Charleston lawyer Mark Hunt said Saturday he has halted his sponsorship of a French scientist who installed a high-tech laboratory in the former Nitro High School in an attempt to clone an identical twin of Hunt's dead child.
Hunt, a former legislator, said he lost confidence in Dr. Brigitte Boisselier recently because she became "a press hog," giving many international news interviews on behalf of the cloning project, and on behalf of the Raelian religion.
Raelians contend that space aliens called Elohim created all life on Earth, including humans, through genetic experimentation. The sect was founded by a French race car driver who changed his name to Rael, started a UFO theme park in Canada, and claims 50,000 followers in 85 countries.
Because of his race driving, Rael calls himself "the world's fastest prophet." Dr. Boisselier - who holds doctorates in chemistry from the University of Dijon, France, and the University of Houston - is listed as a bishop of his church. Together, they founded Clonaid, which advertises that it is "the first company offering to clone human beings."
Hunt, who is vacationing in California with his wife and new baby, said in a telephone interview Saturday that he entered the project with Clonaid because he and his wife were traumatized by the loss of their 10-month-old son, who died from heart defects two years ago.
"For parents, nothing can be worse," he said. "It was devastating. We cried. We prayed. ... You can't imagine the absolute misery. It's more than depression - it's physical pain. ...
"We decided, for the first time in human history, since Jesus raised Lazarus, to transcend the great gulf of death and bring our baby home - to create an identical twin of Andrew."
Hunt said he and his wife realize that a clone wouldn't restore their son's life, but a duplicate child would be "some solace." He said they visited scientists in several states, learning about genetic engineering and stem cell research. But the only group prepared to attempt a human clone from cells of a deceased person was Clonaid, he said.
Hunt called the undertaking "a great adventure" and said he isn't ashamed of seeking to duplicate life, "but we kept it secret because press coverage would have jeopardized it."
He leased the science lab in Nitro's old high school and bought advanced equipment for Dr. Boisselier and her colleagues to use. In some recent news interviews, the French woman said her cloning project was funded by a "$1 million investment from an American couple who lost their 10-month-old baby." However, Hunt said Saturday that he invested less than $500,000.
Workers in the Nitro lab sought to "determine the viability" of the dead child's DNA, Hunt said, and also fertilized cow eggs in laboratory dishes.
Agents of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration came to Hunt, alarmed by reports that a human clone was being attempted in Nitro. A federal grand jury in Syracuse, N.Y., was exploring a case designed to determine whether the FDA has jurisdiction over cloning. Hunt said he promised the federal officials that no human cloning would occur in Nitro until the legality question was resolved.
But Dr. Boisselier gave another TV interview saying a cloned baby would be achieved within six weeks, Hunt said, and the FDA asked if he had misled the U.S. agency. So he closed the Nitro laboratory and changed its locks.
All this occurred, Hunt said, before the U.S. House of Representatives voted last week to ban human cloning.
The lawyer said he decided to disclose the Nitro experiment because a reporter from the London Times came to Charleston last week and approached his relatives about it. "He went to Nitro and told people that dangerous work was going on there, and that someone might bomb the building." So Hunt felt it was best to make a public statement.
He said he and his wife will continue to support cloning and stem cell research in America, because they see no ethical problems with it, and feel it may bring great benefits to humanity.
In cloning, scientists extract a creature's DNA, bearing its entire genetic code from the nucleus of a cell. The DNA is substituted for the DNA in a fertilized egg. The egg is implanted in a womb, where it grows through normal gestation into an exact replica of the original creature.
Dr. Boisselier said several young Raelian women had volunteered to become pregnant with the egg that would create the first human clone.
Hunt was elected to the state House of Delegates in 1994, 1996 and 1998. Last year, he defeated former Sheriff Art Ashley for the Democratic nomination to state Senate, but lost in the fall to Sen. Vic Sprouse, R-Kanawha. Hunt spent about $200,000 of his own funds in the Senate races.