AN AMERICAN couple whose infant daughter died last year during a routine heart operation is trying to bring her back to life through cloning.
In a move that makes skeptical scientists shudder, the parents are spending $500,000 to have a new baby cloned from preserved skin cells of the 10-month-old girl.
Adding to the eerie scenario, the cloning will be carried out by a company with ties to a religious cult that believes humans were cloned by extraterrestrials.
“We anticipate we’ll start work on human cells soon, and hope to have the first embryo ready by early this year,” says Dr. Brigitte Boisselier, scientific director for Clonaid, a biotech firm affiliated with the Raelian religion, which believes cloning is the key to eternal life.
“I would love it if they were able to have the baby by Christmas,” she says.
The couple – who are in their 30s, are still able to conceive a baby naturally and have other young children – declined to be interviewed.
That’s understandable, since their plan has touched off a storm of controversy. Some doctors and scientists say we are years away from having the techniques needed for human cloning.
For others, this is an ethical nightmare. They openly fear that by making human replicas, we are crossing the threshold to the Brave New World of the social engineering of people.
“Human cloning is very much frowned upon,” concurs Dr. Russell Foulk, medical director at the Nevada Center for Reproductive Medicine. “Both ethically and medically, there’s no reason for it – it’s pointless. There are plenty of reproductive methods that are far easier and more viable.”
“It’s medically naive to think that cloning is going to bring a dead child back. Cloning doesn’t solve the problem of a missing child,” adds Dr. Jamie Grifo, director of the division of reproductive endocrinology and infertility at New York University Medical School.
“It’s premature to even try cloning at this point, and I don’t know of any reputable reproductive specialist who would consider it.”
BOISSELIER – a French-born, Montreal-based scientist with a Ph.D. in physical and biomolecular chemistry and a mother of three – brushes such criticism aside.
So do many others. Since Clonaid announced its plan in September, the company has been swamped with requests from infertile couples, gay couples and people who’ve lost an older child, Boisselier says.
“Twenty years ago, when they started working with in-vitro fertilization, there was controversy and protests from people who said those doctors were playing God,” she says. “Now, IVF is not only acceptable, it’s commonplace. Historically, people are always afraid whenever someone introduces something new.”
Boisselier is a longtime member of the Raelians, a cult founded in 1973 by Claude Vorilhon, a former French sportswriter who uses the name Rael and believes humans were cloned by a group of alien scientists from another planet. The cult claims to have 50,000 members worldwide.
Rael, who lives in the province of Quebec, founded Clonaid in 1997 with a group of investors called Valiant Venture Ltd. The company is incorporated in the Bahamas and has a Web site, Clonaid.com.
Clonaid spokeswoman Nadine Gary, who is based in Nevada, says the company has about a dozen employees, but refuses to say where its headquarters are located.
The couple who want to clone their dead daughter are not Raelians, Boisselier says. But they are wealthy, and reportedly jumped at the chance to participate in – and finance – the Clonaid project.
“After their baby died, they talked to many doctors and scientists, and then they heard about Clonaid,” Boisselier says.
The couple provided the initial $500,000 Clonaid says it needed to begin the cloning experiment. Future participants will be charged $200,000.
Boisselier says the cloning will be done in the United States by a Clonaid team consisting of a doctor who specializes in in-vitro fertilization, a biochemist, a cell-fusion expert and a geneticist.
She declined to identify the four and refused to reveal the state where the cloning will take place, except to say it is not Nevada.
Cloning using private funds is not illegal in the United States, but the Food and Drug Administration says it has the authority to regulate and approve any cloning project.
The agency’s Health and Human Services Department says any group seeking to clone a human being must apply for permission – and probably won’t get it because of “major unresolved safety questions.”
Boisselier says she won’t contact the FDA because she doesn’t believe the agency has authority over the Clonaid project.
TO CLONE the child, the team plans to use the process of somatic cell nuclear transfer – the same process used to create Dolly the sheep, the first successful animal clone, in 1996, Boisselier says.
Scientists use an electrical shock to fuse a skin cell from an animal – in this case the dead child – and clone it to an egg cell that has had its genes removed.
The newly combined cell grows into an embryo that’s a genetic replica of the skin-cell donor, and the embryo is planted in the uterus of a surrogate mother to develop.
The parents had preserved some of their dead daughter’s cells “for research,” Boisselier says.
“Our hope is for parents to think about preserving the cells of their loved ones before they die, to make the task of cloning easier,” she says.
Clonaid says on its Web site that for a charge of up to $50,000, it will take cell samples from clients and preserve them in “a safe, confidential place under cryogenic temperature” for future use.
It also says it is mulling a Clonapet service for “wealthy individuals who wish to see their lost pet brought back to life.”
Even if Clonaid’s plan makes them wince, most experts say that recent scientific advances make it a fairly safe bet that human cloning can eventually be achieved – and probably sooner than later.
What’s more, they say cloning might be easier in humans than in animals because much more is known about human reproduction.
In 1998, Advanced Cell Technology, a Massachusetts biotech firm, announced that in 1995, it had successfully taken a human cell and inserted it into a cow’s egg. The egg was destroyed before it became a human clone.
The main problem with cloning is that most clone pregnancies end in spontaneous abortion. For example, Dolly the sheep was the only survivor of 347 embryos.
However, scientists believe that if a human clone survived the fetal development phase, it would probably go on to be completely normal.
Boisselier acknowledges there could be a high miscarriage rate, and has lined up 50 volunteers – including her own 22-year-old daughter, Marina Cocolios – to act as surrogates.
“I am very sure about what I’m doing,” says Cocolios, a fine-arts student at a Canadian college. “These people want this baby so much. They want the DNA of that first baby to have the chance to fully express itself, and I want to help give that chance.”
NEITHER the American Medical Association nor the American Society for Reproductive Medicine endorses human cloning. Both have called for more extensive study into the safety and ethical issues.
The groups do support cloning-related and embryonic research, however, because it could lead to breakthroughs in treating or wiping out genetic and degenerative diseases, cancer and other illnesses.
Grifo and Foulk are far more outspoken about the matter.
“Nature has made clones – they’re called identical twins. And even identical twins don’t have the same personalities, the exact same life experiences,” Grifo says.
“They share many similar traits, but they are different. These people think they’ll replace their daughter by cloning her. They won’t.”
“There’s bound to be a tremendous psychological impact on a child,” says Foulk. “If you clone a child as a replacement for one that has died, the parents might have high expectations that it be exactly the same, and that’s unfair. Even little, everyday things – the new child might walk at a later age, or be potty trained later – could put unnecessary pressure on the child.
“A cloned child would grow up in a completely different set of circumstances in terms of time and space. The only thing similar would be the genetic makeup.”
Boisselier says the parents “know perfectly well there are psychological and emotional issues, and are prepared to deal with them. People say there will be a burden on this child. But this is a child who is desired, who will be loved. That’s a wonderful way to come into life.”
“If we fail at this, we fail,” she adds. “If someone else does it before us, that’s fine. For us, this project is philosophical, a way to create eternal life.”
Not so, says Foulk.
“Cells have a certain duplicative number, or life span – if you clone a cell over and over and over, it eventually runs out of chromosomes. By the 50th time, it’ll die. So this idea that you can perpetuate a cell’s life indefinitely – and achieve eternal life – is just wrong.”