STORM OF CRITICISM FOR REPRODUCTIVE CLONING PROPONENT

January 8, 1998

WASHINGTON -- The Chicago-area scientist who says he wants to try to clone humans to help infertile couples was attacked as "unhinged" Wednesday and prompted immediate calls for a ban on any such efforts.

Physicist Richard Seed is assembling a team of experts who would try to duplicate the as-yet unique experiment that produced the first cloned mammal, Dolly the sheep, in 1996.

On ABC's Nightline program, Seed said he was motivated by the intellectual challenge of the enterprise and the desire to help infertile couples, as well as a wish to "advance technology and to advance human civilization."

Seed said he could not understand public opposition to human cloning -- which he put at 80 percent to 20 percent -- and although it disturbed him, it would not halt his work.

"I'm going to go ahead and do it, yes, but I worry about public attitudes. I'd rather have it 80-20 the other way and I think it will go 80-20 the other way, and I think it will take ... half a dozen bouncing, baby, smiling, happy clones and their happy parents," he said.

Reaction was quick, and strong, even from the White House.

"I think the scientific community should make it clear to Dr. Seed and I think the president would make it clear to Dr. Seed that he has now elected to become irresponsible, unethical and unprofessional should he proceed on his course that he outlined today," White House spokesman Mike McCurry said.

After Dolly was cloned, U.S. President Bill Clinton set up a Bioethics Commission to investigate the possibilities and threats and proposed banning such research for five years.

"No doubt this announcement will encourage Congress to look more closely at the measure the president proposed last June," McCurry said.

It did. "I for one don't want to live in a Brave New World of sidewalk cloning clinics," said House Majority Leader Dick Armey. "Congress should pass a human cloning ban quickly and stop this risky experimentation before it starts. Human cloning should remain the province of the mad scientists of science fiction."

"When Congress reconvenes, I will try to push through an emergency ban on human cloning experimentation," said Missouri Republican Sen. Christopher Bond.

Dr. Jamie Grifo, director of the division of reproductive endocrinology at New York University, said he feared bad legislation could result.

Although the cloning of humans was unacceptable, he said, related science could help infertile couples.

Grifo described experiments he was doing that would help infertile older women have healthy babies. He wants to take the young, healthy egg of a younger woman, take out the nucleus, and replace it with the nucleus of the would-be mother.

An older women whose eggs were too old to develop normally when then have a chance of a baby that was genetically hers.

"But we are a long ways away from even doing this clinically," Grifo said. "If legislation is passed that says we cannot do this, this stops the research. The biggest loser in all this is the infertility patient."

Clinton has already issued an executive order blocking the use of federal funds from being spent on such research. Food and Drug Administration spokesmen said they believed the agency would have the authority to regulate any such attempt.

Reproductive specialists around the world expressed doubt Seed could ever do what he proposed.

"I think the man is clearly unhinged and I don't think he is to be taken seriously," said Lord Robert Winston, the London-based fertility expert who helped produce the world's first test-tube baby, Louise Brown, in 1978.

Seed, a Harvard-trained physicist, defended himself. "I don't think there's any real moral consideration," he told CNN, adding in the ABC interview, "I think any analogy with (Adolf) Hitler and his maniacal activities is inappropriate."

Seed suggested that human cloning could eventually help scientists upgrade human immune systems to prolong life by 15 to 20 years. He professed to being a religious man and said he opposed abortion, although he vowed to eliminate any cloned embryo that developed abnormally, with parental consent.

Wilmut, the scientist who created Dolly the sheep also spoke out against Seed's plans, telling ABC, "I think that if my wife was living with me and a little copy of me, that this would be a very unusual relationship and not at all right for any of the three of us and most of all for the child."