Cloning People
Thread - Is the Expert Qualified?, Dolly R.I.P.
On 30/12/2003, Toby Fiander posted:
American Broadcasting used to
employ a bloke called Michael Guillen as its science editor. He has
a doctorate in theoretical physics, mathematics and astronomy from Cornell
University. He taught physics to undergraduates at Harvard. He is an Emmy-award-winning
science journalist who appeared regularly on "Good Morning America," `20/20"
and other ABC news programs for 14 years before leaving the network in October.
Dr. Guillen has a bit of history as a reporter. At various times
he has dealt credulously and earnestly with astrology, ESP, healing at a
distance, auras and cold fusion. He also has a good record in fact-ferreting,
too, but the rest makes you wonder.
I point all this out because, according to the New York Time, Dr Guillen
has agreed to examine the claims of Clonaid that it has cloned human beings,
and one in particular, known for the moment as Eve.
Dr Guillen is an eminent journalist and a physics teacher, but is he a
good person to evaluate the claims of Clonaid? ... or are the tell-tale
signs of cloning so obvious that you do not need a background molecular biology
or genetics or some other relevant discipline to determine the matter conclusively?
Does it matter anyway?
Zero
Sum replied:
Anybody trusted
not to lie and given access could determine the provenance of the genetic
materials.
But even then,
that would provide evidence of parthenogenesis not cloning. Unless
the two can be distinguished, the only certainty would be a trusted observer
during the whole process.
Toby replied:
It seems to me that there are a lot of unanswered questions, like (just
the ones I can see from sampling other things for "proof" of various things):
- who is taking the samples;
not the journalist/physicist presumably,
- who is testing them and
using what techniques,
- what chain of custody system
is being used, so it can be obvious if anything is tampered with,
- who will do the interpretation,
- will other samples be taken
for comparison with other laboratories,
- will other samples be taken
for comparison of other situations in that lab,
- will the samples be disguised
in some way?
- and, finally, who is paying
for all this?
Then there are the technical questions....
Peter Macinnis added:
This
take on Guillen from Robert Park may be more to the point -- note the inoculation
comment:
>2. HUMAN CLONING: RAELIANS ANNOUNCE THE BIRTH OF BABY
"EVE." Do
>you
recall the controversy stirred up by physicist Richard Seed,
>PhD
Harvard '53, when he announced his intention to clone the
>first
human (WN 9 Jan 98)? We haven't heard anything from Seed
>lately,
but today the scientific director of Clonaid says her
>company
has created the first human clone. Clonaid was founded
>by
Raelians, a religious group that believes extraterrestrials
>created
humans. There are no details on how the supposed cloning
>of
Eve was achieved, but physicist Michael Guillen, PhD Cornell,
>has
been selected by Clonaid to verify the claim. Guillen has
>just
the credentials Clonaid needs. In 1997 as the science
>correspondent
for ABC Good Morning America, Guillen did a three-
>part
series, "Fringe or Frontier." Of precognition he concluded
>"these
guys are not flakes"; on astrology, "I think we're just
>going
to have to suspend judgement"; on psychokinesis, "you have
>to
take it seriously" (WN 3 Oct 97). Indeed, Guillen covered
>everything
from James Patterson's cold fusion cell to Kirlian
>photographs
of the human aura with the same credulity. A PhD in
>physics,
after all, is not an inoculation against foolishness.
>We
called ABC, but were told emphatically that their relationship
>with
Guillen ended nearly a year ago.
Toby Fiander responded:
> A PhD in
physics, after all, is not an inoculation against foolishness.
Then why would you choose such
a person to do "the evaluation"? It simply invites the accusation
of fraud.
I note in other articles that Guillen is supposed to have said he would
employ others to do the technical work without saying who they were, which
makes the mystery even deeper, really.
On
Tuesday 31 December 2002 17:15, Peter Macinnis wrote:
>
You may very well think that, I could not possibly comment :-)
>
> The
samples will be switched -- they need James Randi in charge!
>
Zero Sum replied:
It would not do them any good if they did. Three cases:-
If the genes and the mitochondria were identical we know it is a fake as
the mitochondria would come substantially from the egg donor.
If the genes and mitochondria differ we know it is not a clone.
If there is identical nuclear DNA but the mitochondria differ then looks
like they did it.
That sort of testing is not exactly novel...
Toby Fiander wrote:
My general view has been that banning human cloning is silly, but I think
I am in the minority. I think human cloning ought to be treated with
care and examined, case by case against some NHMRC guidelines, like other
research. But effectively the cloning will shortly not be permitted in Australia.
I suppose the issue is probably that no one is at all clear where cloning
will lead, if indeed it leads anywhere. And the immediate concern
seems to be whether cloning on this occasion will lead eventually to it
occurring routinely as IVF does without proper consideration of issues like,
for example, the right of the cloned human to be born unique, and having
been born to hang on to life and not surrender it to ensure someone else's.
