Did the Clonaid company really succeed in cloning the world's first baby, or is it a publicity stunt?
The US Food and Drug Administration will examine whether the company actually cloned a baby girl, and if the process was done on US territory
Cloning the babies: it may be a scam * This is what the journalist who formed a team of scientists to check the statements of the "Clonide" company that cloned babies claims; According to him, "we were not allowed to check on the family"; It is possible that this is just an advertisement for the people of the religious movement
7/1/2003
(News update and voila!)
Dr. Michael Gillen - a journalist who headed a team of scientists that tried to assess the truth of the statements of the "Clonide" company, that it cloned babies - said yesterday that it may be a scam. According to him "the team did not get access to the family and therefore could not assess the truth of the claims first hand". He added that "Clonaid's statements may be a scam aimed at publicizing the realist movement." Gilan, who temporarily suspended the work of the inspection team, said that if he is given the opportunity to perform a DNA test on the baby, he will return to check the claims.
The Cloneade company, which is based in the USA, is associated with the religious movement - a religious group that claims that the origins of the human race are clones made by aliens who visited the earth at the dawn of history. The company claims that two cloned babies were recently born, one to an American couple and the other to a lesbian couple in the Netherlands. After the first baby, "Hava", was born, Clonaid promised that it would allow Gilan to conduct an independent investigation to find out the truth of the publications.
Dr. Gilan accepted the Haralim's offer to head a team of scientists who would test, through DNA tests, the truth of their statement. Gilan said he would establish a team of "independent and world-renowned" scientists, who are not related to the realist movement. A simple DNA test can reveal if the baby was cloned, but a necessary condition for its reliability is that the DNA samples be taken from two different people. According to an investigation by the "Washington Post", it is doubtful whether the results of any test under Gilan's supervision will be accepted by the scientific community.
Doubts regarding the credibility of the journalist who will oversee the investigation of the baby clone * The administration will investigate Clonaid
3/1/2003
The statement of the Ha'ral movement from the end of last week, that Shivta was a baby, is still awaiting proof. While many scientists doubt the ability of the hares to clone a person, publications that appeared yesterday in the American press cast doubt on the credibility of the journalist who was entrusted with the supervision of the tests, who had to find out if the baby was indeed cloned.
The journalist, Dr. Michael Gillan, said that he accepted the Haralim's offer to head a team of scientists who would test, through DNA tests, the truth of their statement. Gilan said that he would establish a team of "independent and world-renowned" scientists, who are not related to the realist movement.
A simple DNA test can reveal if the baby was cloned, but a necessary condition for its reliability is that the DNA samples be taken from two different people. According to an investigation by the "Washington Post", it is doubtful whether the results of any test under Gilan's supervision will be accepted by the scientific community.
"The man supported every piece of pseudo-science that came his way. Putting him in charge of this kind of cloning claim is like letting a fox guard a chicken coop," James Randi, founder of the "James Randi Education Foundation", an organization that fights pseudo-scientific and naturalistic claims, told the newspaper.
According to the "New York Times", about a year ago Gilan offered to mediate between a couple who wanted to clone their dead baby, and the American doctor Dr. Panos Zavos, who wants to clone humans.
Gilan conditioned his mediation on the demand that the couple grant him exclusivity on the coverage of the story, and withdrew after it became clear to him that the couple had already promised exclusivity to another TV network. His response could not be obtained, despite repeated requests.
Tamara Traubman, Haaretz
The US has begun to look into the suspicions against Clonaid * Israel is looking into the cloning law
31/12/2002
The US Food and Drug Administration, the federal agency in charge of public health in the US, has begun an informal investigation against "Clonaid", a company founded by the religious movement with the aim of cloning humans. The investigation was opened after Clonaide's chief scientist, Dr. Brigitte Boislier, claimed on Friday that the first cloned baby had been born.
Boislia, who did not present any evidence to support her claim, told the AP news agency today that the baby is expected to arrive at her home on Monday, and that shortly after that an independent team of experts will be allowed to take DNA samples from her and her mother and check if the baby was indeed cloned. Dr. Michael Gillen, former science editor of the ABC television network, is to select the team of experts and oversee the tests.
A spokesperson for the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) told the "New York Times" today that the agency has not yet begun an official investigation. According to him, for the time being, this is an attempt "to obtain the basic facts, to reconstruct the chain of events that led to the statement (about the cloning), and to explain the circumstances of the case." According to him, the agency will have the authority to take measures against Clonaid only if the process - in whole or in part - is done on the soil of the United States.
Besides the Harels, two other doctors, Dr. Severino Antinori from Italy and Dr. Panos Zavos from the USA, claim that they are engaged in trying to clone babies. They too, like the Harels, did not present any evidence of this. Scientists doubt the truth of the three groups' claim, and say that it is unlikely that they succeeded in cloning a baby. In addition, according to ethicists, attempting to clone humans involves great risk to the mother and the newborn.
