Sect working on human cloning, scientist says

WASHINGTON - A scientist affiliated with an obscure religion that favors human cloning said yesterday that her group has begun cloning research at an undisclosed location in the United States.

She would not say whether she would obey a recent Food and Drug Administration warning not to clone a person without that agency's approval.

The comments to a House subcommittee were by Brigitte Boisselier, scientific director of the Raelian religion, which believes that humans are clones of extraterrestrials. The work she described involves only cow cells, and her claims could not be verified.

House members said Boisselier's report, along with similar testimony from a scientist pursuing human cloning in a separate venture, strengthened their conviction that the nation needs a legislative ban.

Boisselier's assertions before the subcommittee on oversight and investigations came as President Bush made his first comments on human-cloning legislation, saying through press secretary Ari Fleischer that he would support a ban.

"The president believes that no research - no research - to create a human being should take place in the United States," Fleischer said, adding that Bush would work with Congress to draft a bill.

Several scientists and doctors at the hearing argued against such a ban, however, saying it would be almost impossible not to also block legitimate biomedical research. Others said a ban on human cloning would undercut physicians' right to practice medicine and infringe on people's right to reproduce as they see fit.

In a lively five-hour hearing in which some scientists accused cloning proponents of misleading Congress about its risks, the FDA also fielded withering criticism from representatives for doing "too little, too late" to regulate the quickly evolving field.

Both Boisselier and Kentucky scientist Panos Zavos, who has said he is laying the groundwork for his own human-cloning clinic, publicized their intentions months ago. Yet only this week, the subcommittee learned, did the FDA contact the two scientists to warn them that they should not proceed without first submitting their protocols for FDA review.

If the agency waits much longer before acting aggressively, warned subcommittee Chairman James Greenwood, R-Pa., a human clone is going to be growing in a woman's womb somewhere in the United States.

"My sense is that would pose a fairly difficult enforcement situation," Greenwood said dryly.

Expressing doubts that the FDA even has the legal authority to regulate cloning, Greenwood and Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman W.J. "Billy" Tauzin, R-La., said the committee would introduce legislation to ban human cloning, probably soon after the Easter recess.

"What we heard today is that these people are serious enough and scary enough to get our attention," committee spokesman Ken Johnson said.

Rep. Brian Kerns, R-Ind., introduced the first of what could eventually become a raft of bills this session on the topic.

Yesterday's hearing featured widely divergent views on the safety of human cloning. Zavos, the former University of Kentucky professor who has said he will open an offshore cloning clinic soon, testified that only a small proportion of cloned animals harbor serious defects.

"I'm surprised to hear that from a professor of biology," countered Massachusetts Institute of Technology researcher Rudolf Jaenisch, who called Zavos' comments "totally irresponsible and totally misleading." In fact, Jaenisch said, "I don't believe there is a single normal clone in existence."

Boisselier said she received a letter from the FDA on Monday explaining rules for cloning research. But she wanted to speak to her lawyer, she said, before deciding whether to accept the FDA's assertion of authority over cloning.