I just think banning things for all time is probably a bit silly, but that
is just a personal point of view; the alternative point of view (ie.
that there are some things that should be banned for all time) has a lot
to recommend it... I am just never quite sure what things should be put out
of reach forever, at least at the margin, and I think there needs to be case
by case consideration.
Chris
Lawson added:
At
17:15 31/12/02 +1100, Peter Macinnis wrote:
>The samples will be switched -- they need James Randi in charge!
Here is my
prediction for the affair:
Our Trusty Physicist/Journalist will go in *intending* to be skeptical.
But his desire for a story and for weirdness in general (see Bob Park's comments
on his early reports) will eventually eat away at his skepticism and
in fact will create in him a willing accomplice to the Raelians while still
believing himself to be a skeptic. In this manner, not only will he support
their claims, he will define himself as a true skeptic so that all the others
who find his arguments unpersuasive can be labelled as ultra-conservatives/anti-progress
conspirators rather than "true" skeptics.
Now, I have to admit, this is highly conjectural and relies on psychological
traits that I am inferring from limited data. This could turn out to be
wrong.
But this I am certain of: the Raelians will try some con like switching
the samples as Peter suggests. Either Guillen will fall for it (for whatever
psychological reason), or he will rise above his shoddy past efforts and
see through their con and denounce it. Either way, the Raelians will be forced
to deal with accusations of shonkiness by Guillen or by scientists. And
their response is highly predictable: first, the scientists are jealous
that the Raelians did it first (despite the fact that almost none of the
world's scientists want to have anything to do with this sort of cloning,
and certainly not to support the lunatic philosophy of one of the freakier
religious cults around).
Second (and this is my gold-standard prediction -- if someone reminds me
in 12 months, we can see how accurate this is), the Raelians will concede
that they did not give the conclusive evidence, and indeed they cannot because
to give the conclusive evidence would put the mother at risk of prosecution
by narrow-minded Western governments. That is, the fact that they cannot
release the conclusive evidence will be used as evidence itself. After all,
if they hadn't really cloned someone, then they wouldn't have anything to
hide, right? So the fact that they can't provide the evidence proves that
the evidence is conclusive.
You heard it here first.
Chris Lawson added:
At 20:46 31/12/02 +1100,
Zero Sum wrote:
>If the genes and
the mitochondria were identical we know it is a fake
>as the mitochondria would come substantially from the egg donor.
Not necessarily. If they used
the mother's own egg, then the mitochondria will also be the same.
>If the genes and
mitochondria differ we know it is not a clone.
See above.
>If there is identical
nuclear DNA but the mitochondria differ then
>looks like they did it.
That would be the acid test,
but it may not apply for reasons already mentioned.
I still agree with Peter that the Raelians will pull some sort of swifty.
After all, they don't really need to convince anyone but their own followers.
And anyone who believes the Raelian philisophy will easily be convinced
by the con, even if none of the scientists are. I reckon the same for "Dr
Volcano".
Zero
Sum responded:
On Wednesday 01 January 2003 15:53, Peter Macinnis wrote:
>
That assumes they want to prove it, and while I don't see this as
> partenogenesis
in the strict sense, how does parthenogenesis differ
> from
cloning?
I was under
the impression, which may or may not be correct, that there were occasions
of parthenogenesis in all species. If this is the case, then the difference
is that parthenogenesis occurs
'naturally', while 'cloning' does not.
This is why I was assuming that they would use a different genetic strain
for the egg and for host mother. Otherwise they have not proven anything.
Granted, I am making two assumptions;
(1) that they want to prove it, and
(2) that they seriously want to do it.
>
My gold-standard prediction: the DNA and the mitochondria will both
> match,
but I will line up behind Chris on his one as well.
If the DNA and mitochondria do match and are removed from different individuals,
all you can say is that something wants investigating for an explanation.
For a nuclear replacement clone what you would expect to see would be near-identical
or identical nuclear DNA ('near' because mutations do occur) and NOT identical
mitochondrial DNA.
During the ennucleation process, some mitochondia from the two cells get
mixed and if the egg is from a diffe....
Ah... This is getting difficult... How about a truth table....
For 'donor X' read that this is the same genetic material (self, twin, mother, sister, whatever)
not necessarily the same individual.
Egg
|
Nucleus
|
Womb
|
Result
|
Donor A
|
Donor A
|
Donor A
|
Doesn't prove anything. Should be dismissed as deliberately
confusing. This would not be chosen unless deception is the point.
Con-men would choose this.
|
Donor A
|
Donor A
|
Donor B
|
As immediately above
|
Donor A
|
Donor B
|
Any
|
This is falsible/verifiable. This is what should be chosen
by anyone wishing to know (or prove) they got it right.
|
>
We are dealing with excellent con-men (and women) here -- we should
> not
assume we can outguess their cunning, but somebody mentioned
> over
dinner last night that the lab used by the Raelians had been
> reported
as containing a couple of Bunsen burners and not much else.
> Can
anybody elaborate on this?
No, but I'll ask how you 'know' they are con-whatevers? I mean, maybe
they are, it is pretty likely. However they just *may* believe what
they preach and be really trying to do the 'right' job. It seems a
bit presumptious to assume they are frauds. But I'll admit to having
the same ideas about American presidents.
