First cloned baby "born on 26 December"
The Seattle Times, USA:
Scientist tied to UFO-based religious group claims to have cloned a human
Melbourne Herald Sun, Australia:
Scientists reject cloned baby claim
Utusan Online, Malaysia:
Bayi klon pertama di dunia -- Lahir menerusi pembedahan walaupun ditentang masyarakat antarabangsa
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NewScientist.com news service
15:30 27 December 02
First cloned baby "born on 26 December"
The world's first cloned baby was born on 26 December, claims the Bahamas-based cloning company Clonaid. But there has been no independent confirmation of the claim.
The girl, named Eve by the cloning team, was said to have been born by Caesarean section at 1155 EST. The birth at an undisclosed location went "very well", said Brigitte Boisselier, president of Clonaid. The company was formed in 1997 by the Raelian cult, which believes people are clones of aliens.
"The baby is very healthy. She is doing fine," Roisselier told a press conference in Hollywood, Florida, on Friday. The seven-pound baby is a clone of a 31-year-old American woman, whose partner is infertile, she said.
Proving that the baby is a clone of another person would be possible by showing that their DNA is identical. Genetic tests on the baby and "mother" will now be carried out and the results will be available "in eight or nine days", Boisselier said.
She told reporters: "You can still go back to your office and treat me as a fraud. You have one week to do that." Boisselier added that Michael Guillen, science editor at ABC News and a former Harvard University mathematician, will carry out the genetic tests.
Many scientists are sceptical of Boisselier's claim. Alan Trounson of Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, says he does not believe the group has the necessary expertise to clone a person. "And nearly everything they have said in the past has never been confirmed by scientific investigation," he told the Sydney Morning Herald.
Maverick fertility scientist Severino Antinori, who claimed earlier in December that the first cloned baby would be born in January 2003, is also critical. "An announcement of this type has no scientific corroboration and risks creating confusion," he said. "We keep up our scientific work without making announcements. I don't take part in this ... race."
Opponents of human cloning point to the high rate of miscarriages of cloned animal fetuses, and the high rate of defects in live births. Boisselier has claimed that the large number of female cult members willing to act as surrogate mothers increased their chances of success.
"Irresponsible and repugnant"
Attempting to clone humans is "irresponsible and repugnant and ignores the overwhelming scientific evidence from seven mammalian species cloned so far," Rudolph Jaenisch, a cloning expert at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology told New Scientist previously.
In May, US-based fertility scientist Panos Zavos told the US Congress that five groups of scientists were rushing to be the first to produce the first cloned human baby.
Reproductive cloning - creating a baby rather than a cloned early embryo - is illegal in many countries. But in November, talks on a global ban were suspended, following a series of deadlocked United Nations meetings.
First cloned baby due in January
27 November 2002
Talks on global cloning ban suspended
6 November 2002
California challenges US stem cell rules
23 September 2002
Who is behind Clonaid?
What is Rael and Raelian theology?
Friday, December 27, 2002
Posted: 3:21 PM EST (2021 GMT)
Who is Rael and why does he want to clone humans?
Claude Vorilhon now calls himself Rael, the leader of a religious sect that believes mankind was created by aliens.
(AP) -- The religious sect connected to the company claiming it has produced the first human clone is clearly unlike anything that science has grappled with.
The group's founder says he met little green space aliens on a visit to a French volcano in the 1970s. That man -- a former French journalist named Claude Vorilhon, who now calls himself Rael -- says the extraterrestrials told him they created life on earth through genetic engineering.
Cloning humans is at the heart of the Raelian theology of "scientific creation," which they describe as an alternative to both Darwinian evolution and creation dogma of the major religions.
"Cloning is the key to eternal life," Rael says. The group claims 55,000 devotees worldwide and operates its own theme park, UFOland, near Montreal.
RaŽl and a mock-up of the U.F.O. he claims to have boarded in 1973.
THE RAELIAN MOVEMENT
Founded: 1973, France
Founder: Claude Vorilhon, who took the name Rael; his book is "The Final Message"
Basic tenet: The old Hebrew phrase "Elohim" -- usually translated as a name for God -- should have been interpreted as a reference to non-Earthlings "from the sky." These entities are, Raelians say, responsible for the creation of life on Earth.
