Baby boy clone 'born' in Sydney (more Raelian nonsense)

Sydney Morning Herald ^ | February 11, 2004 - 10:05PM

[dead]

The controversial international cloning group Clonaid claims to have successfully created its sixth child, following the birth of a baby boy in Sydney last week.

The child is said to have been born in a Sydney hospital on February 5, 2004, to infertile parents living in the greater Sydney area.

Head of the Clonaid project, biochemist Brigitte Boisselier, who is in Australia to monitor the birth, said the boy had been released from hospital and was being monitored by a local pediatrician.

"It happened last Thursday morning, the baby is a little boy," Dr Boisselier told AAP.

"We waited a few days to make sure that everything was okay, but like the first five babies born last year, he was perfectly healthy and reactions are perfectly normal.

"The parents are an infertile couple, and the father is the one who gave the cells to have the baby.

"The mother has been carrying the child, so it is very easy, the situation."

Dr Boisselier declined to reveal further details about the child, his family, or their doctor, for privacy reasons.

Clonaid grabbed international headlines last year, after it claimed to have created the first cloned human baby, a girl named Eve.

Since then, the organisation says a further five cloned babies have been born, including the Sydney boy.

Another seven babies are expected to be born in various countries before the end of February, as part of a new group of implantations.

Clonaid is linked to the quasi-religious Raelian Movement which believes aliens created life on Earth with cloning being the key to humanity's survival.

But the organisation's claims have been dismissed as a hoax by the wider scientific, medical and religious communities, due to its failure to produce DNA proof of the babies.

Dr Boisselier, usually based in Las Vegas, will remain in Australia for another week as part of scientific documentation of the birth which she says will validate their claims.

"What we are doing right now, and hopefully it will be published by April, we are collecting those cells and there is an independent lab in America that will do all the testing," Dr Boisselier said.

[happydogdesign]

[jtminton]

Wow. What a grille. I wonder if there is a "Big Book of Raelien Smiles"?

[GovernmentShrinker]

The ethical problem isn't with cloning itself, but with doctors who are going ahead with human cloning while the techniques are nowhere near perfected in animals (and in the case of the Realians, I don't believe there are even medical doctors in charge of these activities -- Boisselier has a PhD in biology, if I recall correctly). They are also funding these experiments by charging huge fees to emotionally distraught and desperate couples.

I look forward to the day when human cloning is safe and reliable, but that day is still far off. As for the cloning claims of the Raelians, I don't believe a word of it. I think they're making these claims of successful clonings in order to lure more would-be parents into forking over money.