Several states in the US have enacted laws prohibiting the cloning of humans, but there is still no federal law prohibiting the method. Last year, the House of Representatives approved a bill imposing a blanket ban on cloning: both for the purposes of birthing babies and cloning embryos for the production of embryonic stem cells (cells capable of turning into any of the types of cells in the body) and biomedical research. The proposal also received the support of the US President, George Bush.
However, when the proposal reached the Senate's approval, two senators - a Republican and a Democrat - made a rare alliance and submitted an alternative bill, calling for a ban only on the cloning of babies and to avoid a ban on the cloning of embryos. The submitters of both proposals were unable to gather a sufficient majority for the approval of their proposals.
The Harels' announcement of the birth of the baby girl, whom they call Eve (Heva), provoked a wave of reactions in the US, calling on Congress to hurry up and enact a law that would ban cloning and impose heavy prison sentences on its perpetrators.
Examination of the Israeli Cloning Law has begun
by Tamara Traubman
A committee acting on behalf of the Ministry of Health recently began the process of examining the law prohibiting human cloning in Israel, in order to formulate recommendations for its renewal. Israeli law was approved in 1998 and prohibits the cloning of humans for any purpose. The law is formulated in the form of a moratorium - a prohibition limited to a certain period of time. The moratorium will expire in January 2004
The "Supreme Helsinki Committee for Genetic Experiments" is supposed to formulate recommendations for this date. It will have to decide whether the latest developments in the field of cloning justify changes that will make the wording of the law more stringent, or whether it is possible to extend its validity without making changes to it.
One of the options that will probably be discussed by the committee is to establish a permanent ban on cloning, the validity of which will not be limited. The opponents of the proposal claim that in the future cloning may become an efficient and safe process, and in such a situation a permanent ban will prevent infertile couples from having a legitimate way to have children.
In December 2001, the United Nations began drafting a treaty proposing a permanent global ban on human cloning. As of March, cloning is prohibited in 33 countries. However, last month the USA, with the support of other countries, delayed the continuation of the treaty discussion until the middle of next year. The US demands that the treaty also ban the cloning of human embryos.
where is the girl
29/12/2002
Dr. Brigit Bislia at the journalists' party, announcing the birth of baby Eve. "You can continue to say that I'm a fraud, a forger or a teller of fiction."
"I am very happy to announce the birth of the world's first cloned baby. Her name is Eve, she was born yesterday at 11:55 from DNA taken from her mother's skin cell. She weighs 3.1
KG, was born by caesarean section, she is sighted and her parents are happy."
This historic announcement was made on Friday at a press conference in Florida by Dr. Brigitte Basilier, the chief scientist of the cloning company "Clonaid". The baby's mother, said Dr. Bislia, is a 31-year-old American whose father is infertile, and the baby is an exact copy of her mother. But then the journalists started asking questions. The mother and daughter were not shown at the press conference, nor was their photo shown. A DNA test that would prove that it is indeed a clone was also not presented.
"We have 24 years of experience at Clonaid in cloning. My expert, the technician who created the embryo, performed more than 3000 cow embryos before touching human eggs," said Dr. Bislia, in what began to turn into a confrontation with the skeptical journalists. "You keep coming down on me, now sit quietly and listen to what I have to say. This is my day, this is my celebration and you will have to listen to me quietly", she said, and threw four more toothpicks into the fire: "Four more cloned babies will be born in February".
A press conference was held at the Holiday Inn Hotel, in the palm-fringed resort town of Hollywood, north of Miami in Florida. Bislia, a chemist by profession but lacking any experience in cloning, presented herself as "the chief scientist of the Haralite sect, in a position equivalent to a 'bishop'", a fact that raised deep doubts from the beginning. The Harels are a movement that believes that beings from the outside world with the Hebrew name "God" created humans through genetic engineering.
The movement was founded in 1973 in France by a former journalist named Claude Vaherlon who adopted the name Rael. Rall claims that while traveling in France he met beings from the outside world who took him on a journey in their spaceship to another planet. His movement claims to have 40 believers worldwide, including in Israel. Its headquarters are in France, Japan and Canada. The movement advocates free love, lots of sex and eternal life.
Bislia did not say at the press conference in which country or city the baby was born. She only said that they were staying in a secret place outside the US. She flatly refused to give the names of the scientists or doctors who managed the cloning, detail how it was done, describe its stages, and give details about the birth itself. In front of the microphone and the cameras he defied that within eight-nine days "we will present the results of tests, including DNA tests, to verify the report. The tests will be conducted by an independent entity. Until then, for a week, you can continue to say that I'm a fraud, a forger or a teller of fiction."
The scientific world reacted with severe skepticism, which, beyond the dubious reputation of the Haralim sect, stems from the fact that to date, severe problems have been discovered in animal cloning, and human cloning is many times more difficult. Many scientists around the world were not content with skepticism, but rather expressed great anger and complete disbelief in the honesty and motives of the Clonoid people. A typical response was provided by Dr. Leon Cass, chairman of the Presidential Council on Bioethics in the USA. "If this is the future - then I don't want it," he said. The cloning expert, Robert Lanza from the biotechnology company ACT from Massachusetts, said: "They have no scientific documentation, no organized, controlled and reliable publications. They have not even cloned a mouse or a rabbit in the past."