Peter Macinnis replied:
>I was under the
impression, which may or may not be correct, that
>there were occasions of
parthenogenesis in all species...
I have never heard of parthenogenesis
in humans. I seem to recall that the literal meaning is "virgin birth",
but a case with scant anecdotal evidence 2000 years ago can be ruled out,
as the issue was male.
Actually, I would have been more impressed if they had cloned a male.
>No, but I'll ask
how you 'know' they are con-whatevers? ...
How about their failure to clone
a male? Let us just say that I have asserted with some force an hypothesis
that few would bother to question. And that is before we consider the likelihood
that aliens would choose to reveal themselves to an over-the-hill racing
car driver who, with no other claim to fame, might be tempted to make it
all up. But that, of course, just reflects my lack of respect for petrol
heads in general, and their well-known humanitarian work in spraying the
masses with cheap bubbly.
Let me just put it this way: I eluded the blandishments of the Scientologists
in 1958, as near as I can place it -- I am not about to start falling for
that sort of guff now.
Zero
Sum responded:
On Wednesday
01 January 2003 17:42, Peter Macinnis wrote:
>
How about their failure to clone a male?
I'm unaware
of any *failure* to clone a male. Have they announced such a failure? Is
there evidence of such a failure?
>
Let us just say that I have asserted with some force an hypothesis
> that
few would bother to question.
Nevertheless,
it would not be ethical to assume that the hypothesis is true without any evidence,
not would it.
...
[text omitted]...
>
Let me just put it this way: I eluded the blandishments of the
> Scientologists
in 1958, as near as I can place it -- I am not about
> to start
falling for that sort of guff now.
If you
had ever know anything about Hubbard, then you wouldn't even have been tempted.
But
it still does not explain why you think that they are automatically frauds.
Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained
by stupidity.
We are
not talking about their 'beliefs' here, but only whether thay achieved something or
did not.
Toby Fiander added, in response
to Zero Sum's post:
> But it still
does not explain why you think that they are
> automatically frauds. Never ascribe to malice that which
> is adequately explained by stupidity.
Of course. If it is a fraud,
I expect that the point, if not the details, of any fraud will eventually
be abundantly clear. However, some (quasi-)religious organisations
have been adept at fraud in the past, and the Raelians have a clear objective
to meld science and religion, it is not an unreasonable assumption in the
circumstances to think of this event might have an element of fraud.
This is not the first time the Raelians have claimed that a cloned human
was imminent, although it is the first time they have gone this far with
it, which makes me suspicious about what happened on the previous occasion.
Was a child born, and not claimed as a clone because of genetically inherited
problems? ... or was there a miscarriage? ...or did the people involved
not want to have anything to do with the publicity machine? ... or was there
just a media mishap of some kind?
This time may not be a fraud - they may genuinely have done it, but the
selection of a physicist and media person, Dr Guillen, as an arbiter, makes
one suspicious. On the other hand, knowing the risks from animal studies,
what reputable set of academics would want to be associated with the Raelians,
Clonaid or whatever the third group is that is involved?
Chris
Lawson wrote:
At 16:39 1/01/03
+1100, Zero Sum wrote:
>I
was under the impression, which may or may not be correct, that
>there
were occasions of parthenogenesis in all species. If this is
>the case,
then the difference is that parthenogenesis occurs
>'naturally',
while 'cloning' does not.
I don't believe
there is a single case of parthenogenesis in humans -- and for all practical
purposes, parthenogenesis is a subset of cloning where the mitochondrial
and nuclear DNA are both passed down from the one parent.
>This
is why I was assuming that they would use a different genetic
>strain
for the egg and for host mother. Otherwise they have not
>proven
anything.
Not at all.
If they used the maternal ovum as well as her nuclear DNA, then this would
still be strong evidence for cloning. You are quite right that identical mitochondria
and nuclear DNA are found in identical twins, but there have been very few
reported cases of one twin giving birth to the other :-). The only wrinkle
I can see in this is if the Raelians split an early embryo, froze one copy,
and eighteen years later implanted it in the earlier-born twin. This would
certainly be difficult to rule out, but I find it hard to imagine the Raelians
could bring this 18-year plan to fruition.
>Granted,
I am making two assumptions;
(1) that
they want to prove it, and
(2) that
they seriously want to do it.
While I have
no doubt about their desire to achieve both these aims, I also have no doubt
that when confronted with their technical inability to achieve either of
these aims, they will resort to lies and distortion, largely aimed at *themselves*.
Self-delusion is a powerful force.
> > My gold-standard prediction: the DNA and the mitochondria
will both
> >
match, but I will line up behind Chris on his one as well.
> If the
DNA and mitochondria do match and are removed from different
>individuals,
all you can say is that something wants investigating
>for an
explanation.
As I said,
the only reasonable explanation would be cloning if the individuals are
of different ages.
