Researchers have enlisted the help of farm animals to help fight diseases like H1N1. For more than a decade, companies have been cloning cows in an effort to create new medications to treat a wide range of illnesses.  It all started with a with a steer named Charlie, who's living out his retirement years on a farm in South Dakota.

At first glance, this ordinary-looking cow doesn't seem to stand out from the rest of the herd. But mention the name "Charlie" and the scientific world takes notice.

"Charlie is probably the most famous cow in the world, in fact, I'd say unquestionably the most famous cow in the world" former Hematech President Jim Robl said.

In January of 1998, Charlie and his brother George, were the first calves in the world to be created by combining the process of cloning with genetic engineering.

"This was a very novel process, something that most everyone thought was impossible," Robl said.

As he approaches his 12th birthday, Charlie is old for a regular cow, let alone a cloned one. Like a lot of senior citizens, Charlie is having a few problems with his joints and he moves a little slowly these days. But otherwise, he's in great health for a historically-cloned cow.

"The fact that Charlie is here 12 years later, I think demonstrates that the process does work and we can produce normal animals that can live a long, healthy life," Robl said.

Charlie traces his ancestry back to a single skin cell from a donor animal.

"And then we took that skin cell and put it into a cow egg and then created an embryo, the embryo then grew up, we transplanted it into a recipient cow and then 9 months later, Charlie was born," Robl said.

Charlie paved the way for companies like Sioux Falls-based Hematech to clone of thousands of other cows, with the goal of creating medicines for humans.

"The idea is that you give a vaccine such as the H1N1 swine flu vaccine to the cow, the cow then produces human antibodies against that vaccinated product. You collect the antibodies from the cow and use those to treat people that don't respond well to the vaccine," Robl said.

Charlie now leads a quiet, comfortable life hanging out at a barn east of Harrisburg. His twilight years are far removed from the international limelight that heralded his remarkable birth that would eventually turn farms into pharmacies.

At the time of Charlie's birth, there was a worldwide outcry that cloning would get out of control and move from livestock to people. But Robl says even after twelve years, there's no serious scientific pursuit of human cloning.

Charlie's slightly older brother, George, is also at the Harrisburg farm. But George isn't as healthy as Charlie. Robl says that shows that even clones aren't identical copies of each other.