NSW: Right to Life not surprised by sect's cloning effort
By Sheree Went
SYDNEY, Dec 27 AAP - Reports a human cloned baby had been born showed it was possibleto make an army of made-to-order people, a Right to Life spokeswoman said.
However, Right to Life's Margaret Tighe said she was not surprised about the overseascaesarean section birth of the baby girl as people had been toying with human embryosfor two decades.
"It is a very scary development and its one that I'm not surprised at simply becausewe have allowed the manipulation in human lives in laboratories for 20 years," Ms Tighesaid.
Ms Tighe said while the federal government had banned human cloning, it had given thego-ahead for local stem cell research on surplus IVF embryos.
She said this legislation signalled an opening for human cloning in the future.
"The current legislation says there is to be no cloning either therapeutic or reproductive,but I believe this will happen one step at a time," Ms Tighe said.
" .... because embryonic research will not produce the results that are hoped for andthen they will go back to the drawing board and say we must be able to carry out therapeuticcloning."
Her comments came after French scientist and Raelian sect member Brigitte Boisselierdeclared the birth of the child a success.
Ms Boisselier, a 46-year-old French chemist who is president of the Clonaid human cloningsociety, declined to give further details of the birth, saying, "I prefer not to say morefor now."
The Raelians said the girl was the first of five cloned babies and the births of theother four are imminent.
But while it was still unclear whether the child was a clone, Ms Tighe said it demonstratedanything was possible.
"This is an illustration of what can happen if you let crazy people in a cult or sectproduce people to do what they say," she said.
"We are all concerned that people should have the ability to create human beings bycloning because if people were allowed to do this they will produce an army of made-to-orderpeople."
Claiming 55,000 followers worldwide, the sect believes life on Earth was establishedby extra-terrestrials who arrived in flying saucers 25,000 years ago, and that humansthemselves were created by cloning.
AAP swe/ph/de
KEYWORD: SCI CLONE LIFE
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