Seed of Controversy
Will this unemployed physicist be first to clone humans?

WENDY COLE/RIVERSIDE / Time Magazine 11jan00

[Excerpt only. For complete article go to Time website]

 

The immediate response to the birth of Dolly the sheep was a revulsion against the idea of using the same technique to clone human beings. But the news had just the opposite effect on an eccentric scientist named Richard Seed, who declared with an eerie bravado that he was going to produce "half-a-dozen bouncing-baby, happy, smiling clones" before the end of the decade.

photo source: Pictures of Famous Physicists

Most scientists dismissed his plan as kooky; several U.S. states and 19 European countries outlawed it. But a year later, Seed insists that he is undeterred. He claims to have a partner, an obstetrician-gynecologist, but he won't name him or the three other scientists who he says make up his team. When pressed, he concedes that his colleagues are currently spending no more than 10 hours a week on the project. After all, they have day jobs.

Not so Seed. The unemployed physicist, who has spent a lifetime dabbling in ill-fated ventures, is trying to build support and raise money; he claims to have commitments for $800,000. An impressive start, if true, but still far from the $2.5 million he says is necessary to clone the first human before 2000.

Leaning back in an easy chair in the immaculate Riverside, Ill., bungalow he shares with his wife Gloria, Seed hardly projects the image of a scientific visionary driven to win the cloning race. "I lead a boring life," he says. Indeed, he seems to be spending more time watching television than cloning humans. Lying next to the chair within easy reach is his current reading matter: a textbook called Principles of Genome Analysis and the week's TV listings.

His public announcements haven't exactly bolstered his credibility either. First he said he was going to make little baby clones for infertile couples. Then last September--"to defuse criticism that I'm taking advantage of desperate women"--he announced that he would first clone himself. Now he says he will re-create his wife Gloria, an office worker at a FORTUNE 500 company in downtown Chicago. "She's not as excited about it as I am," he says without a hint of irony, "but she's willing to help."

While virtually no mainstream scientist believes Seed will succeed, there has been a subtle shift in attitudes since the bearded, big-boned maverick loomed into view.

mindfully.org note: For complete article see Time magazine.

If you have come to this page from an outside location click here to get back to mindfully.org