- ATHENS (Reuters) - Chicago physicist Richard Seed, who stirred international
controversy by announcing plans to clone humans, said Friday experiments
on calves and monkeys may soon bring him closer to his goal.
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- Knowledge on human cloning may be complete
within two months, if current experiments on calves and monkeys show positive
results, he told a news conference in Athens.
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- ``It is quite impossible to stop science,
it is quite impossible to stop human progress, it is quite impossible to
stop humanity and civilization,'' he told a packed room at a private Greek
hospital.
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- Last month Seed, 69, reignited the debate
on human cloning, which began when a sheep named Dolly was cloned in Scotland
in 1996, by announcing he would open a clinic to clone human babies.
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- He said recent evidence from an American
scientist, who produced live calves from cells from a 285-days old fetus,
were very encouraging for cloning humans.
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- ``If not me, then someone else. If not
now, then later. If not here, then elsewhere,'' he said. ``A political
group can only impede, it cannot stop.''
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- An increasing number of countries have
banned human cloning and the United States is taking legal steps against
it after President Clinton urged Congress to pass a law banning such experiments
for five years.
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- ``It is still legal in the United States,''
Seed said. ``Many countries have banned the process, many have not and
many will never get around to it.''
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- Asked to answer critics who accuse him
of staging publicity stunts and not heeding moral arguments against making
genetic copies of people, Seed said: ``They can stuff it up their nose.''
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- He also dismissed concerns of creating
a human being whose whole life would be under the scientific microscope,
saying such a person would probably become an instant millionaire.
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- The Harvard-trained physicist said he
had received requests by parents who wanted to clone their dead children
but was unsure if this was possible because it was not clear how fast DNA,
a person's genetic blueprint, deteriorates.
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- He also shrugged off concerns of cloning
the wrong people. ``Saddam (Hussein) would be very unwise to make a clone
because the first thing the clone would do would (be to) grow up and murder
his father,'' he said.
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