By Lisa Richwine
WASHINGTON
(Reuters) - A U.S. fertility specialist and the leader of a group
that believes in extraterrestrials are set to testify at a congressional
hearing on Wednesday about their controversial plans to clone
people.
Scientists,
ethicists and industry officials are also scheduled to speak about
the moral dilemmas and safety issues surrounding human cloning.
Members of Congress plan to question federal regulators about
whether they have the power to stop such experiments.
If federal
authority appears limited, there is ``a very good possibility''
that Congress would move toward banning human cloning in the United
States, said Ken Johnson, a spokesman for the House Energy and
Commerce Committee.
One hearing
witness is Panos Zavos, a Kentucky fertility specialist who has
teamed with an Italian doctor in an effort to provide infertile
couples with children who are clones of either parent. More than
700 couples have volunteered to participate in the project set
to take place in a Mediterranean country, Zavos has said.
Zavos' group
plans to take cells from an adult and place them into a woman's
egg stripped of its own DNA. The egg would be stimulated to divide
and form an embryo with the same genetic material for implanting
in a woman's uterus. The resulting baby would be a clone.
Also scheduled
to testify is Rael, leader of a group that claims to be the world's
largest UFO-related organization. Rael says his group plans to
clone a couple's dead child at a secret lab in the United States.
A Web site
for the Raelian movement says a 4-foot (1.2-meter)-tall extra-terrestrial
with almond-shaped eyes visited Rael, previously known as Claude
Vorilhon, in 1973, and told him that life was deliberately created
by scientifically advanced extraterrestrials using DNA.
Lawmakers
invited Rael to speak because they felt a duty to shed light on
the kind of groups claiming to have the scientific know-how and
funding to clone people, Johnson said. An aim of the hearing,
Johnson said, was to find out ``are they just a fringe nut group
or are they really going to do it?''
Scientists
and religious groups who call cloning immoral and fear it may
lead to babies born with serious deformities also are scheduled
to testify.
Some researchers
are concerned because animal cloning has seen a high percentage
of failures and deformed clones in the four years since scientists
announced they had cloned a sheep named Dolly.
``Today the
technology to clone a human being still is not safe, and the full
range of moral and ethical concerns still has not been addressed,''
said Carl Feldbaum, president of the Biotechnology Industry Organization,
in a recent letter to President George W. Bush.
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