Membership: The organization says it comprises some 40,000 members worldwide, with highest concentrations in France, Canada and Japan. Outside researchers have suggested the membership may be smaller.
Source: The University of Virginia's New Religious Movements source
Friday, December 27, 2002
Posted: 4:48 PM EST (2148 GMT)
Brigitte Boisselier: Science cannot be stopped
Brigitte Boisselier, CEO of Clonaid, said the first cloned human baby was born Thursday.
Brigitte Boisselier, the CEO of Clonaid, and the chemist who made Friday's cloning announcement, is a Raelian herself -- a bishop, in fact.
At the news conference she appeared to be wearing the Raelian silver medallion combining the Star of David and a snowflake, symbolizing infinite time and space.
Boisselier said four other cloned babies are expected to be born by February.
Excerpts of her interview with CNN:
BOISSELIER: We do believe that one day we'll be able to do the accelerated growth process, and we do believe one day we'll be able to download and upload our personality to a new body. This is -- this could sound like science fiction, just like cloning sounded like science fiction in 1973 when Rael talked about it.
Today it's reality. It's our science of today. The science of the future will lead us to humanity .... And it is a completely different society that is coming, and I'm very happy to make it happen.
A Desire to Duplicate
A grieving family hopes to replace a lost child. A genetics-obsessed sect dreams of achieving immortality. Is this how human cloning will begin?
By MARGARET TALBOT
The New York Times Magazine Page 40
February 04, 2001
Brigitte Boissellier, Ph.D., director of the RaŽlians' cloning project.
Take a closer look at the Raelian silver medallion, combining the
Star of David and a snowflake, that she wears.
Photograph by Jessica Wynne for The New York Times
04 Jan 08:04:08 hrs
Florida court sets date in clone baby case
By Frances Kerry
MIAMI (Reuters) - A Florida attorney who asked a state court this week to appoint a legal guardian for the baby girl purported to be the first human clone said on Friday that the court had set a hearing in the case for later this month.
Attorney Bernard Siegel filed a petition with the state juvenile court in Fort Lauderdale on Tuesday aiming to protect the first purported human clone, saying the child was being exploited and may have suffered birth defects.
"If someone has knowledge of an abused child there is a legal and moral obligation to take action," Siegel, who undertook the petition as a private citizen, told CNN's Connie Chung later on Friday.
"As I see it, this child needs a guardian. I didn't see any action by any governmental agency to protect this child."
He said that at the arraignment hearing in court on Jan. 22, the parties in the case would be expected to appear before the judge and the alleged parent or legal guardian would have to admit, deny or consent to the petition he filed.
He added however that his intention was not to get the child removed from the mother, but to have a court guardian appointed. Siegel has also acknowledged that the court would probably have no jurisdiction unless the child is in Florida.
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STRAITS TIMES Singapore
JAN 2, 2003 THU
What is not permitted will be practised illegally
By SUNANDA K. DATTA-RAY
SO IT has happened. The threat that has hung over the world ever since Edinburgh's Roslin Institute made history by cloning Dolly the sheep has come to pass.
The Raelian cult's claim - that it has created the world's first human clone - is a grim reminder that instead of wringing its hands or toying with an ineffective ban, the world should think of comprehensive and enforceable regulations to derive the most social and scientific benefit from mammalian cloning.
That is the only way of restraining irresponsible adventurers from doing a tremendous disservice to science, inviting a terrible backlash and possibly even unravelling civilisation as we know it.
STRAITS TIMES Singapore
Updated Jan 5, 12.53 am (Singapore time)
Cult claims birth of second 'clone'
WASHINGTON -- The world's second cloned baby girl has been born, Raelian sect member Brigitte Boisselier said on Saturday, although this claim -- like the first -- has yet to be proven scientifically.
Ms Boisselier, who heads the Clonaid firm that claims to have produced the first human clone, said that the baby was born in northern Europe late on Friday to a couple from the Netherlands, but she did not specify the particular country in which the baby was born.
She said that the baby girl is smaller than the first cloned baby, at 2.7 kgs.
She added that it was a natural birth and that the child's parents are two lesbians from the Netherlands.