Donor
A
|
Donor A
|
Donor A
|
Doesn't prove anything. Should be dismissed as deliberately
confusing. This would not be chosen unless deception is the point.
Con-men would choose this.
|
It would not
be deliberately confusing. Unless the two people are of the same age, this
*has* to be cloning. And since the Raelians are into cloning the individual
to create immortality, then this is probably the way they'd imagine doing
it. There is still no easy way to fake the same DNA coming from two individuals
who are widely separated in age. The only opportunity for fraud that arises
from this is the that it increases the Raelians' opportunities to switch
tissue samples. But a properly controlled testing regime would still make
any switcheroo impossible.
>No,
but I'll ask how you 'know' they are con-whatevers?
There are very
good reasons for thinking they are frauds. The very best researchers
in cloning in the world do not believe that what the Raelians are doing
is technically feasible. Remember that Wilmot took over a hundred trials
to get Dolly the sheep. That's over a hundred miscarriages and major foetal
abnormalities and early infant deaths for one sheep. Now the Raelians are
telling us that in humans, for which there is no technical experience anywhere
in the world, they have not only succeeded in cloning, but that they have
done so multiple times in different countries, and with no reports of difficulty.
This is ridiculously
implausible, so much so that nobody believes Dr Severino's claims of successful
human cloning, and he at least is a trained gynaecologist. So you take that
initial implausibility and you add the fact that the Raelians believe that
cloning will lead to personal immortality, which shows that their knowledge
of biology goes beyond naive and into utter stupidity. And then you add
the fact that the Raelians will not give their evidence to a team of scientists
with the skills to assess the claim, but to a physics-trained journalist
with a long history of breathlessly supporting every fringe idea he's presented
with. So you have an outrageous claim made by people who are lunatics, who
have no understanding of the biology they are playing with, and who refuse
to divulge their information to anyone capable of proper analysis. No, this
is obviously a fraud. This does not mean the fraud is wilful and conscious.
Being a fraud does not exclude the possibility of believing in what you
say.
And in a further
post:
At 18:36 1/01/03 +1100, Toby Fiander wrote:
>This
time may not be a fraud - they may genuinely have done it, but the
>selection
of a physicist and media person, Dr Guillen, as an arbiter, makes
>one suspicious.
On the other hand, knowing the risks from animal studies,
>what
reputable set of academics would want to be associated with the
>Raelians,
Clonaid or whatever the third group is that is involved?
If I was an
expert on cloning, I'd volunteer my services just so as I could show how dangerous
and deluded these people are. Better to expose their fraud (or their success
in implementing unethical practices) than to say "this is so yucky I'm not
even going to find out what they are up to."
Peter Macinnis, replying to a
post from Karyn:
> > They claimed
a female -- the choice was theirs, and the fact that they
> > chose the one most
easily faked leads me to suspect tbe worst.
> How are females more easily
cloned? Or why rather?
They are not easier, but they are a bit harder to fake. You then
need to show mitochondria predominantly from the egg-donor (who ideally
should not be the gestating 'mother'), and a genome clearly from the father.
But the Clonaid people aren't up to that -- here is the good oil from the
NY Times -- Gina Kolata is an excellent science journalist, and Kenneth
Chang is pretty cluey as well -- I met him at a conference last year.
I would trust either of them, together, they are proof positive, IMHO.
**************
January 1, 2003
For Clonaid, a Trail of Unproven Claims By GINA KOLATA and KENNETH CHANG
Clonaid, the company that says it has produced the first human clone, previously
made astonishing claims that were not substantiated. And the journalist
whom Clonaid has appointed to authenticate its latest claim was once an
intermediary between a couple who wanted cloning services and a scientist
who wanted to provide them, the scientist says.
Clonaid was founded in 1997 by the leader of a religious sect that believes
space travelers populated earth through cloning and that humanity's mission
is to clone. When he formed the company, the leader, who calls himself Raël,
had an express purpose in mind, Clonaid's vice president, Thomas Kaenzig,
said in an interview this week.
"It was a project to create controversy," Mr. Kaenzig said. "That was his
mission, to wake people up."
Though the company advertised a cloning service, it was hardly ready to
provide it. For three years, Clonaid "was just a post office box in the Bahamas,"
Mr. Kaenzig said. "There was no research going on."
But by the spring of 2001, Clonaid's research director, Dr. Brigitte Boisselier,
who is a chemist, a Raëlian bishop and now the company's chief executive,
had begun telling of a secret Clonaid laboratory in the United States.
"She was very coy about it," said an official at the Food and Drug Administration,
whose approval would have been required for any human-cloning work in the
United States. "She said, `I have a lab, but I won't tell you where it is.'
"
But the F.D.A.'s office of criminal investigation soon found it, in a rented
room at an abandoned high school in Nitro, W.Va.
The environment there was hardly ideal for research, said the official,
who would speak only on the condition of anonymity. Insects flew through the
open windows, possibly from a nearby barn. "There was no place where sterile
conditions could be had," the official said, and the researcher there was
a graduate student who seemed woefully unprepared.
