Theos-Talk Archives (December 2002 Message tt00709)

Here is an interesting news:

mkr

HOLLYWOOD, Fla. –– A member of
a sect that believes life on Earth was
created by extraterrestrials claimed
Friday to have produced the world's
first human clone, a baby girl.

The 7-pound baby was born Thursday
by Caesarean section, said Brigitte
Boisselier, a chemist and head of a
company that did the experiment. She
wouldn't say where the baby was born;
she did say the birth was at 11:55 a.m.
local time.

Even before her news conference,
other scientists expressed doubt that
her group could clone a human.

Boisselier said the baby, dubbed "Eve"
by the scientists, is a clone of the
31-year-old American woman who
donated the DNA for the cloning
process, had the resulting embryo
implanted and then gestated the baby.
If confirmed, that would make the child
an exact genetic duplicate of her
mother.

Boisselier said the mother had resorted
to cloning because her mate was
infertile.

"It is very important to remember that
we are talking about a baby," she said. "The baby is very 
healthy. She is fine, she doing fine. The
parents are happy. I hope that you remember them when you 
talk about this baby, not like a monster,
like some results of something that is disgusting."

Boisselier did not immediately present DNA evidence 
showing a genetic match between mother and
daughter, however. That leaves her claim scientifically 
unsupported.

Dr. Michael Guillen, a former medical correspondent at 
ABC's "Good Morning America," told
reporters at the news conference he was lining up 
"independent world-class experts" to perform
DNA test on the mother and baby. He said he was not being 
paid by Clonaid.

The group expects four more babies to be born in the next 
several weeks, another from North
America, one from Europe and two from Asia. Two of the 
couples are using preserved cells taken
from their own children before their deaths, and one is a 
lesbian couple, she claimed.

"I do believe that it is the choice of every parent to 
choose the child they want, even if they don't have
any infertility problem," Boisselier said. "Who are we to 
tell the parents the child that they should
have?"

The couples were not asked to pay for the procedures but 
some had invested in Clonaid, she said.

She said the baby will go home in three days, and an 
independent expert will take DNA samples from
her to prove she had been cloned. She said results would 
come within nine days.

"You can still go back to your office and treat me as a 
fraud," she said. "You have one week to do
that."

Most scientists, already skeptical of Boisellier's 
ability to produce a human clone, will probably
demand to know exactly how the DNA testing was done 
before they believe the announcement.

Clonaid was founded in the Bahamas in 1997 by Claude 
Vorilhon, a former French journalist and
leader of a group called the Raelians. Vorilhon and his 
followers claim aliens visiting him in the 1970s
revealed they had created all life on Earth through 
genetic engineering.

Cloning produces a new individual using only one person's 
DNA. The process is technically difficult
but conceptually simple. Scientists remove the genetic 
material from an unfertilized egg, then introduce
new DNA from a cell of the animal to be cloned. Under the 
proper conditions, the egg begins dividing
into new cells according to the instructions in the 
introduced DNA.

Boisselier, who claims two chemistry degrees and 
previously was marketing director for a chemical
company in France, identifies herself as a Raelian 
"bishop" and said Clonaid retains philosophical but
not economic links to the Raelians. She is not a 
specialist in reproductive medicine.

Legislation or guidelines to ban human cloning are 
pending in dozens of nations, including the United
States. Several countries, including Britain, Israel, 
Japan and Germany, already have banned it. There
is no specific law against it in the United States, but 
the Food and Drug Administration contends it
must approve any human experiments in this country.

Boisselier would not say where Clonaid has been carrying 
out its experiments. Bush administration
officials had said they were aware of rumors of an 
announcement but had no plans to comment until
after the details were known.

In Rome, fertility doctor Severino Antinori, who said 
weeks ago that a cloned baby boy would be
born in January, dismissed Clonaid's claims and said the 
group has no scientific credibility.

The news "makes me laugh and at the same time disconcerts 
me, because it creates confusion
between those who make serious scientific research" and 
those who don't, Antinori said.

"We keep up our scientific work, without making 
announcements," he added. "I don't take part in this
... race."

So far scientists have succeeded in cloning sheep, mice, 
cows, pigs, goats and cats. Last year,
scientists in Massachusetts produced cloned human embryos 
with the intention of using them as a
source of stem cells, but the cloned embryos never grew 
bigger than six cells.

Many scientists oppose cloning to produce humans, saying 
it's too risky because of abnormalities
seen in cloned animals.

Dr. Robert Lanza of Advanced Cell Technology, the 
Massachusetts company that last year produced
the first reported cloned human embryo, said before the 
announcement that Clonaid has "no scientific
credibility at this point."

But he and other experts do not dismiss the possibility 
of success. In some respects, cloning to
produce a baby may be easier than the task Lanza is 
undertaking, which is to clone an embryo to
produce stem cells for medical research.

"They may be able to bypass many of the problems that we 
would encounter in the lab," he said. He
said his work has found that implanting a very early 
stage cloned embryo in an animal's uterus can be
successful, while trying to grow the embryo in the lab is 
more difficult.

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