Doubts cast on reporter in cloning verification (former ABC science reporter)

Boston Globe ^ | December 31, 2002 | Raja Mishra rmishra@globe.com and Mark Jurkowitzwith Stephen Smith and Anne Barnard

[Cincinatus' Wife]

As the alien-worshiping Raelian sect prepared yesterday to assemble proof that a woman has given birth to the first-ever cloned human baby, some research scientists raised questions about the impartiality and skills of the Boston-based freelance journalist handpicked to verify the claim.

[Hillarys Gate Cult]

Is there a people shortage no one told me about?

[Cincinatus' Wife]

I think there is a brain shortage.

[Caipirabob]

Reporters became sceptical when the Raelians revealed the basis of their "Cloning technology".

[guitfiddlist]

Has the whole scientific world gone nuts? I've never seen such braindead gullibility among those that would presume themselves to be scientists. These ClownAid people are just about as certifiable as the members of Nurse Ratchett's little menagerie, and yet these poindexters still stop on the street to play the research equivalent of a 3-card Monte game.

The world is full of wacko charlatans, so the real dimwits are the so-called scientists wailing and gnashing, "Nah - Ah! We don't believe you!!" What a pathetic bunch of over-educated dipsh*ts.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Oh yes! Where is the vaunted media skepticism? Aliens!? The media is reporting this as if not to offend these wackos.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

[kassie]

Watching the woman being interviewed, looking at her appearance, listening to her words... there is NO way this woman cloned a baby in ANY lab. She's a fruit cake.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

***In 2000, Rael handed the Clonaid project over to Boisselier, 46 According to Friday's Le Monde newspaper in Paris, she previously served as project chief for a dozen years at France's Air Liquide, but was fired when the company learned of her interest in human cloning and her membership in the Rael group, officially listed in France as a sect. Boisselier holds doctorates in analytical and physical chemistry from the University of Houston and the University of Dijon, France. She taught chemistry for one year at Hamilton College in Clinton, New York, but resigned last spring.

Clonaid first operated from a former classroom in Nitro, West Virginia. A Charleston attorney and former state legislator, Mark Hunt, provided up to $500,000 in seed money in exchange for cloning his infant son, Andrew, who died in September 1999 following surgery to correct heart defects. The company moved to an undisclosed overseas location later that year after receiving a warning from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which said Friday it will investigate whether the group did anything illegal in this country.

Researchers familiar with the sect speculate that Boisselier's next step may be to patent the cloning method before anybody else. Religious studies professor Douglas Cowan of the University of Missouri-Kansas City visited the Raelian compound in 1998. *** What happens if Boisselier and the owners of UFOland wind up owning human cloning technology? "If they have in fact done it," Cowan said, "it will kickstart a huge ethical debate."***

[kassie]

Her diplomas aren't faked? I guess intelligence and common sense don't go hand in hand.

[Diogenesis]

Robert L. Park, a physicist at the University of Maryland and
author of ''Voodoo Science: The Road from Foolishness to Fraud,'' said,
''If someone is trying to fool you, it takes a different kind of expert than a physicist or journalist to detect it.
It doesn't seem to me that Guillen has any great experience at that sort of thing.''

Did not think it real, until Park came out against it.

Park (Democrat, American Physical Society) uses the APS
as his personal whip against scientists who are independent
or use research to investigate things which compete with Park's
friends' funded projects.

Park has been almost always wrong, deluded by own his twisted ascientific heart.

[Moonmad27]

University of Houston? In another article she was listed as having gone to University of Texas. There's a difference! How long until this whole thing is revealed to be a fraud?!

[Cincinatus' Wife]

I read a Houston Chronicle article that said she was a 1985 Univ. of Houston grad. Her thesis advisor was interviewed.

[trebb]

"Yes, we can clone you so you get to raise yourself just the way you wish you had been raised, but first, Drink the Koolaid."