"The lab notebooks were reviewed by our staff scientists," the F.D.A. official
said. "They were inadequate" to document scientific research.
The work under way was not even with human cells. The graduate student
had obtained cow ovaries from a slaughterhouse and was trying to extract
eggs from them.
"The notebooks had a sketchy page and a half: `We went to the slaughterhouse
and got some ovaries,' " the official reported.
But the equipment in the lab was state of the art, the official said. It
had been bought by a grieving father whose 10-month-old son had died of
congenital heart disease and who wanted to clone him. The father, Mark Hunt,
a lawyer and former West Virginia state legislator, had obtained the equipment
from a fertility lab that was going out of business. Accounts of how much
he paid vary, but Dr. Michael A. Guillen, the journalist appointed by Clonaid
in the current case, said on an ABC News television program a year ago that
Mr. Hunt had spent $200,000.
After its inspection of the Clonaid lab, the F.D.A. official said, the
agency reached an agreement with Mr. Hunt that he would not proceed any
further in trying to have his dead son cloned in this country without F.D.A.
permission. Mr. Hunt, who did not return repeated telephone calls seeking
comment, later sold the laboratory equipment in Nitro and shuttered the
lab, the F.D.A. says. He also publicly broke off from the Raëlians,
saying they were too avidly seeking publicity.
The company then moved its operations out of the country, Mr. Kaenzig said.
He added that the company had begun by learning to create cow embryo clones
and that by the fall of 2001, it had created its first cloned human embryo.
Many learned of Mr. Hunt and his travails from Dr. Guillen, whose doctorate,
from Cornell, is in theoretical physics, mathematics and astronomy. On Sept.
7, 2001, when he was a science editor for ABC News, Dr. Guillen interviewed
Mr. Hunt and his wife, Tracy, on "20/20 Downtown" and showed a video of
their baby, Andrew, who had died in 1999.
Dr. Guillen did not describe the lab's inadequacies on that program, but
he did say that Dr. Boisselier was being investigated for fraud and reported
that she had moved her cloning efforts out of the country. (Citing confidentiality
concerns, federal law enforcement authorities would not confirm or deny
anything Dr. Guillen said about the investigation.)
Only seven months earlier, Dr. Guillen had reported that Clonaid was on
the brink of success.
"I met with Dr. Boisselier, who is the scientific director, and she told
me that in two weeks they're expecting to conceive the first human clone,
implant it in a surrogate mother and hoping for a pregnancy in March," he
reported on "20/20" on Feb. 16, 2001. "Ready or not, the technology is on
its way."
Soon another scientist who was interested in cloning met the Hunts. In
an interview yesterday, that scientist, Dr. Panos Zavos, founder and director
of the Andrology Institute of America, in Lexington, Ky., said Dr. Guillen
had told him that he could send the Hunts to talk to him, but that in return
Dr. Guillen wanted exclusive rights to their story.
Dr. Zavos, who says his work on human cloning is taking place outside the
country, ended up seeing the Hunts, but Dr. Guillen was unable to negotiate
an exclusive agreement with him because he had already made an agreement
with a documentary filmmaker, Peter Williams. Dr. Guillen did not return
repeated calls yesterday to his office and to his agent's office.
Dr. Zavos said he had not cloned yet and had not taken any money from Mr.
Hunt. He said he wanted to get the technique to work first with cells taken
from living people before trying it with stored frozen cells from the dead.
"If this technology develops in the best scenario possible," Dr. Zavos
said, "if we take fresh tissue and it works, then it is something we can
make available to him."
David
Maddern posted:
I think I can understand the fear of cloning but I dont subscribe to it.
Although we believe each person has a specific base sequence any person
can be genetically identical to another. We wouldn't know without
testing
This means nothing unless the environment this person (and we aren't talking
about subhuman automatons) grows up in is exactly the same as everyone else
of the same genetic disposition.. then you'd have like twins
For instance if a clone of Hitler was born this would not mean a
Forth Reich.. Different food, different family relations, different times,
different mores, no WW1, incredibly different.
Even a clone of Ian Thorpe would have to undergo ten+ years of training
to even touch the Thorpedoe's feats.(pun intentional on a number of levels)
I suppose someone could say ...It's the old Nature or Nurture Conundrum
but the question is meaningless.. it's both
Peter Macinnis responded:
>I think I can understand
the fear of cloning but I dont subscribe to it.
I don't fear cloning -- I regard
it as wrong because it means carrying out pointless experiments on humans,
with a high probability of causing suffering.
I regard the Raelian claims with disgust. See
http://www.post-gazette.com/columnists/20010811roddy0811p1.asp
for a few hints as to why.
The dead baby had a congenital heart condition, which may or may not have
been hereditary, but why take the risk? Why not just have another
baby, the natural way? Something does not add up here . . .
Stem cell research causes no suffering, but may ease much suffering. I
support that. Cloning of transgenic animals may be used to produce therapeutically
valuable products for humans to use -- I am anthropocentric enough to support
that. I have no fear of "another Hitler" -- the product is not the
problem. The process is the problem.
