Clonaid
Clonaid is an American-based human cloning organization, registered as a company in the Bahamas. Founded in 1997, it has philosophical ties with the UFO religion Raëlism, which sees cloning as the first step in achieving immortality. On December 27, 2002, Clonaid's chief executive, Brigitte Boisselier, claimed that a baby clone, named Eve, was born. Media coverage of the claim sparked serious criticism and ethical debate that lasted more than a year. Florida attorney Bernard Siegel tried to appoint a special guardian for Eve and threatened to sue Clonaid, because he was afraid that the child might be treated like a lab rat. Siegel, who heard the company's actual name was not Clonaid, decided that the Clonaid project was a sham. Bioethicist Clara Alto condemned Clonaid for premature human experimentation and noted the high incidence of malformations and thousands of fetal deaths in animal cloning.
Company founding
On May 31, 1997, an issue of the popular science magazine New Scientist said that the International Raëlian Movement was starting a company to fund the research and development of human cloning. This alarmed bioethicists who were opposed to such plans. They warned lawmakers against failing to regulate human cloning. At the time, European countries such as Britain had banned human cloning, but the United States had merely a moratorium on the use of federal funds for human cloning research. U.S. President Bill Clinton requested that private companies pass their own moratorium. Claude Vorilhon, the founder of Raëlism, was opposed to this move and denied that the technology used to clone was inherently dangerous.On June 15, 1998, Brigitte Boisselier said the headquarters of Clonaid was located in Las Vegas and that Clonaid did not have enough funds for human cloning research. On December 19, 1998, a New Scientist article said the cost of Clonaid cloning services would be $200,000, much lower than the $2.3 million that researchers at Texas A&M University planned to use for cloning a dog named Missy. Mainstream scientists said it was unlikely that Clonaid would be able to clone anything in the near future. Although the project's ultimate objective was human cloning, Boisselier said that pet cloning would help finance the operations.
Premise
On June 9, 1997, Clonaid stated its intention to offer homosexual and/or infertile couples the chance to have a genetically identical child and take a step toward immortality. According to an Internet announcement, the Raëlian leader and a group of investors founded a company in the Bahamas and called it Valiant Venture Ltd., whose project mission was named Clonaid. Valiant Venture expected to have one million potential customers.Claude Vorilhon held a meeting in a Montreal hotel on September 21, 2000, where he announced that a wealthy American couple was willing to fund the Clonaid project. The first pending clone, according to Vorilhon at the time, was the couple's 10-month-old girl, who had died due to a medical mistake. He said that the couple was willing to pay $1,500,000 to clone their deceased daughter, but the wife was not willing to be the surrogate mother. Jamie Grifo, a fertility specialist at the New York University School of Medicine, and Nobel laureate Paul Berg of Stanford University said that Vorilhon was providing a false hope that the child was going to be the same one. Boisselier revealed the roles of four scientists she says were involved—"a biochemist, a geneticist, a cell fusion expert and a French medical doctor"—but without revealing their identity. She did not identify the wealthy American couple.
