The leader of a growing cult, the Raelians, claims to have been contacted by aliens who told him that mankind has been cloned from an alien race called ‘the Elohim.’
Americans ranging from troubled theologians to enthusiastic scientists are finding human cloning something of a Pandora’s Box. Or even a spaceship, if you ask the Raelians, a UFO cult that believes human cloning is at once the wave of the future and a blast from the past. The group’s response to Sept. 11 was no less paranormal: Clone the charred remains of the perpetrators and make their doubles stand trial.
This isn’t the first time the Raelians have dramatized themselves with a publicity stunt. In November 1992, they distributed 10,000 condoms to students at a Roman Catholic high school in Montreal, where the movement is based. The distribution, called “Operation Condom,” gave the Raelians a reputation for free love and casual sex, an image the group is not at pains to deny. As a Raelian “guide” tells Insight, “Life should be fun. Life is about happiness.”
If the Raelians are known for sixties-style love-ins, they also purport to be dedicated to the science of tomorrow. Since they believe mankind was cloned from the DNA of an advanced alien race, they think science holds the ultimate promise of being reunited with our makers. For the Raelians, cloning is in our past and in our future.
After Scottish scientists announced that they had cloned a sheep in 1997, the Raelians were among the first to announce their efforts to clone a human. In many ways cloning is to Raelians what salvation is to Christians. The movement’s founder, Rael, claims that in 1973 he “was contacted by a visitor from another planet and asked to establish an embassy to welcome these people back to Earth.” This extraterrestrial, Rael says, was “about four feet in height, had long dark hair, almond-shaped eyes, olive skin and exuded harmony and humor.” Rael, then known as Claude Vorihol, says that the alien confided to him: “We were the ones who made all life on Earth. You mistook us for gods and we were at the origin of your main religions. Now that you are mature enough to understand this, we would like to enter official contact through an embassy.” These advanced aliens called themselves “the Elohim” — a plural Hebrew name for God in the Old Testament — and live on a planet with a pleasant tropical climate, Rael explains to Insight.
After this visitation, Rael believed that his mission was to proclaim the truth of human origins, advance science — in particular the study of DNA and cloning — and build an embassy through which the aliens might return. “We can expect the Elohim to return, possibly in 2030, but this date is not certain,” says Rael. Indeed the numbering of our calendar from the birth of Christ is a sticking point for him. He says he would rather that “year one” be based on a more universal date, such as the year the United Nations was founded or the year the first atomic bomb was detonated.
As for converts, the Raelian practices of free love, group gatherings and “sensual meditation” have attracted perhaps 55,000 adherents in more than 80 countries, according to Rael. The actual number may be closer to 25,000, estimates Susan Palmer, a sociologist who studies the group.
“It is a happy philosophy, all about happiness and living forever,” continues Rael. A second encounter with the Elohim, one in which they whisked Rael away to their own planet, convinced the former race-car journalist that the Elohim way of life is, indeed, a superior one. It was during that second visit in 1975 that Rael, then married, was ravished by six biological robots on the Elohim’s home planet. Though he claims that his wife wasn’t upset by this infidelity because they were robots, he does allow that “Yes, it was a lot of fun.”
Rael draws many parallels between Raelianism and Buddhism, which he says is closest to the truth because, “There is no God — all that is a style="mso-spacerun: yes"> myth.” Jesus, Mohammed and the other “great prophets” have all just been spokesmen for the Elohim, much like Rael himself. Despite his advocacy of the pleasure principle and his professed hatred for the destruction wrought by religious wars, Rael has flashed an apocalyptic flare in some of his writings. For example, he has written, “To die for Elohim, that is the most beautiful thing that this planet has to offer. It is the key to Allah’s garden or to the planet of perpetuity.”
As for the embassy, the Raelian collection plate is bringing in money; at the latest count, around $20 million has been raised, $13 million of it since 1997 when scientists cloned Dolly the sheep. To the bewilderment of Rael, Israel has not proved amenable to his request for land in Jerusalem, where the Elohim would prefer to have their embassy. In an unsuccessful effort to persuade the Israelis, the Raelians — with the blessing of the Elohim — scotched their old symbol of a swastika inscribed in the Star of David. Perhaps Israel’s reluctance stems from the claim of some guides that their embassy will be the third temple prophesied in the Old Testament.