Chris
Lawson added:
> >I think I can understand the fear of cloning but
I dont subscribe to it.
>I don't
fear cloning -- I regard it as wrong because it means carrying
>out pointless experiments on humans, with a high probability of
>causing suffering.
I agree --
although this may only hold today. As cloning technology improves, we may
find that this objection becomes less viable. But I agree completely that
for the foreseeable future, there is no ethical manner of creating human
clones because the technique itself is unethical. The difficulty that this
poses is that many of the anti-clone people are anti-clone in principle
(eg., the Catholic Church, who would oppose cloning even if it was perfectly
safe and reliable), and these people are going to have some real difficulties
if cloning technology improves sufficiently. (Although on the plus side
for them, there are very few pressing reasons why reproductive cloning should
be allowed. Some ethicists have presented hypotheticals where cloning might
be ethical, but even if you agree with them, they're talking about rare situations.)
>I
regard the Raelian claims with disgust. See
>http://www.post-gazette.com/columnists/20010811roddy0811p1.asp
for a
>few hints as to why.
>
>The dead baby had a congenital heart condition, which may or may not
>have been hereditary, but why take the risk? Why not just have
>another baby, the natural way? Something does not add up here
. . .
A story of
mine that I hope to see print this year deals with these issues exactly.
I was extremely disappointed that none of the big US magazines would take
the story 2 years ago (because they thought cloning had been done in sf),
but now I'm finding that a lot of my analysis is turning out correct. The
story even predicts that cloning would be done illegally by a very rich person
who had lost a child at a young age -- and lo and behold, that's what is
happening in the US. For those who are interested, the story is "Lacey's Fingerprints"
and I'll give you notice if the publication eventuates.
Toby Fiander wrote:
In the latest chapter regarding the current absurdity involving "Eve",
a Florida court is to examine whether she should be protected by the State
as an abused child. The parent (sic - you had better read the article
below) is now concerned that her identity might be revealed to the Court
by the person appointed to report on genetic authenticity, presumably Dr
Guillen.
Did someone write this script for daytime TV?
*********************************
ABC NEWS ARTICLE
The unknown "parents" of the purportedly cloned baby known as Eve and the
principals involved in the birth have been summoned to appear before a Florida
court to determine if the baby should be placed under court protection.
"The clerk of the court of Broward County, Juvenile Division, has set a
hearing for an arraignment scheduled on January 22," Miami attorney Bernard
Siegal said.
"The legal custodian, the parents, are required to be there, as well as
the respondents, Clonaid and Rael," he said.
Rael, or the Raelians, is a sect that believes the human race was started
by aliens who landed on Earth 25,000 years ago and cloned the first human.
Clonaid is a Las Vegas-based organisation that arranged and publicised
the first purportedly cloned birth, the location of which it has kept secret
and for which it is yet to offer scientific evidence.
Last week Brigitte Boisselier, formerly a French chemist and now president
of Clonaid, announced that a baby girl cloned from her 31-year-old US mother
was born on December 26 by Caesarian section at a hospital outside the United
States.
Ms Boisselier is also a senior member of the Raelians, who believe cloning
is the key to humanity's survival.
Mr Siegel told AFP earlier that he had petitioned the court to appoint
a guardian for Eve.
"I was concerned that, if this is true, this child is an abused child,
that it could have some serious genetic, [possibly] fatal problems and that
the child was being exploited by Clonaid," he said.
"The purpose of my lawsuit is to appoint a guardian for this child because
I perceived that this child, more than any other child in the world, needs
legal protection under the United States courts."
Under Florida law anyone can file a petition for court protection if they
have information that a child is in danger.
No proof
In interviews on French and English television, Ms Boisselier said DNA
tests on Eve have been put off because the parents are anxious about keeping
their identity secret.
"For the time being the parents told me they are giving themselves another
48 hours to decide whether or not they will do the tests. The parents have
gone home and they just want some peace and to spend time with their child,"
she said.
The baby's parents are said to be concerned the person appointed by Clonaid
to carry out DNA tests would have to reveal their identity to the Florida
court, even though the baby may well fall outside the court's jurisdiction.
"The parents are not ready to take that chance yet. I'm discussing with
them, because they said they would go public, that was the agreement we had.
Right now I have no heart to push them knowing they could lose so much," Ms
Boisselier said.
She says another cloned baby is due to be born somewhere in Europe before
the end of the week.
"Perhaps the second child will be more accessible because it is in Europe
and the country in which he or she will be born may be less sensitive."
Cattle, mice, sheep and other animals have been cloned with mixed success.
Some have shown defects later in life.
[ends]
and on the following day:
In the latest chapter of the farce involving Eve, Clonaid, Raelians and
stupidity it now appears that no genetic testing will occur, ostensibly because
the Court action taken in Florida might risk identifying the baby and her
being taken from her parent (sic) as an abused child.. or some such...
But, wait! There is more....
Nah... I can't bring myself to tell you - you will have to read the NY
Times article below.
Why the plots to American movies so obvious?
