News: First Human Clone?

Looking at various news sources (I first read about it via Tracy‘s blog, but it’s now been covered by CNN, the BBC, CTV.ca, ABC News, The Independent, MSNBC, Ananova and many other news services), it appears Clonaid has been the first organisation to clone a human being. They’ve named the little girl which was born on Boxing Day to a 31 year old American woman “Eve”.

Whilst there has yet to be any scientific evidence presented by Clonaid (they say DNA evidence will be available in 8 to 9 days time and according to the CNN article, there will be strict 3rd party evaluation of the evidence), there is a large amount of controversy about this claim. It goes further than the normal ‘Is cloning right?‘ moral issues… It appears the company has very strong links to a cult religious group called the “Raelians” (indeed, the scientific director of Clonaid – Brigitte Boisselier – is a “bishop” in the group).

The Raelians believe their spiritual leader is a direct descendant of the aliens that created life on Earth through genetic engineering. This spiritual leader is the former French journalist Claude Vorilhon (who now calls himself Rael) who also wrote the books “Messages given to Me by Extra-Terrestrials“, “Yes to Human Cloning: Immortality Thanks to Science“, “Lets Welcome the Extra Terrestrials” – may I just remind readers of a slightly similarity with the founder of Scientology – L. Ron Hubbard – who was also an author/writer (and, it appears, the Raelians also have ‘ties’ with the CoS).

Whilst I’m waiting for true scientific evidence to emerge before making a decision on this issue, I’ve already put the salt on standby (i.e. I’m taking this with a large pinch of salt/I have large doubts about this). Religious “cults” have not exactly had a good track record for telling the truth, plus the likely hood of the Raelian‘s coming from practically ‘nothing’ to producing a fully fledged human clone seems unlikely to me (considering a large number of other companies have been working on the same thing and have not yet achieved success)…