Word: cloned
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...science circus comes to town when a group like the Raelians claims to be cloning children, announcing one arrival just in time to fill the holiday news vacuum. The news came as a shock but not much of a surprise. It was only a matter of time before one of the teams racing to produce the first human clone either succeeded or just decided to claim it had. Chemist Brigitte Boisselier, president of the biotech company Clonaid, is a member of the Order of Angels of the Raelian religious cult, whose prophet Rael says 4-ft.-tall green space aliens...
...doubts there's a demand for human cloning. On its website, Clonaid estimates it will charge $200,000 for its reproductive service, but Boisselier insisted to TIME that so far she has not charged the first guinea pigs. Clonaid also sells human eggs for about $5,000 each and offers "banks" in which to store cells in case a family wants to clone a loved one in the future. Boisselier also has a pet-cloning service called Clonapet, which she says has also received great interest. "The media only want to talk about possible birth defects, that the baby will...
Still, there was ample reason to challenge her claims of success, even before she began backing off her promise of providing proof. No one has yet succeeded in cloning a primate despite thousands of tries; efforts at a dog have so far failed as well. Even among other mammals, more than 90% of the embryos never implant or die before or soon after birth. Among those most dismissive of her entire operation are the other researchers rushing to beat it, such as Italian fertility specialist Severino Antinori. He missed his own deadline, having announced last spring that...
...Guillen do it? Probably not because he thought the story was true. Guillen—who was once a teaching fellow at Harvard—should know better. The claim by Boisselier that Clonaid had produced a human clone is about as believable as the Raelians’ previous pronouncements that its leader communicated with extraterrestrials. The company had no prior experience with cloning, and the published literature shows that success in cloning mammals is extremely rare. Cloning a human requires using genetic information stored in a mature cell from an adult. But such cells, which are specialized for specific...
Former ABC News science editor Michael A. Guillen late last month offered to test the claims of the Clonaid corporation that it had cloned a human baby. The company is associated with the “Raelians,” a cult whose leader believes he has communicated with extraterrestrials. Guillen offered to hire outside scientists to test whether the baby was, indeed, a clone. His very involvement, including an appearance with Clonaid’s chief Dr. Brigitte Boisselier, helped give the claims credence. Indeed, his imprimatur as an outside “expert” suddenly made...