**************************************
NYTIMES STORY
he company that said last week that it had produced the first human clone
has backed away from a promise to provide genetic proof even as it said
a second clone would be born in Europe over the weekend.
Dr. Brigitte Boisselier, chief executive of the company, Clonaid, told
France-2 TV on Thursday that no genetic tests had yet been performed and
that the parents were having second thoughts about the tests.
"The parents told me that they needed 48 hours to decide yes or no - if
they would do it," she said.
At a news conference on Dec. 27 announcing the cloning claim, Dr. Boisselier
said Michael A. Guillen, a former ABC News science editor, would arrange
independent genetic tests of the baby, who the company says is a clone of
her mother.
"You can still go back to your office and treat me as a fraud," Dr. Boisselier
said then. "You have one week to do that."
One week later, Dr. Boisselier has not provided any evidence that the baby,
nicknamed Eve, even exists, much less that it is a clone.
Dr. Guillen, who has not spoken publicly since last week's news conference,
did not respond to requests for interviews.
A person close to Dr. Guillen, who spoke on the condition of confidentiality,
confirmed that no samples had been taken, but said Dr. Guillen had completed
arrangements to conduct the testing.
"The team is in place to get the answers," the person said. "By early next
week, Guillen will have to make some sort of a statement if nothing has
changed."
In the France-2 TV interview, Dr. Boisselier said the parents were reconsidering
the DNA testing because a Miami lawyer petitioned a court in Broward County,
Fla., on Tuesday, asking it to appoint a guardian for the baby.
The lawyer, Bernard F. Siegel, said in an interview yesterday that he had
acted under a Florida law that allows an individual to seek court protection
for a child who has been abused, neglected or abandoned. "The child has
potential medical defects," Mr. Siegel said. "This child has been the subjected
to untested medical experiments. Where is the safety net for that? This child,
more than any child on earth, needs a guardian."
Clonaid has not said where the parents live, but the Florida court may
have jurisdiction, in part because Clonaid held its news conference in Hollywood,
Fla.
Mr. Siegel said he became involved child advocacy cases in the 1970's,
working for parents whose children had been kidnapped by estranged spouses.
Mr. Siegel, who interrupted his legal career in the 1990's for a stint as
a wrestling promoter, said he knew little about Clonaid before last week.
A hearing has been scheduled for Jan. 22, Mr. Siegel said.
Dr. Boisselier did not identify the European country in which she said
the second clone would be born.
Nadine Gary, a spokeswoman for Clonaid, said yesterday that Dr. Boisselier
was traveling to the United States from Europe and was unavailable for comment.
Ms. Gary said she could not comment on what Dr. Boisselier said on French
television. "Really, I don't know anything about that," Ms. Gary said.
But she added, "There are different press releases that will be coming
out this weekend."
[ends]
and again:
Ho hum... here is the latest on the cloning beat-up. I think I am
getting tired of it all now. Dr Guillen may have tried in past months
to act as an entrepreneur in the cloning story, which may mean his impartiality
is in question. But wait - there is more.
You won't get any steak knives, but it is possible to get your own subscription
to the NYTimes just be asking: http://www.nytimes.com
I think my reporting of developments from the NYTimes is at an end for
the moment.
*******************
NYTIMES ARTICLE Most of the world first heard
of Clonaid, a company owned by a religious sect whose theology is based
on alien cloning, when it announced on Dec. 27 that it had produced the
first human clone.
But many news organizations were already familiar with the company's effort:
Michael A. Guillen, a former science editor at ABC News who said at the
news conference that he would independently test the company's claims, had
approached several broadcasters months before to offer exclusive coverage
of the cloning, according to several industry executives.
Dr. Guillen's independence from the religious group, the Raëlians,
has been questioned since it became known that he was seeking to sell a documentary
on the cloning effort for more than $100,000.
His most ambitious proposal, for a reality-based program on the cloning
effort, was made to Fox Entertainment several months ago, an executive at
the company said. He said Dr. Guillen offered to produce the program and to
be its host on the air. The program, Fox was told, would begin before the
births of the clones and continue beyond, according to the executive.
Fox, which is not known for squeamishness - the network has produced "When
Animals Attack" and "Who Wants to Marry a Multimillionaire?" - declined,
in large part because the project seemed "loaded with ethical questions"
as an entertainment program, the executive said.
Joe Earley, a Fox spokesman, said only, "We were pitched the project, but
we thought it was more appropriate for our news department and we referred
it to them." Fox News declined to make an offer, the executive said.
Dr. Guillen approached other news divisions and cable companies as well,
including ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN and HBO, media executives said. An executive
at one network said the offer, which would have given his network little
editorial control and would have meant significant payments to Dr. Guillen,
was "not the way we do things." The executive said the proposed exclusive
documentary about the process of creating the first human clone was offered
for a price in the "low six figures."
An executive from CNN said the company listened to Dr. Guillen, but declined
to make an offer. "We told him, and we did it very politely because we are
interested in the bigger story, that we didn't want to pay for the story,
we wanted to cover it," said the executive, who insisted on anonymity because
he expected Dr. Guillen to be an important source in the future.
