Dr. Michael Zuk purchased the decayed molar from the original owner—a former housekeeper of Lennon's—at auction in 2011, paying £19,100 ($30,000 US) for the tooth. In a press release submitted this week, Zuk claims that the DNA value of the tooth is "easily worth $2.5 million to the right company", adding "It actually is priceless if it means we can clone the Beatle." Regarding the cloning, Zuk says, "With researchers working on ways to clone mammoths, the same technology certainly could make human cloning a reality".
In 1996, scientists at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, made headlines when they successfully managed to clone a sheep named Dolly by using the extracted DNA from another sheep. Since then, great strides have been made in cloning, but ethical and moral ramifications have kept the procedure from going main stream.
Lennon was shot and killed in 1980 by crazed fan Mark David Chapman while entering his apartment building the Dakota in New York City's Upper West Side. He was forty-years-old at the time of his death.
