From: scerir (scerir@libero.it)
Date: Thu Jul 11 2002 - 05:14:19 MDT
http://cooltech.iafrica.com/technews/994014.htm
CLONING
Human cloning underway
by Hiroshi Hiyama
Posted Wed, 10 Jul 2002
A team of scientists from Clonaid, a human cloning company linked with the
Raelian movement, were working with "10 to 20 clients" on the firm's human
cloning project, an official from the company said Wednesday.
"We chose them from a client list of a couple of thousand people," said
Thomas Kaenzig, vice president of Clonaid.
"We are working with about 50 surrogate mothers," he said, adding that the
company would present some results of its project "in a couple of months
time."
Kaenzig was speaking at the first International Bio Expo Japan, a medical
industry trade show that showcased products and services from about 250
Japanese and foreign exhibitors, including Du Pont and Roche Diagnostics.
Clonaid showed off its "embryonic cell fusion system," which, Kaenzig said,
creates the stable electronic pulse required to develop human embryos to the
blastocyst stage.
That is the stage generally about five or six days after fertilization at
which the embryo is made up of about 100 to 150 cells.
The device, the RMX 2010 which resembles a car battery, and is for sale at
9,000 dollars, was manufactured by BioFusion Tech Inc. of South Korea, a
Clonaid affiliate established about two months ago.
The "2010" designation reflected the hope that cloning would be commonplace
by year 2010, said Jung Yung Pyo, sales director at BioFusion Tech.
Despite a promise on the company's website that it would present partial
results of its cloning process at the fair, Kaenzig, a Swiss native and
Raelian follower, declined to say how far the group is from bringing the
first human clone into the world.
Kaenzig said, however, the company had created "a few hundred" human
blastocysts and "you know what the next step is."
Clonaid argues its cloning technology will help people suffering from
infertility as well as single and gay people who want genetic offspring.
"Thanks to reproductive cloning, they can fulfill their dreams," Kaenzig
said. Cloning of one person would cost about 200,000 dollars, he said.
"After the first (cloned) baby is presented, people will see it's OK. It is
a reproductive technology. Why are we launching this product (RMX 2010)
here? We felt Asian countries are more open to new technologies," he said.
Clonaid had faced strong resistance in Western nations, especially by
"conservative Christian groups," he said.
The Raelians, who claim 55,000 followers worldwide, believe that life on
Earth was established by extraterrestrials who arrived in space ships 25,000
years ago and that humans themselves were created by cloning.
According to the Clonaid.com website, Raelians believe humans can attain
eternal life by creating clones and transferring memory data to the clones.
Earlier this year, Clonaid revealed that a 59-year-old man with a terminal
illness had asked Raelians to clone him.
Inspectors from the US Food and Drug Administration raided the Raelian's
secret laboratory in West Virginia, and seized documents.
"We pulled out of the United States," Kaenzig said, although he declined to
disclose the location of the new headquarters or where it is conducting the
cloning project, adding only that it was in a nation that allows human
cloning.
The movement's founder, Rael - the former French journalist Claude
Vorilhon - describes himself as a prophet in the line of Moses or Mohammed.
Many scientists are repelled by ethical questions posed by human cloning,
and many governments, including Japan, have raced to ban reproductive
cloning.
Yet it has not prevented a race among scientific mavericks to become the
first to clone a human.
One of them, Italian gynaecologist Severino Antinori, told the French daily
Le Monde in an interview published in May that three women were pregnant
with clones.
AFP
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