On July of 1996, "Dolly", a Finn-Dorset sheep, was born. What made this so important is that she was the first mammal clonned from an adult somatic cell (at least publicly known). After this scientific achievement came to be, during the rest of the decade of the 1990's, and beginnings of the 2000's, the topics of cloning, bioenginering and stem cells became very popular, cointroversial and, overall, extensively discussed among scientists, academics, the mass media and general public.

On that context, in 2001, at the time Ishiguro was writing "Never Let Me Go", he decided to drop his original idea of having the nuclear element as the center of his story and turning into cloning. On an interview made by the media, "Literary Hub", Ishiguro himself mentions that Dolly and the cultural phenomena that came from her birth, was an inspiration to include this element on the novel he was writing at the time. He even mention that around that time he heard a radio debate about biotechnology, as the thing that convinced him of using cloning as a central element of his novel.

This give us a different perspective of the novel, as it help us to understand how it was defined by a scientific and cultural phenomena of the time in which it was being written, and that even the moral implications that came from it are present on the novel when analyzed.

Sources:

Niemann, H: Tian, X: King, W: & Lee, R. (2008). Epigenetic reprogramming in embryonic and foetal development upon somatic cell nuclear transfer cloning. Reproduction. 135 (2): 151-163.

Sexton, D. (2023). Simple, Sparse and Profound: David Sexton on Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go. Literary Hub. Website: Simple, Sparse and Profound: David Sexton on Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go ‹ Literary Hub

Picture by: Toni Barros (2009). Hello, Dolly! Used under CC BY-SA 2.0 License.