What's New in Life Science Research is managed and written entirely by Seed editors and expert guest bloggers. Read more about them Obligatory puns notwithstanding, cloning - of humans, animals, and embryos for stem cells - is no laughing matter. The various applications raise different serious concerns, many of which have been discussed on this blog.
But before we leave the topic, it would be a shame not to note that the field has attracted more than its share of bizarre figures. The record is amusing to consider, in a sick sort of way, and important as a cautionary tale about the consequences of a free-for-all approach to human biotechnologies. Here are a few of the most colorful of the cloning characters...
Richard Seed is a Chicago physicist turned biologist who touched off a media storm with his January 1998 announcement that he would soon open a cloning clinic. According to Wikipedia, Seed first said that he would produce cloned babies for infertile couples, and later talked about cloning himself and his wife. Seed told NPR, "God intended for man to become one with God. Cloning and the reprogramming of DNA is the first serious step in becoming one with God."
Rael - formerly a race car test driver named Claude Vorilhon - is the leader of a religious cult that believes human beings were created by alien cloners. The Raelians founded a human cloning company called Clonaid in 1997; announced in 2000 that an anonymous US couple had given them $1 million to clone their dead daughter from preserved cells, and claimed in 2002 that a cloned baby named Eve had been born. The Raelians were covered worldwide in news stories and editorials; Rael, bedecked in robes and a top-knot hairdo, testified at a US Congressional hearing.
Hwang Woo-suk is the South Korean cloning scientist who was lauded around the world for having produced the first stem cell lines using SCNT, and hailed by his government as its "Supreme Scientist" - until it became known that in fact he had perpetrated the scientific fraud that Science Magazine called "one of the most audacious ever committed." He also embezzled something like $3 million in state funds and private donations, and landed more than a dozen women in the hospital after egg retrieval procedures. He is currently cloning dogs with BioArts, the company that Alexandra Stern mentioned in her post earlier this week.
Bernann McKinney (shown here with one of the clones of her dog Booger) is the first customer of the dog cloning company RNL Bio, which is competing with - and fighting about patent rights with - Hwang's firm. She is a former beauty pageant queen who kidnapped a Mormon missionary with whom was obsessed, holding him at a remote cottage in Britain as her sex slave for days. She fled to Canada disguised as a mime, and then went into hiding in the US disguised as a nun. The dog that she had RNL Bio clone was a pit bull named Booger; she originally obtained him by breaking into an animal shelter where he was scheduled to be euthanized after he had attacked some joggers. As of August 2008, she was wanted in Tennessee, where she is accused of convincing a 15-year-old to break into a house so that she could buy a prosthetic leg for her three-legged horse.
Taking stock of all this, it would be easy, as the Center for Genetics and Society's Jesse Reynolds put it, to "dismiss the cloning endeavor as nothing but a freak show." But, Reynolds continues, that's not a good idea:
Despite a broad consensus that human reproductive cloning should be banned (as it already is in about sixty countries), there's no shortage of bioethicists and pundits who fail to see anything wrong in the practice, and supposed cloning opponents who limit their concern to matters of safety.
Comments
You must be kidding. I thought this was a joke until I checked
the links. Let's make sure they don't clone Bernann McKinney.
Posted by: Pogo | December 10, 2008 11:34 AM
Well, I am one of those people who have yet to understand what the ethical issues related to stem cell research and cloning could possibly be. In fact, I think most concerns stem from a combination of religious blather and straightforward confusions. And I think this post illustrates the latter quite nicely. None of the above mentioned incidents are even remotely relevant to the issue of cloning and stem cell research. Yes, they show that there's a lot of cranks out there. We knew that already. They do not show that there are serious moral issues related to cloning or stem cell research, nor do they even suggest that we need to particularly careful (which I agree with), insofar as none of the examples even manage to illustrate careless handling of or misapplications of stem cell/cloning related resources. If examples like these are the ones being used in the debate, I think my point of view is further corroborated. Take the McKinney case for instance. Can anyone tell me exactly what part of this story is suppose to be showing us the need to be cautious?
Posted by: G.D. | December 16, 2008 6:14 PM
i agree completely with G.D.
the problem with cloning is ignorance as to what it actually is. the politicians in countries that have banned it have visions of "the boys from brazil" in their heads.
Posted by: greg | December 17, 2008 12:29 AM