Dr. Guillen did not return calls seeking comment. But a friend who is familiar
with his business dealings said the overtures to the networks and cable
companies were nothing more than a freelance journalist's using his knowledge
of an event and its sources to market his work.
"Terms of a documentary which would follow a cloned child in the future
had been discussed, but no arrangement with a distributor or with Clonaid
had been finalized," the friend said.
"There is nothing sinister in any of this," the friend added. "As long
as you are not taking any money directly from the subject, there is no conflict.
Broadcasters pay for productions all the time."
Although American news organizations rarely pay for news, they commonly
buy documentary programs from various production companies.
In May, Dr. Guillen approached The New York Times, offering an exclusive
article about a couple who were trying to have a child through cloning.
Dr. Guillen said he was the only reporter allowed to follow the couple,
patients of Dr. Panos Zavos, a fertility specialist in Lexington, Ky., who
is leading a competing team of cloning scientists.
In his proposal, Dr. Guillen wrote: "During the better part of the past
five years, I've cultivated close relationships with all the major human cloning
scientists worldwide. In fact, I know more about what's going on than any
of the individual players; that's because they all confide in me."
The Times declined the offer, saying it preferred to do its own reporting
on the subject.
In August, Dr. Guillen interviewed the couple on CNN's "Connie Chung Tonight."
Dr. Guillen is a science journalist with a doctorate in theoretical physics,
mathematics and astronomy from Cornell University. He produced reports for
"Good Morning America," "20/20" and other ABC News programs.
Second Cloned Baby Announced
The company that claims to have created the first human clone announced
yesterday that a second cloned baby was born Friday night to a lesbian couple
in the Netherlands. But as with its earlier claim, it provided no evidence.
Dr. Brigitte Boisselier, chief executive of the company, Clonaid, said
in an interview that the baby, a girl, was born at 10 p.m. local time. She
would not say where, but said that the embryo had been fertilized and implanted
in the mother outside the Netherlands. The baby is a clone of the 32-year
Dutch woman who gave birth, Dr. Boisselier said.
[ends]
Chris Lawson added:
Bob Park's latest WHAT'S NEW
is even more critical of Guillen than we've been...
Here's what Park has to say:
4. SCIENTIFIC HOAX? NO, NO,
NOT THE CLONING, MICHAEL GUILLEN.
We now learn that the scientist/journalist,
who grandly announced that he was accepting the responsibility of testing
the Clonaid claim "on behalf
of the scientific community," tried to market an exclusive to the media before
Eve was born, which raises serious questions about his independence. Even
Fox Entertainment, which gave us such classics as Alien Autopsy, declined
on ethical grounds. Wednesday, Guillen was interviewed by Charles Gibson on
ABC Good Morning America. "You are a Professor of Physics at Harvard?" Gibson
began, by way of establishing Guillen's credentials. "Yes," Guillen mouthed.
Whoa! Guillen is not a Professor of Physics at Harvard. I went to American
Men and Women of Science; the edition I had was 1995-96. His autobiographical
sketch says he's a member of the National Academy of Sciences. He's not.
Park also has more on "The Skeptical
Environmentalist"...
3. MISCONDUCT: "THE SKEPTICAL
ENVIRONMENTALIST" IS DENOUNCED.
Bjorn Lomborg, author of the
1999 best-seller, was found to be scientifically dishonest by the Danish Research
Agency, Denmark's equivalent of the National Academy of Sciences. An associate
professor at the University of Aarhus, Lomborg concluded that the "air and
water around us is becoming less and less polluted." Industry-backed think
tanks loved it, but a panel of scientists responsible for investigating charges
of scientific dishonesty found Lomborg had been highly selective in his choice
of data.
Paul Williams posted:
> At 11:19 15/02/03
+1000, Paul Williams wrote:
> >Dolly -
the most famous sheep of all time, died today. She had been very
> > ill with a (common in sheep) lung infection.
> >She was 6 years old (middle aged).
> >She has left 6 natural decendents.
> >There appears to be no suspicion that the cloning process effected
her
> >health in any way.
> I don't think that last line's certain. I think this is a matter of
great
> interest and we will have a better idea after the autopsy.
Yes:
"Professor Richard Gardner, chair of the Royal Society working group on stem
cell research and therapeutic cloning, said: "We must await the results of
the post-mortem on Dolly in order to assess whether her relatively premature
death was in any way connected with the fact that she was a clone."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/2764039.stm
I would also be interested to see how her offspring are faring - and if they
have ofspring in turn, how they fare. (I now read she had 4 offspring not
6 offspring as the NYT article stated).
Also, I wonder how much was known about Dolly's 'mother'?
If I recall correctly, 'The Roslin Institute' had over 260 failures before
the birth of Dolly.
This is a press release from the Roslin Institute on the dangers of cloning
and why it would be "grossly irresponsible" to attempt to clone humans.
http://www.roslin.ac.uk/news/press/articles/166.html
