Double Talk
Cloning Humans for Fun and Profit

by Linda Pannozzo
HighGrader Magazine March 1998
This article may be downloaded but any reprints require prior permission from HighGrader Magazine.

Cloning is back in the news again. Not surprising. What is surprising though is that in less than a year after Dolly, the first cloned sheep, some scientists are already planning for the first human clone - something that wasn't supposed to 'happen' for 20 years and for some, just something that wasn't supposed to happen at all.
One group of scientists aren't wasting any time. Valiant Venture Limited, a company based in the Bahamas for tax purposes, was started up last March by three scientists - Dr. Brigitte Boisselier, their "scientific director" based in France, Dr. Marcus Wenner, a British neurophysiologist in Japan and Marc Rivard, a microbiologist in Valcourt, Quebec.
According to Rivard, the company plans to build a laboratory in a country where cloning isn't illegal and will offer services to wealthy parents worldwide.
"For $200,000 US, the company's Clonaid service will provide assistance to would-be parents willing to have a child cloned from one of them," he says. "The other service is called Insuraclone. For $50,000 US we will provide safe storage of cells from a living person." Don't worry about dying from an accident or an incurable disease, Insuraclone can create a double.
There are only two things holding Valiant Venture back, money and the fact that cloning humans isn't (yet anyways) possible.
"We need about two million dollars to build a lab and do the research," he says. Rivard is confident that cloning will not go away.
"I think it will be regulated but not banished," he says. "Remember in-vitro fertilization - everyone thought it would create monsters, now you can go to a clinic and you can have an in-vitro baby."
Recently, another scientist came forward with plans to start up a private cloning clinic in Chicago. Richard Seed would like to use cloning as a treatment for infertile couples and hopes to clone 500 people a year once his clinic is up and running.

Been Around
Cloning is not new. In fact, farm animals have been cloned since the early l980s. What was new about Dolly, the Finn-Dorset lamb created by the Scottish research team at the Roslin Institute last March, is that a fertilized egg was not required. Dolly showed you don't have to use embryonic cells to make a new organism.
Bill Pohajdak, a Dalhousie University professor working on genetic manipulation of fish, says the Dolly experiment was a major step forward:
"They took a cell from the mammary tissue of a six-year-old sheep, took the nucleus of that cell and put it inside an egg from another sheep and they grew a total lamb."
The reason this is possible, says Pohajdak, is because every cell carries all the genetic material for the whole organism, but the cells shut off certain genes and turn others on depending on their function.
"Let's say you cut your hand. New skin cells have to grow there. Why don't you grow an eyeball there? Or a new ear? It's because those cells are programmed to become a skin cell." The debut of Dolly showed that you could take that skin cell and make a human out of it, he says.
According to David Patriquin, who teaches biology at Dalhousie, cloning invites many problems from a biological perspective.
"If you look at all higher organisms, sex and replication are always combined." Cloning doesn't require sex. However, sex is how one organism's genetic material gets mixed up with another organism's. It ensures genetic variability, says Patriquin. Diversity within a species means greater success. Cloning reduces genetic variability.
Patriquin says the way to stop human cloning is to make it illegal here in Canada and cut off the demand for it so that it doesn't happen in other countries.
Right now, the only thing standing in the way of experimentation in cloning is a "voluntary moratorium."
Cloning is one of nine reproductive technologies that fall under a Canadian moratorium, says Fiona Burgin, an associate at Dalhousie's Health Law Institute. The others are sex selection, buying and selling of eggs, sperm and embryos, germ line alteration, retrieving eggs from dead people, commercial surrogacy, artificial wombs and creating human/animal crosses.
Burgin says the voluntary moratorium was put in place in July of l995 as a result of the Royal Commission on Reproductive Technologies. In l993 it released a 1,300 page report that cost $28 million dollars and came up with close to 300 recommendations.
Burgin says that other than the moratorium, none of the recommendations have been followed.
In June of l996, David Dingwall, then Health Minister, tabled Bill C-47, a bill that would outlaw 13 reproductive and genetic technologies and regulate others that were considered acceptable.
The Bill made it to second reading in November of '96 and was sent to a standing committee where it died when the election was held.
Doris Cook, a policy analyst with Health Canada, says that some new rules will be laid down. "Minister Allan Rock will be tabling legislation soon that deals with reproductive and genetic technologies and will reflect some of the comments made about Bill C-47."
Bringing in laws to govern this technology worries some in the medical community. This past fall at the annual Canadian Bioethics Society general meeting in Halifax, doctors argued against criminalizing the technologies.

