Editing Clonaid (section)

==Company founding==
On May 31, 1997, an issue of the [[popular science]] magazine ''[[New Scientist]]'' said that the International Raëlian Movement was starting a company to fund the research and development of human cloning.  This alarmed bioethicists who were opposed to such plans.  They warned lawmakers against failing to regulate human cloning.  At the time, European countries such as Britain had banned human cloning, but the United States had merely a [[Moratorium (law)|moratorium]] on the use of federal funds for [[human cloning]] research. U.S. President [[Bill Clinton]] requested that private companies pass their own moratorium.  [[Claude Vorilhon]], the founder of Raëlism, was opposed to this move and denied that the technology used to clone was inherently dangerous.<ref name="Cult's bizarre vision rekindles cloning debate">Cohen, Philip, [https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg15420841.400-cults-bizarre-vision-rekindles-cloning-debate.html Cult's bizarre vision rekindles cloning debate], ''[[New Scientist]]''. May 31, 1997. Retrieved September 9, 2007.</ref>

On June 15, 1998, Brigitte Boisselier said the headquarters of Clonaid was located in [[Las Vegas]] and that Clonaid did not have enough funds for human cloning research.<ref name="Is cloning Spot the next step towards cloning ysl human being? Clonaid betting on it">[https://web.archive.org/web/20110517035907/http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-50079680.html Is cloning Spot the next step towards cloning human being? Clonaid betting on it], ''Transplant News''. June 15, 1998. Retrieved September 9, 2007. [https://news.google.com/archivesearch?q=clonaid+%22she+is+certain&btnG=Search+Archives&num=20&lr=&scoring=t&as_ldate=&as_hdate=2000 ''(highlight)'']</ref>  On December 19, 1998, a ''New Scientist'' article said the cost of Clonaid cloning services would be [[United States dollar|$]]200,000, much lower than the $2.3 million that researchers at [[Texas A&M University]] planned to use for cloning a dog named Missy. Mainstream scientists said it was unlikely that Clonaid would be able to clone anything in the near future.<ref name="From little seeds…">[https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg16021654.500-from-little-seeds.html From little seeds…], ''[[New Scientist]]''. December 19, 1998. Retrieved September 9, 2007.</ref>  Although the project's ultimate objective was human cloning, Boisselier said that [[pet cloning]] would help finance the operations.<ref name="Is cloning Spot the next step towards cloning ysl human being? Clonaid betting on it" />

===Premise===
On June 9, 1997, Clonaid stated its intention to offer homosexual and/or infertile couples the chance to have a genetically identical child and take a step toward [[immortality]].  According to an Internet announcement, the Raëlian leader and a group of investors founded a company in the Bahamas and called it ''Valiant Venture Ltd.'', whose project mission was named Clonaid.  Valiant Venture expected to have one million potential customers.<ref name="SWISS GROUP LAUNCHES FIRM TO MARKET HUMAN CLONING">[http://nl.newsbank.com/nl-search/we/Archives?p_product=SJ&s_site=mercurynews&p_multi=SJ&p_theme=realcities&p_action=search&p_maxdocs=200&p_topdoc=1&p_text_direct-0=0EB720C8D4722366&p_field_direct-0=document_id&p_perpage=10&p_sort=YMD_date:D&s_trackval=GooglePM SWISS GROUP LAUNCHES FIRM TO MARKET HUMAN CLONING], ''[[San Jose Mercury News]]''. June 9, 1997. Retrieved September 9, 2007. [https://news.google.com/archivesearch?q=clonaid+%22expecting+more+than+1+million&btnG=Search+Archives&num=20&lr=&scoring=t&as_ldate=&as_hdate=2000 ''(highlight)'']</ref>

[[Claude Vorilhon]] held a meeting in a [[Montreal]] hotel on September 21, 2000, where he announced that a wealthy American couple was willing to fund the Clonaid project.  The first pending clone, according to Vorilhon at the time, was the couple's 10-month-old girl, who had died due to a medical mistake.  He said that the couple was willing to pay $1,500,000 to clone their deceased daughter, but the wife was not willing to be the surrogate mother.  Jamie Grifo, a fertility specialist at the [[New York University School of Medicine]], and Nobel laureate [[Paul Berg]] of [[Stanford University]] said that Vorilhon was providing a false hope that the child was going to be the same one.  Boisselier revealed the roles of four scientists she says were involved—"a biochemist, a geneticist, a cell fusion expert and a French medical doctor"—but without revealing their identity.  She did not identify the wealthy American couple.<ref name="Human Cloning's 'Numbers Game'">Weiss, Rick, "[https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/2000/10/10/human-clonings-numbers-game/7ed0daa7-3dae-485e-b65a-a540919e314d/ Human Cloning's 'Numbers Game']", ''[[The Washington Post]]''. October 10, 2000. Retrieved September 19, 2023.</ref>

===Responses by scientists===
According to cloning specialist and physiologist George Seidel of [[Colorado State University]], cloning a human being would not be difficult if many people donated their eggs or offered their wombs for implantation of clone embryos.<ref name="Human Cloning's 'Numbers Game'"/>  [[Lee Silver]], a molecular biologist from [[Princeton University]], noted the advantages that Raëlians had, as a pro-cloning religious group, in finding willing surrogates.<ref name="Human Cloning's 'Numbers Game'"/>  A biotechnology company called [[Advanced Cell Technology]] had cloned human embryo cells for medical purposes, and its CEO [[Michael D. West]] said that the directions for cloning a human being were available in published scientific literature.<ref name="Human Cloning's 'Numbers Game'"/>  Experts knowledgeable of the scientific advances in the field have noted that human reproductive chemistry is better understood than that of most animals.<ref name="Human Cloning's 'Numbers Game'"/>  For this reason, they thought that a higher rate of success was possible in human cloning compared with animal cloning.<ref name="Human Cloning's 'Numbers Game'"/>  Brigitte Boisselier anticipated that the work could begin on the preserved cells as soon as October, but there was no evidence that Clonaid had medical knowledge necessary for its success.<ref name="Human Cloning's 'Numbers Game'"/>  There was no evidence that the Clonaid claim was more than a publicity stunt.<ref name="Human Cloning's 'Numbers Game'"/> No verification or evidence proving that a successful clone has been made.{{Citation needed|date=August 2022}}