Abducting The Cloning Debate

BASTIENNE SCHMIDT/POLARIS
Rael and women who have agreed to serve as surrogate mothers in his sect's human-cloning project pose at the Raelians' UFO theme park in Quebec

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No one doubts there's a demand for human cloning. On its website, Clonaid estimates it will charge $200,000 for its reproductive service, but Boisselier insisted to TIME that so far she has not charged the first guinea pigs. Clonaid also sells human eggs for about $5,000 each and offers "banks" in which to store cells in case a family wants to clone a loved one in the future. Boisselier also has a pet-cloning service called Clonapet, which she says has also received great interest. "The media only want to talk about possible birth defects, that the baby will be a monster, but the e-mails I get from people tell us we're brave, that we should go ahead," says Boisselier.

Still, there was ample reason to challenge her claims of success, even before she began backing off her promise of providing proof. No one has yet succeeded in cloning a primate despite thousands of tries; efforts at a dog have so far failed as well. Even among other mammals, more than 90% of the embryos never implant or die before or soon after birth. Among those most dismissive of her entire operation are the other researchers rushing to beat it, such as Italian fertility specialist Severino Antinori. He missed his own deadline, having announced last spring that he had a clone due in November. But he is quite certain Boisselier, who has yet to produce Baby Eve, hasn't succeeded either. "It's a great bluff," he barked into his cell phone. "I'm amazed the media believe this."

The damage is done whether Clonaid's claims are a hoax or not. The Raelians can be assured that all the free advertising has worked, and inquiries from prospective parents will rise with each new headline. This desperation leads some lawmakers, ethicists and scientists themselves to argue that it is time to take a broader look at the rules that govern reproductive science. According to a new survey by Johns Hopkins University, two-thirds of Americans approve of using genetic screening to help parents have a baby free of a serious genetic disorder. But more than 70% are against using such techniques to design children to be smarter or more attractive, and 76% are against working on ways to clone humans.

So what should be permissible and what should not? Does the promise of a new technology outweigh the risks that it could be misused? The challenges are too important to address in a climate of fear or ignorance or to be distorted by the greed or vainglory of renegade scientists with an alien agenda.