What I wonder about Raël, Brigitte, and their clone claim is: Assuming it’s bunk (if it’s actually true, that’s a whole other topic), what do they hope to gain by this announcement? Eventually their public fraud will out. They will have disgraced themselves. How would they expect anyone to take them seriously after this? (Not that I’m capable of taking them seriously in the first place.)
Wonder women, you can draw your blinds
Don’t look at me, I’m not your kind
I’m Rael!
—Genesis, The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway
I seriously think it’s a play to get more money for the group.
If poor, vunerable people are willing to shell out $250,000. to bring back a loved one, then why would you want to be a palm reader at twenty bucks per throw?
Clonaid is a BUSINESS, which reportedly charges $US250,000 per pop for using a technology which has yet to be proven either viable or safe for human reproduction. Without a single shred of evidence to prove that the technology can produce healthy human clones, Clonaid has reportedly already implanted 10 clones (5 of which spontaneously terminated or were terminated, depending on which reports you read) and plans to implant another 10 during January.
The client has no way of determining whether they are being subjected to normal IVF or whether a genuine nuclear transfer is taking place, and I wouldn’t mind betting that Clonaid has been swamped with enquiries since the announcement of the birth of “Eve”.
At the very least, Clonaid has made some pretty serious money from the desperate and childless; and there will no doubt be some people willing to believe that the mainstream scientific community cannot to be trusted to tell the truth about the claims made by the Raelians, and who will be willing to hand over a cool quarter of a million dollars to them even if independent scientific analysis shows that “Eve” is NOT a clone.
It seems the cloning itself is implanted via standard in-vitro techniques. For many of these couples, why dont they just stick to the tried-and-true in-vitro techniques, and not spend $250000?
You might want to check out the Services, products, and Invest in Clonaid links at the Clonaid website if you want to get some idea of the many ways in which they’ve set themselves up to benefit financially.
From what I’ve read, human cloning isn’t yet illegal in the US - it just requires FDA approval and the FDA won’t give approval.
Even if human cloning was illegal in the US, those who can afford to pay over $US200,000 for reproductive technology can certainly afford to go offshore for the procedure.
According to the information which has been released to date, the procedures didn’t take place on US soil (the Raelian website emphatically states that they will not perform procedures against local law, and their cessation of cloning research in the US along with their quitting the Bahamas suggests they might be sincere in this respect). Although many nations are currently debating what laws should exist in relation to human cloning, not many have reached a final conclusion and passed legislation which specifically addresses the issue - possibly because animal cloning is still so imperfect that no country seriously expected any scientist to attempt human cloning at this point.
Unless there is a US law against travelling overseas to avail oneself of assisted reproduction technologies, then I can’t see that any US law has been broken. And even if such a law were introduced, how could you possibly enforce it? Tens of thousands of US women must fall pregnant naturally each year while out of the country - it would be untenable to require every pregnant woman entering the US to “prove” in some way that her baby had been conceived by legal means.
I would be extremely interested in finding out whether the US government already has or intends to place restrictions on the importation of this equipment offered for sale by Clonaid.
Assuming it does what it claims then it has legitimate and legal uses in the US, the cloning of animals. I am totally against human reproductive cloning but AFAIK the same techniques and equipment that could be used to clone humans are used to clone animals. Unless we ban all equipment and techniques used for cloning animals, then banning this piece of equipment wouldn’t really serve any purpose. And I personally would be against any efforts to ban the cloning of animals. Doing so would greatly hinder medical progress.
I might do some hunting around and see if the Raelians are advertising their equipment on sites related to animal cloning or only those which promote human cloning.
We do - quite often - restrict the uses of drugs and medical procedures : quite a lot of veterinary drugs cannot LEGALLY be used on humans. This equipment is priced within credit card purchase range, no longer only within the grasp of those research scientists who have been given dedicated grants to conduct scientifically valid studies.
No-one’s suggesting than research into the cloning of animals should be banned, but perhaps it’s not in the best interests of science for equipment which is designed purely for the purpose of cloning mammals to be available to anyone who has $10,000.
After this has been proven to be a hoax the Raelians will still claim it is true. They will say that the Evil Medical Esstablishment is against them and won’t let the truth out. This will help to add to their group, as there are many people who feel that the Evil Medical Esstablishment is out to get them. Just look at how many people belive in accupuncture and homeopathy.
I don’t reckon that this is a hoax (at least one person here http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/2610827.stm says that it might have really happened and it looks like he ought to know http://www.icggri.ic.ac.uk/governance.htm). It just shows that we should’ve been having the debate about the morality of cloning several years ago and putting in place the international safeguards to ensure that it did/didn’t happen as we decided.
On a slightly separate issue, therapeutic (but not reproductive) cloning is permitted in the UK (http://www.ukonline.gov.uk/NewsRoom/NRHotTopic/0,1175,100319~801b22~fs~en,00.html) but this isn’t allowed in the US (http://feinstein.senate.gov/Releases02/bioethic.htm - but my weak understanding of the US govtl system means it might have changed since July & I’m open to correction). Does this, and now this possible reproductive cloning in another country show that a unilateralist approach is inappropriate in an interdependent world in which technological advances are occuring rapidly? Does anybody know what international discussions ther have been about this or about other bio issues such as GM foods?