The emailer wrote: "I am now raising those very questions i.e. does a clone have a soul? Did Jesus die for clones? Jesus said, "you must be born again". This implies that one must be born the first time! What is the biblical definition of being born and birth? Since God "set the rules" of birth via the mechanics of male-female conception, then would a cloned lesbian be a human?

Lesbians are begging to be cloned because if they could be cloned, then they could be re-classified as a "race" and hence gain the political rights as any other race, nation, tribe, or tongue. What about the verse in Revelation 18:13 where God mentions the commercial traffic of the "...souls of men".

I for one will be openly making bold statements during open-air preaching on the University of Minnesota campus this fall. Personally, I've had it up to here with the silence on these issues from the pulpit in Christian churches. In Minneapolis, the congregation of an ELCA Lutheran Church "ordained" it's lesbian "pastor". This made national news. I'm not being to far out to say there is a day coming soon where there could be clones in church receiving communion by lesbians!"

:THE LONDON TIMES Wednesday August 08 2001 From Damian Whitworth In Washington THE scientists working to clone a human being said yesterday that they hoped to make their first attempt by the end of the year. Severino Antinori, the Italian embryologist who wants to clone human beings for infertile couples, would not say exactly where or when the first operation would take place, but confirmed that "three or four" British couples were among 2,000 to 3,000 who had asked to be considered.

At a sometimes chaotic conference on the scientific and medical issues of cloning held at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, Dr Antinori said that his work was "very important to humanity" and labelled the Pope, who is one of his fiercest critics, a "criminal". Dr Antinori, director of the International Associated Research Institute in Italy, said that he would employ the same techniques that were used to produce the first cloned animal, Dolly the sheep. He added that comprehensive screening processes would detect any abnormalities in a foetus and women would be offered an abortion. He came under heavy fire from some of the scientists.

"You can't do this. The methods do not exist. It is not responsible," Rudolf Jaenisch of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology said. "At present, there is no way to predict whether a given clone will develop into a normal or abnormal individual." Dr Antinori dismissed his critics as veterinary scientists who "have no experience in reproductive science" and said that what had gone wrong in animal cloning experiments had been exaggerated. "With a human it's different," he said. Alan Colman, the director of PPL Therapeutics, the Edinburgh biotechnology company that was involved in the Dolly experiment, described the event as a circus.

He gave a warning that the effectiveness of the cloning would only improve over time and that initially, at least, the results would be abortions and babies with abnormalities. "I do not see that it's ethical to undertake what I call practice," he said. Dr Antinori charged that the Vatican was behind the drive to outlaw cloning. He said that when the Pope recently met President Bush in Rome "nobody denounced the criminal. The Pope is screaming at me. He wants to avoid the condom and IVF." Panayiotis Zavos, an American Professor of Reproductive Physiology at the University of Kentucky who is working closely with Dr Antinori, attacked their detractors for focusing only on the failures of cloning, and said that it was necessary to accept that the road to cloning a human being would not be straightforward.

"There's no such thing as total perfection in the business of human reproduction," he said. "We tell a patient that there is a chance that the child could bleed to death. You sign a consent form. These are realities of life that we have to understand. There is a risk in everything that you do. We will try to minimise that risk factor by the time we do this." He declined to explain how that would be done. "We can't reveal everything. We have the right to remain somewhat silent. We have some privileged information that we can't give out to the public." He said: "They may be calling us mad scientists; we are not."

The two men sat on stage with Brigitte Boisselier, scientific director of Clonaid, which advertises cloning services on its website for fees starting at $200,000 (£140,000). It was founded in 1997 by a French racing car driver who changed his name to Rael and started the Raelian Movement, which claims that life on Earth was created by extraterrestrial scientists. [ http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/0,,2-2001272204,00.html ]

Half-serious questions: Would a clone have a spirit? Will the ac be a clone?

Irene A biochemist in the US is being investigated for allegedly defrauding investors by promising to bring their loved ones back to life. Federal investigators said Dr Brigitte Boisselier, scientific director for biotech firm Clonaid, was years away from cloning humans. One man said he spent up to £350,000 leasing a laboratory and buying equipment after saying she could clone his dead son. A grand jury in Syracuse, New York, is said to be considering fraud charges against Dr Boisselier, who is a member of a cult believing in UFOs.

Lawyer Mark Hunt has withdrawn his support for her after paying out the money in the hope his dead son could be cloned. Dr Boisselier, who wants to create eternal life, was one of three scientists who caused uproar in Washington last week with their proposals for human cloning, reports The Daily Telegraph. The website for her Clonaid company states for $50,000 (£36,000) she will "provide the sampling and safe storage of cells from a living child or from a beloved person in order to create a clone if the child dies". According to the Clonaid website, Dr Boisselier is a "bishop" in the Raelian movement founded in 1997 by a French racing driver. See this story on the web at http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_374114.html - More information about cloning.

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