Raelian leader says cloning first step to immortality
Right. If we're going to be talking about possibly breaking every imaginable bioethical and moral tenet AND more than a few natural laws, this is JUST the person I want to be doing it....
Former French journalist Claude Vorilhon, who now calls himself Rael, claims to be a direct descendant of extraterrestrials who created human life on Earth through genetic engineering. A company founded by his followers announced Friday that the first human clone has been born -- a 7-pound baby girl dubbed "Eve."
The announcement was met with skepticism and concern, since other cloned mammals have had serious birth defects or developed health problems later. But in an interview with CNN, Rael dismissed concerns about health problems in cloned animals, saying "I have no doubt the child will be perfectly healthy."
"Everybody in the world now is crazy about what if the child has a problem. What if? I say, what if the child is perfectly healthy and beautiful? I think opponents to cloning are more afraid of that than of the faults," he said.
Brigitte Boisselier, the chief executive officer of the Raelian-founded company Clonaid, said Eve was created using DNA from the mother's skin cells and is a genetic twin of her mother, a 31-year-old American citizen.
Why do I feel as if we've just committed the equivalent of handing a 16-year-old boy a bottle of Wild Turkey and the keys to a brand-new Jaguar? Legal questions, or even questions about playing God aside, these folks have shown themselves to be unbound by the most basic of medical ethics. Given the modest level of scientific knowedge surrounding animal cloning, it would seem there are far more questions than there are answers. So why are these folks rushing in where medical science fears to tread? What safeguards were put in place? Given the high rates of deformities and other medical problems evident in cloned animals, what does anyone know that would indicate cloned humans would be better off?
And what if this child, this sacrificial lamb, does turn out to have significant (and perhaps long-term) medical problems? Have any provsions been made to provide for her long-term care? In the rush to clone a human, I wonder if any thought was given to what would happen to the child that was created?
I may be wrong here, and this may all turn out to be much ado about nothing. I hope so. Still, I watched the news conference yesterday morning, and it did nothing to calm my concerns. I don't know whether to consider the Raelians pioneers or wackos. My suspicion is that there are elements of both at work here. Regardless, if the news of Eve's birth (and am I the only one creeped out by that name?) is true, it would seem that we as a species have just passed a point of no return. I just wonder if we're ready to go wherever it is we're heading.