Burgin explains, "They argue that criminalizing it will just drive it underground and there'd be difficulty proving anything in a court of law."
The alternative is to establish standards that can be enforced. One way of doing this would be to cut government funding to labs that don't comply. Burgin acknowledges that for people setting up independently, like Valiant Venture Ltd., such rules will be meaningless.
Offshore investments in cloning companies will not be covered under the new bill.
Cash on the Barrelhead
Private Canadian companies will need to get a license for those practices deemed acceptable under the bill, and as for the unacceptable ones like cloning, "we are confident there won't be any cowboys out there in the private sector," says Cook.
But Rivard claims Valiant Venture Ltd. is already getting calls for clones.
"I just received a letter last week from a mother who had twins, and one died of leukemia and she wanted to have her back."
Without a lab or the technology Rivard tells people that if they invest the $200,000 US they will be first on the list for a clone when the technology becomes available. He wouldn't reveal how much money the company still needed or where the company plans to set up.
Francoise Baylis is a bioethicist at the Faculty of Medicine at Dalhousie University. She says the services that Valiant Venture Ltd. claims to offer is simply not possible scientifically.
"It's a service for which they don't have the science, but if they want to make money then they're going to say they are right on the edge."
Baylis says it could take another 50 years before cloning is possible. But according to an article that appeared in The Guardian after Dolly's debut, it may be much sooner. The article quoted Ian Wilmut, the head researcher of the Dolly experiment, and suggested a "determined researcher" could use the technique to clone humans within two years.
The ethical implications of cloning are cumbersome, especially in a market driven world where the human body has become a commodity, argues Andrew Kimbrell, author of The Human Body Shop. He says the potential abominations that could arise from the technology outweigh any benefits.
This fall British scientists grew a frog embryo without a head. Scientists believe the technique could be adapted to grow human organs such as hearts, kidneys and livers in an artificial womb. Dr. Patrick Dixon, author of The Genetic Revolution, reacted to the news in a recent Globe and Mail brief saying that it was only a matter of time before cloning technology is used to create partial fetuses with missing heads, arms or legs "as organ factories for tomorrow's people."
Cloning is hard to stop, no matter how distasteful it may be, says Baylis.
"Can I stop people from picking up a hammer and using it as a weapon? No. Is that what hammers are for? No. You can't stop people from doing this."

We're Not Making This Up
Besides being a would-be cloner, Rivard claims to be a priest in the Raelian Movement - a group which claims that life on earth was created scientifically in laboratories by extra-terrestrials called Elohim.
"When I started my studies at the University of Sherbrooke in l983 I was a Raelian and I knew that one day cloning would be possible."

According to Rivard, the movement began in l973 when a French journalist named Claude Vorilhon had a UFO experience and met the Elohim who renamed him Rael. Rael, who now lives in Canada, was one of the backers of Valiant Venture Ltd.
The Raelians claim they have 35,000 members in 85 countries This number has not been verified by any independent sources.
One of their pet projects has been the creation of a theme park in Valcourt, Quebec called UFO land where a visitor could "climb aboard a full size UFO, see the world's biggest replica of DNA and visit six halls with displays on cloning and genetics."
Not surprisingly, Rivard and his colleagues see no ethical problems with cloning.
"I can assure you, it's not difficult to find women who we could pay to give birth to babies," he says. "Pretty soon we will also be able to use artificial wombs which the Japanese have been working on."
This past July, Japanese scientist Yoshinori Kuwabara, developed an artificial womb capable of incubating goat fetuses. His findings were published in the Journal of the Japan Medical Association. Kuwabara kept up to three week-old goat fetuses in a plastic tank until the end of the incubation period. The "artificial womb" is a clear plastic box filled with amniotic fluid and fitted with a dialysis machine - cleaning the fetus' blood and replacing oxygen.
Rivard says the technology is just on the horizon and when it comes, Valiant Venture will be ready.
"The research is being done right now all over the world. When we heard about Dolly, no one knew they were working on that. This kind of research is done secretly. The technique is simple and all you need is a good microscope, microsurgery equipment and a good surgery technician."

Vaping has become a popular alternative for those seeking a Stylish and Convenient way to enjoy nicotine without the drawbacks of traditional smoking. the iget moon Offers an exceptional Vaping Experience, combining sleek design with ease of use. Its compact size makes it perfect for on-the-go enjoyment, while its variety of flavors satisfies diverse preferences. Choose the iget moon for a modern and satisfying Vaping solution that fits seamlessly into your lifestyle.