Dolly's status confirmed

French scientists say that they have performed experiments which help confirm that Dolly the sheep is indeed the clone of an adult mammal - something that some American observers have questioned, writes Charles Arthur.

A French team say they have managed to reprogram cells from a calf, and implant them in an egg cell to create a new cloned embryo which is now growing. Jean-Paul Renard, the team's leader, said they had taken the unusual step of announcing the work before its official publication to add "supplementary arguments" to the debate over whether Dolly really came from the cloning of an adult cell.