“The Birth of First Human Cloned Baby”

An American non-traditional religious group’s subsidiary company, which has been promoting human cloning, has reported on 26th the birth of the first human baby through cloning and this news has created a serious debate over the issue of human’s dignity and the limitations of the genetic experiments.

Also, it is predicted that this event will accelerate the movements of the UN’s International Pact Institution for Restricting Human Cloning and the various countries’ legislation.

During the telephone interview with AFP Communications on 26th, Bridgitte Boisselier, the representative of Clonaid, which is a subsidiary company belonging to the American religious sect ‘Raelians Movement’, has reported that “A baby, conceived through cloning experiment, has been born through a caesarean operation and the delivery went very smooth.”

AFP Communications reported that because Clonaid has been promoting the birth of cloned baby in an extreme security it has not been proven immediately whether the baby was really conceived by cloning as well as the place where the birth took place.

Representative Boisselier stated that they will officially announce the birth of human clone sometime during 27th (Night of 27th in Korea) and will allow the neutral scientists to examine the baby’s cell structure to prove that the baby is a real cloned human.

The 27th of last month, Representative Boisselier has announced that “Total of five people, two Americans, two Asians and one European are participating in Clonaid’s Human Cloning Project and among them, one American woman will give a birth sometime in December 2002.”

In relation to this, Kwak Ki-hwa, the spokesman of Clonaid’s Korea Branch, stated in the telephone conversation with Dong-A newspaper reporter that “Originally three Korean women participated in the cloning project. Four cloned babies will be born in February of 2003 including two Asian women and there is a high possibility that a Korean woman might be included among them.”

Different from artificial fertilization, which goes through fertilization of sperm and egg, human cloning has been studied as one of the method to cure the incurable diseases by creating human embryo bud by inventing bodily cells through genetic engineering. However, some researchers along with Clonaid have used it for the human cloning and have been competitively promoting the birth of cloned baby.

Eighty-eight Korean government members of the Assembly have submitted the Life Ethics Security Bill, which prohibits the human cloning to National Assembly, but even though UN is promoting the International Proposition, it has not been able to make a conclusion due to the different views surrounding the forbidden scope.

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