Israel is not alone in rebuffing the Raelian embassy requests. When a group of Raelians petitioned the Swiss government to open an official embassy there, a Swiss assemblyman offered that he gladly would vote to allocate the funds as soon as the Elohim built an embassy for Switzerland on their planet. The Swiss have not been pestered since.
Which leaves the cloning project as the best way to prove to the Elohim that humans are ready for the return. Soon after that sheep was cloned, Rael founded Clonaid, an enterprise to clone humans. Once it’s fully up and running, Clonaid will charge between $200,000 and $500,000 per cloning, though it is not soliciting clients at this time.
Clonaid’s director, Brigitte Boisselier, who holds two doctorates and also is a Raelian, was teaching chemistry at Hamilton College in Clinton, N.Y., before she resigned her three-year contract there. School officials have no complaints about her teaching. In an effort to show religious toleration, the college president issued a statement that neither her religion nor her extracurricular cloning activities impeded her work as an introductory-chemistry professor.
Boisselier was afforded similar respect by the House Energy and Commerce subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, which invited her and Rael himself to testify at a hearing about human cloning. In response to criticism that UFO cult members were testifying before Congress, a committee spokesman responded that Congress needed to solicit a broad range of views, including those of a UFO sect. To exclude some groups on the basis of their religious beliefs would be unfair, suggested the spokesman. Eventually, the specter of Rael testifying in front of Congress did try the subcommittee’s patience. “We’ve broken all the rules today, so you go ahead, Rael, and respond,” sighed Chairman Jim Greenwood (R-Pa.) in mild disbelief. Even so, the committee raised awareness — and eyebrows — by inviting Boisselier, even if her cloning efforts have suffered some recent setbacks.
In July a Clonaid lab in West Virginia was closed after community protests and a Food and Drug Administration investigation. Like many cloning advocates, Boisselier’s business partner there, a respectable former state legislator named Mark Hunt, wanted to recreate the genes of a 10-month-old infant he and his wife had lost. Since the lab’s closure, Hunt and Boisselier have parted ways. “Her interests in the press have been to forward and promote her religion, more than forward and promote the style="mso-spacerun: yes"> science,” Hunt told ABC News. Federal prosecutors say they are weighing whether to charge Boisselier with fraud for collecting $5,000 a month from the Hunts for a service that authorities have concluded she could not provide.
But could she? While Boisselier has confidence in her team of six scientists, all Raelians, others are more skeptical. “Of all the groups out there trying, they are the least likely to succeed,” says Ronald Green, director of the Institute for the Study of Applied and Professional Ethics at Dartmouth College in Hanover, N.H. “I think the Raelians are a joke. She [Boisselier] is not a cell biologist or a reproductive specialist. They’re just doing this for the publicity and contributions.”
Though she won’t release the names or credentials of her scientists, this double doctor defends her efforts: “I’m not a specialist in this field, but my scientists are. We are a private enterprise. When we have an announcement to make, we will do so. In three months we will have something very interesting to report,” she declares.
“Down the road, cloning activity will give us eternal life,” Boisselier enthuses to Insight. According to Rael, the Elohim enjoy a biblical life span because they are able to clone themselves over and over again. “Imagine being 17 for the rest of your life, retaining all of your experiences over hundreds of years in a new body. It sounds nice, doesn’t it,” says Rael.
The Raelians admit that earthling technology does not yet have the capacity for this type of cloning. This is precisely why proceeding with scientific experimentation is so important, Rael argues. The type of cloning that is marginally conceivable today is only the beginning — the first of three phases.
The first task is to duplicate the successful cloning of animals, like Dolly the sheep, in humans. “At this point we will be able to create a biological twin, but that person will not be you, because you will have had different experiences,” cautions Rael.
