WASHINGTON, USA - A U.S. fertility specialist and the leader of a group that believes in extraterrestrials are set to testify at a congressional hearing on Wednesday about their controversial plans to clone people.
Scientists, ethicists and industry officials are also scheduled to speak about the moral dilemmas and safety issues surrounding human cloning. Members of Congress plan to question federal regulators about whether they have the power to stop such experiments.
If federal authority appears limited, there is "a very good possibility" that Congress would move toward banning human cloning in the United States, said Ken Johnson, a spokesman for the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
One hearing witness is Panos Zavos, a Kentucky fertility specialist who has teamed with an Italian doctor in an effort to provide infertile couples with children who are clones of either parent. More than 700 couples have volunteered to participate in the project set to take place in a Mediterranean country, Zavos has said.
Zavos' group plans to take cells from an adult and place them into a woman's egg stripped of its own DNA. The egg would be stimulated to divide and form an embryo with the same genetic material for implanting in a woman's uterus. The resulting baby would be a clone.
Also scheduled to testify is Rael, leader of a group that claims to be the world's largest UFO-related organization. Rael says his group plans to clone a couple's dead child at a secret lab in the United States.
A Web site for the Raelian movement says a 4-foot (1.2-metre)-tall extra-terrestrial with almond-shaped eyes visited Rael, previously known as Claude Vorilhon, in 1973, and told him that life was deliberately created by scientifically advanced extraterrestrials using DNA.
Lawmakers invited Rael to speak because they felt a duty to shed light on the kind of groups claiming to have the scientific know-how and funding to clone people, Johnson said. An aim of the hearing, Johnson said, was to find out "are they just a fringe nut group or are they really going to do it?"
Scientists and religious groups who call cloning immoral and fear it may lead to babies born with serious deformities also are scheduled to testify.
Some researchers are concerned because animal cloning has seen a high percentage of failures and deformed clones in the four years since scientists announced they had cloned a sheep named Dolly.
"Today the technology to clone a human being still is not safe, and the full range of moral and ethical concerns still has not been addressed," said Carl Feldbaum, president of the Biotechnology Industry Organization, in a recent letter to President George W. Bush.
01:34 03-28-01
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