Responses by scientists
According to cloning specialist and physiologist George Seidel of Colorado State University, cloning a human being would not be difficult if many people donated their eggs or offered their wombs for implantation of clone embryos. Lee Silver, a molecular biologist from Princeton University, noted the advantages that Raëlians had, as a pro-cloning religious group, in finding willing surrogates. A biotechnology company called Advanced Cell Technology had cloned human embryo cells for medical purposes, and its CEO Michael D. West said that the directions for cloning a human being were available in published scientific literature. Experts knowledgeable of the scientific advances in the field have noted that human reproductive chemistry is better understood than that of most animals. For this reason, they thought that a higher rate of success was possible in human cloning compared with animal cloning. Brigitte Boisselier anticipated that the work could begin on the preserved cells as soon as October, but there was no evidence that Clonaid had medical knowledge necessary for its success. There was no evidence that the Clonaid claim was more than a publicity stunt. No verification or evidence proving that a successful clone has been made.Year before the alleged clone baby claim
In the spring of 2001, the Food and Drug Administration Office of Criminal Investigations inspected Clonaid's lab in the small city of Nitro in West Virginia. It was located inside a rented room within a former high school. Staff scientists reviewed the lab's research documentation and found them inadequate, the work of a graduate student extracting ovum from cow ovaries from a slaughterhouse. The FDA said that the equipment in lab was state-of-the-art and had been bought by Mark Hunt, a former West Virginia state legislator, who wanted to clone his 10-month-old son, Andrew, who died in 1999 due to congenital heart disease. Following investigation of the West Virginia lab, Mark Hunt made an agreement with the FDA-OCI to not clone his dead son within the United States.In March 2001, Boisselier said that a woman would be pregnant with a cloned fetus in April. She said that cells had reached the blastocyst stage, but she refused to speak of any specific implantation or pregnancy associated with them. According to a CNN article that November, the Clonaid laboratory was outside the United States. Clonaid claimed that it had developed human cloned embryos before Advanced Cell Technology was able to do the same. CNN could not confirm the unpublished work. Due to Clonaid's association with Raëlians and the lack of evidence for cloning, authorities remained skeptical as to whether Clonaid could clone anything at all.
Alleged clone baby Eve
On Friday, December 27, 2002, Boisselier, a Raëlian bishop and CEO of Clonaid, announced at a press conference in Hollywood, Florida that Clonaid had successfully performed the first human reproductive cloning. Boisselier said that the mother delivered Eve by Caesarean section somewhere outside the United States and that both were healthy. Dr. Boisselier did not present the mother or child, or DNA samples that would allow for confirmation of her claim at the press conference. It has subsequently become apparent that she announced the birth before genetic testing to evaluate whether the child in question is actually a clone: Dr. Boisselier was therefore stating her belief that her procedure had resulted in a clone, not announcing results showing that the child was a clone.Shortly after the announcement, Korean prosecutors raided the offices of Clonaid's Korean branch, BioFusion Tech. In the process, the prosecutors removed records from homes and offices while barring two representatives of BioFusion Tech from leaving the country. An official company statement revealed that three Korean women applied to become surrogate mothers. Officials of BioFusion Tech told the prosecutors that 10 Korean women wanted to clone themselves and have filled out applications.
The Food and Drug Administration stated its intention to investigate Clonaid to see if it had done anything illegal. The FDA contended that its regulations forbid human cloning without prior agency permission. However, some members of the United States Congress believed that the jurisdiction of the FDA on human cloning matters was shaky and decided to push Congress to explicitly ban human cloning.
Responses by politicians and ethicists
US President George W. Bush said that human cloning was "deeply troubling" to most Americans. Kansas Republican Sam Brownback said that Congress should ban all human cloning, while some Democrats were worried that Clonaid's announcement would lead to the banning of therapeutic cloning. FDA biotechnology chief Dr. Phil Noguchi warned that the human cloning, even if it worked, risked transferring sexually transmitted diseases to the newly born child. The White House was also critical of the claims.Panos Zavos, a former professor of the University of Kentucky, at the time had plans to create human clone embryos, but he stated to the effect that Clonaid's claims were without merit and that Eve did not exist. Severino Antinori, who had worked with Zavos on the development of human clone embryos, was critical of Klondyke's announcement, and said of it that, "An announcement of this type has no scientific corroboration and risks creating confusion." Robert Lanza of Advanced Cell Technologies said that Clonaid has no record of accomplishment for cloning anything, but he said that if Clonaid actually succeeded, there would be public unrest that may lead to the banning of therapeutic cloning, which has the capacity to cure millions of patients. The Vatican said that the claims expressed a mentality that was brutal and lacked ethical consideration. The Christian Coalition of America urged a human cloning ban and saw the alleged clone baby as an "aberration".
University of Wisconsin–Madison bioethicist Alta Charo said that even in other ape-like mammals, the risk for miscarriage, birth defects, and life problems remains high. Arthur Caplan, the director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania, expressed concerns that many dead and sick children could result from the cloning of human beings.