To retain a person’s individuality, he says, humans must develop the kind of technology that allows us to store our memory in a central database or a personal computer. After a clone is regenerated, the data of experience would be “uploaded, or downloaded,” into a new body. The third phase is to grow a human being outside of the womb, at an accelerated rate, and produce the specimen “in minutes” at the optimal age of 17. To avoid Malthusian population problems on their own planet, the Elohim have instituted a rule against cloning yourself before you die. But on Earth, Rael insists, we would not need to implement this measure for some time.
As for those Raelians who will pass from this Earth before cloning is perfected, there’s some hope. That’s because the Elohim have a database of all Raelians’ DNA, says a spokesman for the group. “They have acquired this information by a ‘transmission’ when a Raelian guide places his (or her) hand on the new convert’s forehead and transmits their DNA to the Elohim.”
Though the guide with whom Insight spoke wasn’t certain how this transmission occurs, she was confident that because of the Elohim’s “superior technology” the DNA data is transmitted safely to a faraway planet. Worldwide, says a spokesman, there are more than 139 guides qualified to perform these transmissions.
Leaving aside the science, Boisselier does have the human capital. Any cloned human would have to be carried to term by a willing mother. With an advertised following of 55,000, the Raelians may be at an advantage in this department. There is great secrecy, of course, but Boisselier defends the clandestine nature of her activities by explaining that “cloning is not politically correct.” In addition to concern about the reputation of her scientists, she also worries about the safety of her lab. On these scores her precautions do not seem excessive.
Indeed, the debate about human cloning has inflamed the passions of many. At an August conference on the “Scientific and Medical Aspects of Human Cloning,” sponsored by the National Academy of Sciences, the acrimony spilled out into the lobby. Opposing sides were all but brawling in a yelling match that resolved nothing, reported Newsday.
The debate over human cloning simply cannot be divided into “pro” and “con,” say some scientists and ethicists. There’s a third group that currently is opposed to experimentation as too risky but is hopeful that in the future cloning will be as routine as the nearly 200,000 test-tube babies. At the House subcommittee hearing, many panelists suggested that the issue of cloning is more one of “when” than “if.” The key issue for many in the “maybe” camp is safety.
“Even amongst cloning enthusiasts, it generally is accepted that proceeding on human projects is irresponsible,” for the moment, says Dartmouth’s Green, who supports a short-term ban on human cloning. The problem, according to Green, is that there’s no way to test a cloned embryo fetus, even during gestation, to determine how prone it is to common cloning side effects, such as large-animal syndrome. “They say they’re going to test, but it’s categorically impossible to test for the kind of defects that can occur at this time,” says Green. “There’s so much more that we need to understand before we can proceed.”
And Thomas Murray of the National Bioethics Advisory Commission told the House subcommittee that an “attempt to create a child using somatic-cell nuclear transfer, whether in the public or private sector, is uncertain in its outcome, is unacceptably dangerous to the fetus and, therefore, morally unacceptable.” In response, the House has passed legislation that bans nearly all cloning experimentation, but the Senate has yet to act on companion legislation.
Before all the ethical dilemmas are explored and resolved, many scientists predict, the world will be presented with the first human clone —and sooner rather than later. “What [the Raelians] are doing is of symbolic significance. If they don’t succeed, someone else will in the next five years,” Gregory Stock, director of the Program of Medicine Technology and Society at the School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles, told the New York Times.
“In the early 1970s, almost all bioethicists except Joseph Fletcher opposed ‘test-tube babies’ for fear of monsters, harm to families and potential threat to the identity of the resulting children. Many of these same critics today oppose human cloning,” recalls Gregory Pence, a philosophy professor at the University of Alabama.
But he notes that today “over 100,000 American babies exist — 200,000 worldwide — who would not have existed had these critics won. Back then, over 80 percent of Americans opposed test-tube babies; now the same percentage of Americans support such efforts.”
Indeed, the historical comparison augurs that cloning is all but an inevitability. Rael seems to understand this, is investing heavily in it and expects to ride this wave of scientific enlightenment into outer space.