Clonaid
Clonaid is an organisation run by a highly placed member of the Raelian Movement. On December 27, 2002, Dr. Brigitte Boisselier, a Raelian bishop and CEO of Clonaid, announced to the world press that Clonaid had successfully cloned a human being. They claim that aliens taught them how to perform cloning, even though the company has no record of having successfully cloned any previous animal.
Boisselier said that the mother gave birth by Caesarean section somewhere outside the United States, and that both the little girl, named Eve, and mother are healthy. She did not present the mother or child, or any DNA samples that could be used to confirm her claim at the press conference although she did explain the procedure which she intended to use to confirm her claims.
Several scientists who were interviewed regarding the announcement averred skepticism regarding both the authenticity and the ethics of such a procedure. These included Lord Robert Winston, head of the IVF research team at London’s Hammersmith Hospital, and Tanja Dominko of the Oregon Regional Primate Center's monkey cloning project.
Many scientists have stated that animal cloning has a low rate of success per implantation, and that many cloned fetuses are malformed or do not survive to be born. They are surprised that Clonaid does not appear to be affected by these problems, and state that Clonaid must either have been extremely lucky, or has discovered a superior method of cloning that does not have these problems, or is making false claims. Given the background of the Raelian movement, and the failure to date of Clonaid to provide any physical or methodological evidence, this leads these scientists to adopt an extremely skeptical position on the alleged cloning.
Clonaid says there will be four other cloned babies delivered in February 2003.
See Raelism for the significance of cloning for Raelians.