquisition process of foetal cell tissue, which is closely wrapped up with the whole abortion thing, and I'm not going there.
With regard to human cloning, should the process prove to be successful and safe for the clone, then I don't see any reason that it should not be permitted. Alot of people point to the weirdness that might occur (cloning a dead wife, child, keeping a clone as extra body parts, etc) but that is a moral issue for the cloners, it has nothing to do with the science of cloning. I do not believe that because your DNA is used for for the creation of another being it takes away from your individuality. Many identical twins wind up being quite different despite their identical genetics.
Lamont
