Reflections on the cloning case.
نویسنده
چکیده
T HIS PAPER EXPLORES THE EVENTS surrounding the Raelian cloning claim and the first and only legal case ever filed to protect the rights of a cloned human being. I was the lawyer who filed that case. Four years ago, societies were burdened with the fear that very soon cloned persons would walk among us. In a charged political climate , cloning was the popular culture issue blurring the line between legitimate science and science fiction. In the age of the 30-second news bites, how was the public to understand the difference between the real scientists, seeking understanding and cures through research in developmental biology, and the provocateurs, posing as legitimate scientists, making irresponsible and outlandish claims? Bill McKibbon's book Enough: Staying Human in an Engineered Age explores the darker edges of biotechnology. His opening paragraph underscored the world's angst at a particular moment in time concerning an astonishing claim that the first cloned baby had been born. He wrote: As this book goes to press in January 2003, the world is still waiting to find out if the Raelian UFO cult has produced Earth's first cloned child or if that prize will go to one of the other teams of rogue scientists racing toward that goal. But the question of who will be the first is, in the course of things, unimportant ; the real issue is what will follow? Will this news open the gate to a " posthu-man " world that the people described in this book now imagine—people who, at first glance, appear far more rational and sober than Rael's colleagues? Or will it be instead the news that rallies us to ward off a future filled with far more insidious developments than the Raelian's baby Eve? As a trial attorney for nearly 30 years, I had drafted a thousand lawsuits in my career but none like the true case of " first impression " that I filed on December 31, 2002 in the Broward County Circuit Court in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. I was seeking a guardian for the alleged cloned child. In the matter of baby Eve, no governmental authority chose to take action, so in my capacity as an officer of the court and private citizen, I decided to do what I knew best. I sued. Although the case was not ultimately resolved on the merits, the truths discovered would ultimately defuse the cloning …
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عنوان ژورنال:
- Cloning and stem cells
دوره 9 1 شماره
صفحات -
تاریخ انتشار 2007