[pabianice]

ABC has a long, rich history of employing utterly unqualified "science reporters." One prime example was Jules Bergman, who ruled ABC News science reports with an iron hand for 20 years. His only qualification was that he had a private pilot's license, which, to the pinheads running ABC, made him look like an astronaut. He helped make ABC News a laughing stock on science issues. ABC hasn't changed.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

January 6, 2003 - Journalist Halts Review of Group's Cloning Claims - By Maggie Fox - [Full Text] WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The independent scientist and journalist brought in by Clonaid to verify its successful cloning of a human denounced their claim on Monday as a possible "elaborate hoax" and halted his review.

Michael Guillen, a physicist and freelance journalist, said the company, Clonaid, had not given him access to the family of the first cloned baby it claimed was born to an American mother. Guillen, a former ABC science journalist, was to select the independent experts who would perform the genetic testing needed to prove the existence of a clone.

Clonaid, linked with a group that believes life on Earth was originally cloned by aliens, said two women had given birth to babies it had cloned. It at first said it would present DNA evidence but has delayed doing so.

"This morning, I suspended the independent review process designed to determine whether or not a cloned human baby has been born," Guillen said in a statement.

"The team of scientists has had no access to the alleged family and, therefore, cannot verify firsthand the claim that a human baby has been cloned. In other words, it's still entirely possible Clonaid's announcement is part of an elaborate hoax intended to bring publicity to the Raelian movement."

Leading scientists around the world believe the group's claim is a hoax.

On Saturday the Dutch branch of the Raelian movement--which believes aliens have visited Earth and are the source of life on the planet--said a Dutch lesbian had given birth to a cloned baby. On Dec. 27 the group said a 31-year-old American had given birth to the first human clone, named Eve.

Usually, scientific claims are accompanied by some kind of proof, and are submitted to experts for review by peers of the researchers before the results are made public, most often through publication in scientific journals.

BYPASSING PEER REVIEW

But the Raelian claims bypassed this process, hitting television screens and newspapers at the height of the Christmas and New Year holidays--when news is often scarce.

"It was a slow news period. They totally knew what they were doing," said Michael Manganiello, president of the Coalition for the Advancement of Medical Research.

"I think they timed it," agreed Arthur Caplan, a bioethicist at the University of Pennsylvania.

"I think they picked Christmas week deliberately."

Caplan complained about the media coverage of the claims. "Nobody should get a story until they produce evidence. No matter how telegenic they are, no matter how many Star Fleet Command uniforms they have, if you don't show up with a baby or a parent or a DNA test, or some witnesses who are credible, you shouldn't have a story."

It would be easy to offer proof, said Dr. Robert Lanza, medical director of Massachusetts-based Advanced Cell Technology. "They are claiming to have the expertise to clone people and they didn't even buy a home DNA kit?" he asked. "The samples could have been taken by someone in junior high school. That only adds to their complete lack of credibility."

Cloning researchers fear they will be tarred with the same brush as Clonaid, and their research will suffer as a result.

TARRED WITH THE KOOKY BRUSH

"It's very clear everyone has, rightfully so, proven these people to be the kooks that they are," said Kevin Wilson, director of public policy for the American Society of Cell Biology. "The problem is, I worry that their kookiness is going to be visited upon research," he added.

"In all likelihood there now going to be a moratorium or a ban (on cloning research)," Lanza said. "It's just damage control at this point."

Lanza's privately owned ACT is a leader in cloning technology, using it not only to make cloned farm animals but also for research on stem cells--the body's master cells which scientists hope will someday transform medical research.

Opponents of this research note that it involves the creation of a human embryo, albeit a tiny one, and want it banned. Some members of Congress, including Republican Sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas, are pushing legislation to do so.

"Multiple laboratories in the United States are working toward mass creation of cloned human embryos to use in research that will kill them," Douglas Johnson, head lobbyist for the National Right to Life Committee, said in a statement.

"In order to prevent such human embryo farms, and the other horrors of human cloning that will follow, the Senate must act quickly to pass the Brownback-Weldon cloning ban."

The United States is not alone in planning legislation.

A spokesman for the European Union's executive said the commission was preparing a report on cloning for the end of February that could lead to new EU legislation by year-end. [End]

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Bump!