In order to produce Dolly the sheep, the first animal cloned and now a "grandmother" with serious age and health problems, scientists needed no less than 276 cloning attempts. Baby Eve, according to Bisleya's claim, was born after only two attempts. Ten mothers began pregnancy while carrying cloned embryos, Bislia said. Five of them did not terminate the pregnancy due to spontaneous abortions in the first three weeks of pregnancy. In five, the pregnancies developed well. The second birth of a cloned baby will take place in Europe in the coming week, three more births are expected at the end of January. "In this series there is also a lesbian couple expecting the birth of their baby", it was said. She also said that with two mothers, the clones used the cells and DNA taken from their children, before they died.
"I'm not ready to believe this whole story until I see the results of genetic tests by independent scientists," said Dr. Robin Lobel-Badge of the National Institute for Medical Research in London. He and many others like him in the USA, Australia, France, Germany and also in Israel, tried to cool down the bursts of enthusiasm and astonishment that gripped the scientific world over the weekend. "All in all, it's a very evil act," said the American theologian Prof. Stanley Haveros from Duke University in deep shock. Prof. William Moyer, a geneticist from Purdue University in the state of Indiana, said: "There are things that are unethical to do. For example: such attempts in people". Prof. Arthur Kaplan, head of the Department of Medical Ethics at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, said: "The chance of seeing a healthy baby is maybe 50:50, so no reliable and respected scientist even approaches such a project."
Most of the scientists said that even when presented with the results of genetic tests related to the birth of the cloned baby, they still believe - based on studies in cloned animals (pigs, cattle, mice, etc.) - that there is a very high probability that the baby suffers from a birth defect as a result of the cloning process. Most of the skeptics pointed out that attempts to clone apes, especially apes close to man such as chimpanzees and gorillas), have failed. "Although some of them came into the world seemingly healthy - later in their lives they developed very serious complications, abnormal phenomena, diseases, deformities and deformities."
The chief scientist at the Ministry of Science, Prof. Hagit Maser-Yeron, told "Maariv" last night: "Apparently there is a baby girl, but it is not certain that she is cloned. I am very, very skeptical about this. There are no jumps in science. The group that announced the achievement is strange, unable to do it on its own. Says with the utmost caution: I will be very surprised if it turns out that there is something real in the report. My impression is that they are trying to sell an illusion. Desperate people are willing to pay to be helped, and that's what those who spread this information ride on."
"This is false and bizarre advertising"
A few days ago, the competitor to Clonaid, the controversial Italian fertility expert Dr. Severino, announced
Antinori, because the world's first cloned baby whose "creation" he has been working on for the past few months, will be born in early January 2003 to a Serbian woman in Belgrade. In the past year, Antinori has often released announcements along the lines of o-to-to my first cloned baby is coming, but with the exception of the "minutes of fame" he received, each time in a different corner of the globe, he still has not delivered the goods. For example, just a few months ago he claimed, for example, that "his" baby would be born to a rich Arab, "a very important w2 personality with unlimited money", but the baby has not yet arrived.
At the end of the week, following the announcement by the Clonaid company, Antinori's phone did not stop ringing. Journalists from all over the world asked for his response. In an interview with Maariv, Antinori contemptuously dismisses the attempt to steal the premiere from him. "The French biologist Bisselia doesn't understand anything about human cloning," he says, "at a conference held in the field in August last year in Washington, at the US Academy of Science, she approached me and asked me to explain to her what is meant when the term cloning is used. I ask you, who asks such a basic thing, can stand in front of the world and make statements of this kind? She also explained to me that all the attempts they make in the field have one goal: to gain maximum publicity for the company behind them."
Antinori loses his patience when he is told that he has lost the primacy in the human cloning race. "These misinformation can only cause unnecessary confusion in the field. The fact that a religious sect that believes in aliens is behind the project managers only increases the feeling that this is a completely bizarre activity. I, on the other hand, am a secular person who has been involved in the field for over 31 years. For me there is one simple and central reason why the idea of human cloning should be promoted, and that is to provide a scientific answer to infertile male men who wish to become parents. I hope that after they examine the baby Eve, it will be proven that this is a fraud and it will be my turn to stand in front of the spotlight to prove that I was the first to succeed, despite the opposition of governments and religious priests, in duplicating the first human being."
In the meantime, Antinori prefers to be modest about his recent statements, according to which he stated that the first cloned baby will be born this January in Belgrade to a Serbian family. "We are not running in competition with anyone", he says, and does not specify how the women who carry babies reproduced from his work are doing.
By the way, by Antin Vary's side, in the fund that finances his operations, are Panos Zavos, an American expert, and Avi Ben Avraham, an American Israeli. When members of his staff were previously asked how the professor intends to deal with the sweeping decision that no European country will allow him to bring a cloned baby into the world, his staff explained that "Mediterranean countries, or even a ship in international territorial waters, may be a suitable solution." The presence of Avi ben Avraham in the territory led some to think that the Mediterranean country is Israel. No approval was given for this.
For many news published on December 28-30, 2002
